How to fight for Israel on social media as the war with Hamas rages online - opinion

The hellhole that is social media is inescapable in nature. So much of a millennial’s life revolves around the trials and tribulations of an Instagram story or a Snapchat Snapstreak – and I haven’t even begun to touch on the serious struggle of learning a TikTok dance.

I’m a journalist, but I know when I’ve met a worthy opponent, and social media is the titan we need to cooperate with in order to survive. That being said, and let me be clear when I say this, there is a massive difference between a valid news source and a social media influencer.

Influencers these days are activists in their own right a lot of the time, and that’s perfectly valid. Also valid was the need, when this war began and support for Israel was haphazard (especially in leftist circles), for a total, panoptic advocacy for Israel’s plight.

So we reposted Instagram stories, and we reshared infographics, and we tweeted (X’d?) videos, and the source did not matter, as long as we were posting, posting, posting.

We’re now three and a half months into the war and what then seemed like a cakewalk of sharing the horrors and presenting our casus belli, the event that justified our entering the war, has somehow slipped away and become a lost battleground instead. 

No matter how much the horrors of October 7 that we share on social media are objectively correct, these platforms cannot withstand the nuance that explains how over 1,200 deaths in a mass terror attack are worse than over 25,000 deaths in a carefully executed operation by Israel on the Gazan side, as reported by the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry.

The pictures of struggling children and dying families are the saddening truths of a war fought against an enemy hiding behind densely populated areas filled with civilians used as human shields. To be clear, dead babies and dead children are always a terrible scenario, and this reality exists on both sides. The “other side” presenting these images is driving the anti-Israel force, and it feels like social media is a lost cause, but it must not be abandoned. 

Helpful tips for navigating the cesspit that is social media

So what can we do? 

For starters, we must not add fuel to the fire. While it’s difficult to make a difference and build a dam in the never-ending stream of misinformation being shared by the pro-BDS camp, we cannot give any more ammunition to those who would seek our demise. 

When we share fake news that would be to our advantage, even from a place of naiveté, when we express pain through calls for revenge and indiscriminate violence – and yes, this applies to members of Knesset more than anyone else – we are hurting our own cause more than we are helping it.

Yes, I know, double-checking a reel for authenticity might take more than the few seconds it takes to repost or share, but we must understand: Just like we are soldiers fighting in Gaza; just like we are mothers alone at home with the kids; just like we are running small businesses with no help; so, too, are we fighters on social media.

Even if we have fact-checked, there’s something else to be considered: Who are we in this war and what do we want to take with us out of it? Because while so-and-so may share an Instagram story that we agree with, are we sure that we wish to affiliate ourselves with them in the grand scheme of things? We must look at the people we share.

For example, while “Mike” might be sharing some haunting footage from Kibbutz Be’eri, check his feed: He’s an anti-vaxxer.

And while “Sarah” might be sharing an impressive video of the IDF speaking with Gazans about the plight of living under a Hamas regime, look again: She has three followers and is sharing supposedly “exclusive, no-one-else-will-have-this” information.

Even if we do not intend to do so, sharing means aligning, and that might not always be good.

Now that we know what not to share, let’s get to what we should share.

The first, and perhaps the most obvious answer, is that we must share the atrocities Israelis endured on October 7, because there is no room for questioning the truth value of the horrific events of this murder rampage.

When it comes to Israel’s operation in Gaza, jus in bello, the ethical laws of war, are on our side. But the qualities of this principle are individually being put into question by the anti-Israel camp, which calls into question the validity of evidence Israel has presented that it has acted rationally and carefully. Well-sourced evidence of these individual qualities could be very powerful indeed.

When Israel’s proportionality is put into question, compare Hamas’s actions on October 7 to the IDF operation in Gaza.

When Israel’s reasonable hope for success is put into question, highlight the targeted, sharp, and careful tactic operations Israel’s security forces have carried out to eliminate terror leaders with as few unnecessary casualties as possible.

When Israel’s operation is being questioned for not being a last resort, ask: What would be reasonable justification to fight an enemy keen on your destruction? Would it not be a sadistic operation with the goal of murdering, raping, and kidnapping your civilians and threatening to continue to do so?

Another thing to keep in mind: Know thy enemy and thy enemy’s TikTok feed. A counterargument to the falsehoods being shared on anti-Israel dashboards carries a power of its own. These, of course, require a solid foundation.

We must support Israel and be vocal in our support, but we must not shoot ourselves in the foot (feet?). Taking an extra moment makes or breaks the argument for the fight for our very existence.

The writer is managing editor of The Jerusalem Post’s website, JPost.com.