Israel advocacy group StandWithUs executive director says the group’s goal is to ‘humanize’ the Israeli image.
NEW YORK—In the midst of escalating tensions and stabbing attacks, thousands of pro-Israel internet users have taken up the fight to tell Israel’s side of the story in the social media.
Last week the organization StandWithUs, which has close to 800,000 followers on facebook and describes itself as a grassroots education movement dedicated to informing the public about Israel, achieved a combined post reach of 100 million on its page.
Educating the public about Israel, however, is far from being an easy business. It means facing down opponents such as the BDS movement and those who say Israel is an apartheid state. Many of these opponents also propagate their critical image of Israel forward in many public fora and on college campuses around the world.
Shahar Azani, executive director of the StandWithUs northeast regional office, joined the organization at the beginning of 2015 after serving with the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, New York, Los Angeles and Nairobi.
According to him, the recipe for effective Israel advocacy, or “outreach” as he prefers to call it, includes two crucial ingredients: relevance and creativity.
“The biggest risk to advocacy is kishke diplomacy,” Azani told the Jerusalem Post. “When we tell people what we want to tell them and not what they need or want to hear, I think that is a huge problem. And it’s not easy to overcome, because it’s a natural instinct: you are hurting and you want to let it out.”
“We need to ask ourselves: how can I make Israel relevant to my target audience?” he said.
Back in February 2009 when he worked at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles Azani was invited to speak at UCLA just after Operation Cast Lead.
“Of course we wanted to explain Israel’s situation, but February is also Black History month,” he said.
Azani reached out to the Kenyan consul-general in Los Angeles whom he knew from his time in Nairobi and asked her to join him. They focused their UCLA talk on the relationship between Israel and Africa.
“This is in my view an exemplary event because it addressed a need; it was built on the local needs and ideas and relevance. We chose the topic to be an issue that was discussed on campus at that time, and we made sure it was an event that wasn’t an Israel standalone event, but, rather, Israel standing side by side with someone else,” he explained. “There was also a universal message of hope.”
Azani said most college students and people in general may feel that they are being indoctrinated and fed propaganda when approached with the topic of Israel. This is why, he says, entering by the “back door” and not necessarily talking about the conflict with the Palestinians may be the best approach.
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