On the horizon: a third anniversary since the Hamas horrors of Oct. 7, 2023. Eylon Levy remembers the Israeli war room like it was yesterday.
“They needed people to talk to the media, and it was an atmosphere of all hands on deck,” Levy told the IJN.
Levy became the English spokesperson for the Israeli government.
“Every person in that position got sucked in,” said Levy. “I was part of a team of spokespeople whose role was to go out and conquer as much screen time as possible.
“We knew that Israel was on borrowed time, that there were far more organizations, NGOs, that would try to sell a hostile narrative about Israel.”
We are no longer facing just a disinformation war. We are in the grips of a disinformation apocalypse
Recalling the relentless blitzkrieg of defending Israel’s response to the Hamas attack, Levy said:
“You are responding to whatever is going on, playing whack-a-mole with the various lies that are being told about Israel. I wish I could say that Israel went into the war with a grand media strategy [he laughs].
“No, of course it didn’t have one. There was confusion about the goals at the beginning because there was absolutely no message or discipline within the political level with government ministers who went off script and said whatever they wanted and ended up causing us immense damage.
“But we had to stay focused on the big picture, to make sure people understood what happened on October 7, because Israelis think the whole world saw it.
“No, they didn’t.”
Hamas, while still breathing, is hardly the threat it was on Oct. 7, 2023. What has ensued, though, has been a worldwide discourse on Zionism.
“Our enemies are making things up as they go along and they’re twisting international law to shield terrorist armies that are violating every principle of international law so that everything Israel does is illegal,” Levy told a crowd of approximately 400 at Temple Sinai on May 28.
“That movement has a name. It is the anti-Zionist hate movement, because anti-Zionism has as much to do with real Zionism as anti-Semitism has to do with Semitism, which is not a thing.
“The anti-Semites made up a name to give a more respectable veneer to their hatred in the same way that ‘Zionism’ in anti-Zionism is not a real thing. It is a bogeyman of our detractors’ imagination because they’re constructing the state of Israel, Zionism, as some cosmic evil as the nexus of everything that is wrong in the world because its goal is to convince good, ordinary, decent Americans that Israel should be destroyed.
“We are no longer facing just a disinformation war.
“We are in the grips of a disinformation apocalypse. The AI revolution is already putting that process on steroids since the Iran war.
“The internet is now awash with viral disinformation because the Twitter business model is paying people to spread news through that viral disinformation world — a world in which viral disinformation about Jews get clicks.
“They farm engagement and people are literally getting rich from it. It’s an industry.
“So in order to speak about Israel confidently, we have to confidently call out the movement that is trying to gaslight us.
“That movement is anti-Zionism.
“Now, is anti-Zionism the same as anti-Semitism? Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are in many ways mirror images.
“Anti-Semitism was a movement that said, ‘get out of Poland, go to Palestine.’ Anti-Zionism is a movement that says, ‘get out of Palestine, go back to Poland.’
“Anti-Semitism says, ‘we don’t want you living as a minority here.’ Anti-Zionism says, ‘we don’t want you living as a majority.’
“The debate about whether anti-Zionism is different from anti-Semitism is boring and it’s irrelevant. It’s like arguing about whether homophobia and biphobia are the same thing. They’re both hateful prejudices. They target more or less the same people and they share the same motives and histories as ideas. Anti-Zionism, like anti-Semitism, is a mutation targeting the same people, and is a political movement.”
Surely, it has been easy to identify the emergence of the debate. Finding a solution to the ugliness is more difficult.
“The anti-Zionist movement tries to erode our confidence by creating impossible purity tests that shrink and shrink and shrink the space for legitimate Jewish life,” said Levy.
“One of those purity tests you have to square by now is genocide — saying Israel committed genocide, because that is the ultimate crime.
“We have to go after the lies. We’ve got to double down on seeing Israel as a joint project between Israel, the Israelis and the diaspora.”
During the appearance at Temple Sinai, Rabbi Rick Rheins joined Levy for a short question-and-answer session. The subject of the young workforce was at hand.
“There is a young energy in the country,” said Levy, who lives in Tel Aviv.
“I want to see more young Jews roll up their sleeves in a startup seat in Israel and get excited about how we innovate and help to solve the world’s problems and build a vibrant Jewish culture that has become the beating heart of the global Jewish world.”
Levy’s work with the Israeli government was suspended by the Israeli prime minister’s office in March, 2024, after Levy’s online criticism of UK Foreign Secretary, David Cameron. The criticism came in the wake of Cameron’s plea to Israel to “allow more trucks into Gaza.”
“I hope you are also aware there are NO limits on the on the entry of food, water, medicine or shelter equipment into Gaza,” Levy replied at the time on X.
What followed was a tense exchange from UK leaders to Israel’s foreign ministry, leading to Levy’s suspension.
After his address at Temple Sinai, Levy was on his way to Panama. Globetrotting has become his new norm in his new life as a podcaster, which is part of his social media initiative to advocate for Israel.
“Hamas will ultimately disarm,” Levy told the IJN, “and Gaza will be demilitarized, because that’s what the Board of Peace Plan says.
“And if it doesn’t, then Israel has a buffer zone at least.
“So the threat of Hamas is absolutely still there. Anti-Zionism is a political movement that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel and will stop at no lie, no level of propaganda to convince good, ordinary Americans that the state of Israel is not America’s best ally and teammate, but some cosmic force for evil that needs to be destroyed.
“That’s what we need to set our sights on.”
© IJN 2026