The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
Fighting BDS online
How DigiTell is working to change anti-Israel sentiments on social media
‘The DigiTell network doesn’t work for the government. They have been defending the State of Israel and the Jewish people for years’ – Ido Daniel
At the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York this past Sunday, the newspaper awarded a special prize to members of the DigiTell network for its pro-Israel online activism. DigiTell, an independent network of pro-Israel social media influencers, was created by the strategic affairs ministry one year ago in order to fight BDS, hate speech and antisemitism online. According to Ido Daniel, director of digital strategy at the strategic affairs ministry, the network spans six continents, with dozens of organizations, influencers and grassroot initiatives dedicated to this cause.
“As individuals, they were doing great work,” said Daniel, “but there was a lack of coordination and cooperation between them. The ministry has the ‘luxury’ of having the ability to bring everyone together to the same table.”
Daniel explained that the anti-Israel lobby “is working in a coordinated fashion. European anti-Israel groups have shared messaging, mottoes and information to create unified campaigns against Israel.”
A central goal of DigiTell – which is holding its Global Coalition for Israel confab in Jerusalem this coming week – is to empower the pro-Israel activists online.
“We accomplish this in a number of ways,” Daniel said. “First, our annual conference creates face-to-face interactions, allowing members to know each other better, create relationships and launch joint ventures.”
The ministry also provides support in several ways to the DigiTell network.
“We recognized there was a lack of communication between online pro-Israel activists and government bodies, such as during the recent arson attacks in Israel’s South,” he continued. “We chartered a bus and took them – photographers and filmmakers – to see firsthand the damage done, and receive personal insights on the devastation from firefighters, local residents, national park rangers, the IDF – and even view a defunct Hamas terrorist tunnel. The DigiTell network then shared it under the hashtag #FreeGazafromHamas, which was, and is to this day, extensively used online.”
DigiTell has also been involved with many of the campaigns run by pro-Israel movements. According to Daniel, this includes the release of a surprise campaign #NoWayToTreatAChild on the UN’s Universal Children’s Day, to raise awareness about how Palestinian groups “use children in their terrorist attacks and spread hate speech online, on TV and in their school textbooks. More than eight million people were reached through this campaign on Twitter alone.”
The DigiTell network, Daniel told the Post, doesn’t work for the government. “They have defended the State of Israel and the Jewish people for years,” he said. “We bring them
together and give them access to the information they need.”
DigiTell activist Arsen Ostrovsky – a leading pro-Israel advocate and executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress – became involved in DigiTell “because it offers an outstanding and unique global platform that connects and empowers leading pro-Israel advocates from around the world in order to exchange best-practice ideas and help amplify our collective message in support of Israel.”
Ostrovsky explained that the Internet has become a cesspool of antisemitic hate, where lies, distortions of truth and vilification against Jews and the State of Israel are real, direct and intense. The attacks, which come from an array of different sources, are often coordinated and further exacerbated in today’s era of “fake news” and real-time posting.
Although BDS has a minimal impact on Israel in practice, the danger is that if left unchecked online, “it will continue to set the agenda and fan the flames of hatred and antisemitism.”
For Ostrovsky, the key challenge in combating BDS and the anti-Israel lobby online is trying to remain vigilant, “selecting which battles to fight, while at the same time being proactive and setting a positive narrative.” By providing “a unique global platform to exchange best-practice ideas, DigiTell also allows us to calibrate our strategies in order to have a unified message that we can then amplify in fighting BDS and supporting Israel.”
Ostrovsky said that since DigiTell’s inception in early 2018, he has been involved in a number of the network’s “highly successful campaigns, including raising awareness over the Hamas-led Gaza riots in the past year, reinforcing the link between BDS and terrorism and shedding light on Hamas abuse of Palestinian children with the #NoWayToTreatAChild campaign during the United Nations’ Universal Children’s Day.”
Ostrovsky emphasized that “our global network of pro-Israel activists [was] highly engaged during the Eurovision Song Contest and the period preceding it, to repel the attacks of the BDS Movement and to use the Eurovision platform to promote and reinforce the beauty and diversity of Israel.”
NETHERLANDS-BASED DigiTell activist Hidde van Koningsveld – who is also the chairman of CIJO, the biggest pro-Israel youth movement in the Netherlands – has made it his mission to fight against anti-Israel hatred and antisemitism.
“We’re privileged to be a member of the DigiTell network, which enables us to work together with other pro-Israel activists from around the world and work on campaigns to fight the BDS movement,” he said. “I got involved in DigiTell in March 2018, at the very first conference in Jerusalem.”
He noted that the threat of BDS is not economic. “The biggest threat BDS poses is the public relations field,” van Koningsveld explained. “BDS spreads lies about Israel that stick with ‘regular’ people on social media and even the mainstream media.”
Van Koningsveld highlighted that “the only small success the BDS movement had in the Netherlands, after months of campaigning against Eurovision, was that some national newspapers repeated their false claim that the Tel Aviv Expo was built on a ‘destroyed Palestinian village.’” He said they “are working on countering this claim by providing factual information and asking the newspapers to correct their articles.”
Attending the strategic affairs ministry conferences has provided van Koningsveld with pro-Israel friends from around the world.
“As a Dutch youth organization, we used to have a relatively small reach,” he said. “It’s great to have friends all over the world who are facing the same challenges and share our work and strategies.”
The advantage, he said, is that “We stand stronger together. United, we have millions of followers, and with this comes the potential to counter the lies and antisemitism that are being spread by the BDS movement.”
Daniel and van Koningsveld shared helpful advice for those who want to fight anti-Israel bias.
Daniel emphasized that “every action counts,” and recommended that pro-Israel activists join social media, “from writing and liking pro-Israel comments, to reporting anti-Israel hate speech, sharing pro-Israel content and following all of DigiTell’s member organizations social media pages. The second thing, join Twitter and Instagram. It’s the new – and old, when it comes to Twitter – battleground for pro-Israel advocacy.”
Ostrovsky encouraged those in the midst of the social media battle “not to let the haters get to you. Just tell the truth and try to broaden the conversation to convey a positive story about what you love most about Israel.”
‘We stand stronger together. United, we have millions of followers and with this comes the potential to counter the lies and antisemitism spread by BDS’ – Hidde van Koningsveld