This government officially gave up on fighting the blood libel on day five of the war when Member of Knesset Galit Distel-Atbaryan, minister of public diplomacy, dissolved her office.
Why this government refuses to defend Israel off the battlefield, ignoring the tangible effect on foreign support for weapons, Judea and Samaria, and even the Iron Dome (not to mention the lives and safety of Jews abroad), is perplexing.
It is clearly aware of the damage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself called the recent affair involving then-military advocate-general Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who allegedly leaked a video from the Sde Teiman detention facility, “the biggest propaganda failure ever.”
<br><strong>Moral obligation</strong>
While the government fails to (or won’t) issue timely responses to anti-Israel accusations, such as the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in October 2023, which ultimately turned out to be caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, the international media does not.
Consequently, Israelis and Jews with large social media audiences have taken it upon themselves to defend Israel and the IDF, and public opinion appears to be that it is any popular Jew’s moral obligation to do so.
Familiar faces have taken up the mantle, such as Eylon Levy, former State of Israel spokesperson (dismissed by Netanyahu), launching an Israeli civilian spokepersons’ initiative; and Arab-Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad, who travels the world speaking to anyone who will listen, encouraging his followers to comment on and report specific antisemitic posts online.
Israeli news anchor Yonit Levi appeared on CNN early on in the war, not to offer political commentary or factual reporting but to assert that “many in Israel feel that this is the moment to try… to come together because the external threat is bigger than anything else happening right now.”
What those three have in common is not only their advanced media training but the fact that they are Israeli.
They were in the country on October 7, 2023, and lived through the primary threat of anti-Israeli sentiment: terror attacks on Israeli soil. Most of Israel’s online defenders are of a different variety.
J-Influencers
Anglo-Jewish influencers, as they can be observed today, rose to – shall we call it notoriety? – around Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls.
Active on J-Insta and J-Twitter (that’s Jewish Instagram and Jewish Twitter/X, respectively), these individuals position themselves as a hybrid of Jewish Loraxes and news sources, with posts sharing reports of active terror attacks garnered from elsewhere on the Internet, analyses of an MK’s announcement, or rephrasing a Pew poll about antisemitism.
Regurgitating existing posts and information only goes so far; ideally, social media creators have original content of their own to profit from.
Since these J-influencers are based outside of Israel and cannot share any of their own experiences with terrorism or the IDF because they have none, they try to piggyback off Israeli survivors who don’t have a massive following of their own.
One such influencer was Cheryl, who was particularly impressive in her marketability, as she lost her family in a terrorist attack as a child, along with her ability to speak, and later served as a sniper in the IDF.
She had been posting political and military analyses from her account @CherylWroteIt for most of the war, while her husband was in IDF reserve duty and she was at home in Haifa with their five children.
That was until her account was deactivated because “she” was discovered to be an Indian man. He was promoted by J-influencers with tens of thousands of followers. People even donated money to him.
Not believable
It was baffling to hear Americans speaking about this incredible Israeli female sniper, who apparently suffered from selective mutism due to losing her entire family in a terrorist attack – oh, and she was an olah (new immigrant), doing all this in her second language. How do reasonably intelligent people believe such an outlandish claim?
It is true that there are a handful of female snipers, and some have even crossed the border into Gaza, but those women have to prove themselves not just to be good, but better.
Combat units aren’t about encouraging young people to succeed and push boundaries; they’re for maximizing effectiveness and minimizing casualties.
And they don’t accept non-verbal soldiers. They don’t even accept gluten-free soldiers. Many laughed about it, but it is not funny.
Here are scores of non-Israeli Jews who care about Israel and are trying to protect it from abroad, and instead are falling for the level of drivel that one can expect only from the UN.
Bad actors
The Israeli government cannot be content to rely upon Jews with large social media followings instead of real diplomacy and effective hasbara.
It is being manipulated by bad actors, Jewish or otherwise, and our enemies. The next Cheryl won’t be an Indian man trying to capitalize on our pain; it will be a team of Iranians encouraging Jewish donors to fund Hamas.
Israel is the Jew among nations and needs a governmental spokespersons team. Privatizing Israel advocacy in the face of Iran breeding terrorists online is criminal negligence.
Most of those J-influencers are well-intentioned, but they are woefully ill-equipped for the frontlines of the 21st century because they lack the common knowledge and experiences that virtually all Israelis have.
We would never rely on foreign combat soldiers or intelligence officers without Israeli corroboration. Israeli advocacy should be no different.
It matters that most of Israel’s spokespeople don’t live here. Unless we live to witness the Messiah standing upon the roof of the Third Temple, with rays of light emanating from his person, it will be hard to say who truly have the right to speak for the Jewish people. But my humble guess is that at the bare minimum, they will be speaking in Hebrew.■
Lior Zoe Perets is an Israeli-American writer whose work has been published in the literary magazine Verklempt! and on the digital platform Lehrhaus. She is the recipient of the Bar Sagi Prize for fiction, has an MA in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University, works as a paralegal, and serves in the IDF reserves.