Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel are looking for smart ways to spend NIS 500 million (about $150 million) on public diplomacy. This new government hasbara (Israel advocacy) budget is to be 20 times what it was before the war against Hamas began in 2023. The two leaders have been brainstorming with "influencers" and public opinion leaders about the allocation of the funds.

The challenge is enormous, the effort is worthy, and the range of initiatives suggested is impressive. But Saar and Haskel must be careful not to waste funds on feckless enterprises. This includes the establishment of a government hasbara bureaucracy and more. And mainly, they ought to revolutionize Israel's messaging. This means matching resolute messaging to Israel's necessarily aggressive strategic and defense posture and restoring Jewish faith to Israel's diplomatic arsenal.

What Israel should not do with the new hasbara budget is this: Set up a grand government hasbara directorate or fiefdom. There are plenty of existing mechanisms to simply coordinate matters, including the foreign ministry's own public diplomacy division, and anyway, government bureaucracies have never been good at implementation. Give the money to fast-moving independent actors.

Secondly, don't spend big chunks of…