Israel’s Great Defender
"It’s an uphill climb and there’s no doubt that the social media landscape makes this extremely difficult, because the information is weighted against us," says Eylon Levy.
In a wide-ranging interview in this week’s AJN, former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy says fighting the information war against Israel is an immense challenge that will require work, particularly with the younger generation.
Levy will be in Australia in September, when he will headline JNF Australia’s annual events in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Having studied at Oxford university, Levy says he isn’t surprised by the rampant antisemitism seen on campuses around the Western world.
“I remember over a decade ago, when I was at Oxford, a BDS motion came up with the student union and we managed to defeat it by a margin of six to one,” Levy told The AJN.
“By the way, that’s unthinkable nowadays. I spoke with one of the proponents of the motion and I asked her why she was doing this, because it was clear she had no idea what she was talking about. She said, ‘I’m left-wing, it’s just part of what we do.’
“It’s just part of the bundle of causes that if you support LGBT rights and don’t like oil and you’re a vegetarian that you also think Israel should die,” Levy said.
“I think maybe what has surprised me is just how deeply entrenched and how little resistance that ideology has found.”
Articulate and sharp, Levy became a sought-after government spokesperson at the beginning of the war before politics saw him forced to leave the position.
“If it was up to me, I would have stayed.”
Carly Adno: We’re nine months into this war with no real end in sight. What is the feeling in Israel right now?
Eylon Levy: Unfortunately, there’s no end in sight for the broader crisis that Israel faces. As we speak, there are hopes for a ceasefire deal that will see some of the hostages released in the first stage, leading towards talks for a permanent ceasefire. If that happens and the current round of conflict ends, that still leaves Hamas in Gaza – severely degraded, unable to regroup as long as Israel can maintain military action inside the Gaza Strip, but still running Gaza.
We’ve been warning since the beginning that if this war ends with Hamas on its feet, there will be a next time. And it will be worse because Hamas will feel that it survived this war thanks to international pressure on Israel to leave its army of terror in place after the war it started. It will be worse, because Hamas will think that its strategy of building tunnels under UN facilities and hospitals succeeded in poisoning global opinion against Israel.
The current crisis is not only a war between Israel and a Palestinian terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, it’s a war in which Israel has come under attack on eight fronts by Iran and its proxy allies, including in the Diaspora, where the output of antisemitism and intimidation of Jewish communities around the world is a genie that’s not going back in the bottle. So even if, please God, we get the hostages back and the current round of fighting in Gaza is brought to a close, it doesn’t change the fact that Israel’s strategic condition is the same as it was in 1948 – we’re surrounded by very violent and dangerous people who want us dead. Iran’s axis of evil, a network of proxy armies, is something that will have to be confronted and dealt with globally, even after the current round of hostilities comes to a close.
Why do you think this is this not being communicated properly or understood properly by so many Western countries?
EL: If I were to ask the average person in Australia what’s happening in the Middle East and if they were to tell me the correct but incomplete answer that Israel is fighting a terrorist group that perpetrated the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is threatening to do it again and again, I think we’d be on pretty strong footing in the information war. But that answer is not one I’m likely to receive because of horrific numbers who think that Israel is perpetrating a genocide, God forbid.
There has been a very effective information war waged against Israel by the Palestinians, together with a cadre of UN officials, who are manipulating statistics to their benefit, NGOs that see their role as being activists against Israel, which makes it very difficult for Israel to get a fair shake. I have been very critical at home about Israel’s failure to even fight this information war and not put up necessary resources or take this seriously, and I’m trying to shake Israel out of its complacency and explain that the information war matters; that it’s not a question about whether more people in Sydney will like us, but about whether we will maintain the support of our strategic allies to achieve our national interests. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re outnumbered and outgunned in this battle for global public opinion – there are simply far more people who are automatically primed to believe the worst about Israel and the Jews, and they have politically motivated and biased international officials feeding them information that supports their paranoias.
Part of what I’m trying to do by fighting this information war from within civil society is to try to draw people’s attention to that. It’s to say UNRWA is a Hamas front. Yes, people are suffering. No, they are not being helped by an organisation that is an integral part of Hamas’s military machine in Gaza and is laundering its propaganda and is covering up the Jihadi death cults’ abuse of their facilities and resources, and aid and your taxpayer dollars that go to UNRWA are a direct subsidy to the Hamas army of terror. That is where your money is going and you need to demand better from your governments. There is important humanitarian work to do, but it isn’t by going through an organisation that exists to perpetuate the Palestinians’ forever war against Israel and make any resolution of this conflict impossible, while giving political and material help to barbaric terrorists.
It feels like such a hopeless cause sometimes, but do you have any advice for everyday people who choose to advocate for Israel?
EL: It’s an uphill climb and there’s no doubt that the social media landscape makes this extremely difficult, because the information is weighted against us. We find ourselves in echo chambers and TikTok will deliberately suppress pro-Israel content, so it’s important to take the fight beyond social media as well. It’s not enough to share a story, you must take that information and then go out there and have those difficult conversations with friends and colleagues in the real world, because one of two things will happen: either you will manage to convince them, or you won’t and if they hold such repulsive opinions about Israel and Jews I don’t think you want them as friends in the first place. I know many people who have lost friends as a result of this war and what I tell them, insensitive as it sounds, is I don’t care, because there are many Israelis who’ve lost friends in this war, but because they were mowed down at a music festival or were killed in combat in Gaza, not because of a political argument.
Since leaving government service I’ve been focusing on setting up what we’re calling the Israeli Citizen Spokesperson’s office, and the idea is to empower and cultivate a team of citizen spokespeople who will make the case for Israel directly to the Diaspora, in order to empower the Diaspora to be a force. We know that there are so many people who want to advocate for Israel but feel that they’re missing the words or the arguments or the snappy phrases or the information that they need to make the case. There’s so much noise and they don’t know where to go to get their information.
When I was a government spokesman I found that most of the people tuning into my daily press conferences were not necessarily journalists, they were Jews from around the Diaspora who saw it as an authoritative source of information. So we are putting on a special briefing every day where we make a live statement. We then take live questions submitted on various social media platforms, so that we can give supporters of Israel the tools that they need. Then they can reach out beyond their echo chambers and write that letter to the newspaper, answer the phone for that radio interview, engage in that town hall meeting, have that difficult conversation on campus, out of an understanding that we’re in the same fight – that fighting for Israel is fighting for Diaspora Jewish life. That’s why we have to do it together because as much as the Diaspora needs a strong Israel, Israel needs a strong Diaspora as well.
Do you think this war has really brought to the surface how important the Diaspora Jewry is for Israel?
EL: It’s brought it to a surface in a way that I don’t think Israelis have yet understood. We need to shift towards a deeper understanding of the importance of the Diaspora. I do not think that the Israeli public is aware of the great Diaspora awakening that has been taking place since October 7, the huge numbers of October 7 Jews who felt very comfortable and not connected to their Jewish identity or Israel and suddenly received a slap in the face on October 7. They don’t see it because they’re so consumed in the news of the war and the hostage crisis, and I’m trying to shine a light within Israel on that to say, look how the Diaspora has come out in force for us. Look how much money the federations and JNF and other organisations have been raising for Israel.
Photo: TOI
In Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the nation’s leaders called on the Diaspora to be partners the building of Zion, in the building of Israel. And that’s exactly what we see with projects like the JNF’s project to heal the south, an integral partner in the building of this country. Israelis need to be aware of the nature of that relationship.
Australian Asher Westropp-Evans recently joined your Israeli Citizen Spokesperson’s Office, but you’ve been surrounded by Aussies haven’t you?
EL: Let me reel them off. The CEO of the Israeli Citizen Spokesperson’s Office, Eli Parkes, a graduate of Yavneh, is an Australian. He has been my right-hand man pretty much since October 12, when we decided to set up our own public diplomacy initiative based out of my living room for a few hours before, in the most bizarre circumstances, we got called into the Prime Minister’s Office. He set up the whole operations system in the Prime Minister’s Office. Eli’s brother Asher was also one of the core team of volunteers.
Nathan Joel, also from Yavneh, was critical in the first few months of the war. He was writing the briefings that other government spokespeople were giving live on camera behind the podium.
Akiva Franks, one of my Gen Zionist heroes and I believe a graduate of Mount Scopus, flew to Israel during his summer break and was a core member of my team. If you watch back the press conferences I gave, you’ll hear an Australian voice reading the journalist questions into the microphone. That wasn’t a government official, that was an Australian college kid.
Akiva Gluck, who is running the social and global community network of the Citizen Spokesperson’s network, is another Australian oleh based in Israel. And now Asher, who I’ve known for many years because we worked together at i24 news.
It’s a certain pioneering outback spirit.
It’s just as well you’re coming to Australia then! Going back to your previous role as official Israeli government spokesperson, can you talk about how you felt when you left and the controversy surrounding what happened?
EL: It was deeply disappointing and frustrating to have had to leave the position because politics managed to sour the effort. The story is very well understood in Israel – in mid-January I think it was, it was reported that the Prime Minister’s wife wanted me removed from my position because I had been protesting against the government before the war, which is true and I was very open about it – I protested against this government’s judicial reform plans. But when the war erupted on October 7, I did what all Israelis did, which is drop everything and say only one thing matters right now and that’s coming together to fight this invasion of terrorists who want us dead.
The Prime Minister said we’re all in this together and I agreed with that spirit. I’ve never met the Prime Minister’s wife, but it was reported in the news that she wanted me removed from my position. Eventually I was suspended and I learned from a TV report that a decision had been made to remove me from my position. I understood the reason for the suspension was, unfortunately, political, not professional, and I was forced to resign and take my team with me and launch this new initiative in the context of a not-for-profit. If it were up to me, I would have stayed.
Despite the ongoing war and rise in antisemitism, is there cause for hope?
EL: Yes, absolutely. The challenges are immense and we cannot afford for a single moment to downplay them or minimise them, but I have been awed and inspired by the incredible mobilisation of Israeli civil society that came together on October 7. People just wanting to volunteer and do whatever they could to help, and that extended to the Diaspora and what I’m calling the great Diaspora awakening among adults and among Gen Zionists as well, who are fighting back on campus. They realise that things cannot go back to what they were before.
You also see, for example with the extremely ambitious project that JNF is launching now to help rebuild Israel’s south, a plan to raise a serious amount of money over several years – a sustained fundraising initiative out of an understanding that these connections have to be deepened and tightened.
Whether it’s in Tel Aviv where the beaches and the bars are full, or in New York where I attended the most incredible Shabbat dinner at someone’s home, the Jewish people know how to embrace life and celebrate life. Not only even in the darkest moments, but despite the darkest moments and I hope it makes us stronger.
For more information JNF Australia’s annual events with Eylon Levy visit jnf.org.au/annualevent/
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