Once, in another life, a million years ago, or a month, I followed a girl named Ella Keinan, a travel blogger, on Instagram. With 100,73 followers and more than <> countries she has visited, Ella is one of those people that everyone secretly hates, because her job is to travel and then share photos from her trips on Instagram.
But if you log into her account now and look for photos of beautiful hotels or breathtaking views, you'll find that the last travel post – a photo from a colorful market in New Caledonia – is from more than a month ago, from October 3. Four days later, on 7 October, she decided to divert her knowledge, experience and resources to Israeli advocacy on social media.
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While Galit Distel was still trying to connect the printer, Ella, a retired intelligence officer, had already invented the hashtag #HamasisIsis and was alone responsible for hundreds of millions of exposures to pro-Israel content. She currently runs a Telegram group of 3,500 people (come on, everyone join and be soldiers of those!), where she uploads pro-Israel content for distribution, plus explanations of where, when and how to upload it.
While most of Israel's propaganda content manages to reach mainly the... The State of Israel, Ella Keinan, with zero budget and zero support from the state, gives at the top. If you were wondering why we didn't hear from Greta Thunberg again, for example, after that picture, the answer is Ella Kenan. By the way, at the end of the war, she promised to upload tour guides abroad according to "supporters" and "oppressors," so we're covered in this area as well.
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And here, last week, my partner accepted requests to accompany other artists (other than me!?) in performances in front of soldiers, and I had to stay at home, climb the walls and pretend to play with the children, while I actually set up their room.
Since I can't watch TV (I may be traumatized by video content), I sat alone one evening and while scrolling through my feed depressed, I came across one of Ella's requests: to report a post by singer Björk (well, the Icelander with the swan dress), who posted a picture with incorrect maps of Israel and stung the pro-Israel with the caption "? Is this what you call sharing"
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This is probably the most infuriating type of post: those that purport to share factual information, only it is completely wrong. The kind of thing that some people will probably remember as absolute truth for the rest of their lives. A post that is great fuel for all anti-Semites and anti-Zionists.
I reported the post (spoiler alert - it's still up in the air) and made a polite response along the lines of "stop sharing misinformation". My comment somehow became one of the first comments other users see when they come to the post, so I've since received a magical flood of congratulations, congratulations, suggestions and comments about my intelligence, my appearance, my religion and my murderous ambitions, to the extent that I have any.
One user wrote that my music is bad. Out of curiosity, I went to her profile and discovered that she is also a singer, and that the last song she released has 73 views on YouTube. 74 with me. I admit it was a rewarding experience, but in the end there is something depressing about this occupation.
I'm no longer offended by people who try to insult me online, 15 years in the profession have prepared me well, but it's only when you dive into the mire, abandoning your message box to an army of zombies, that you realize how unfair this game is and that for the privileged, ad-ripping college kids, we're just another moralistic game, just as important as separate non-binary toilets. After the successful struggles for women's rights, black rights and trans rights, the Palestinians (yes, Hamas, not Hamas, they don't want to get into the nuances) are the obviously weakened minority. We won't win this game, for the simple reason that we're too strong. And I hope we always will.
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And here's another problem: we're too little. How can you argue when on one side there are a few Jews and on the other side something like 30 percent of the world's population? Do they say that the Jews control the media? What can I tell you, not enough.
Ella makes it clear that she is not trying to convince the outspoken anti-Semitic Islamists or people from Arab countries. It appeals to all the swingers in North America and Europe, to those who can get up tomorrow morning and find jihad knocking on the door. We've been trying to explain for 15 years that we're the good guys, but it doesn't work. It's time to start explaining how bad they are.
And that's exactly what I tried to do in the Instagram trenches that night on the couch. Suddenly, I noticed that someone I follow liked Björk's false post! And not just anyone, someone who has half a million followers, someone who is one of the most famous stylists in the world: Carla Welch.
And one of Carla Welch's clients happens to be our Wonderwoman. Gal Gadot pays her to choose dresses for her. The good thing is that I don't have such problems in life, because I choose my own dresses, especially since I have nowhere to wear any dress now, and the white glavier I wore to the concert last week wasn't a good idea, because there was an alarm and I had to lie on the ground and at the end of the day I still took pine needles out of my underwear.
And now I'm basing myself on some woman who has extensive knowledge of nipple patches but has no idea what river and sea everyone is talking about. Oops. After four weeks of war, after the horrors, the horror, the anxiety, the pain, the loss, the mourning, the monsters of Hamas, Hassan Nasrallah, the BBC, Harvard students who feel themselves - it turns out that that commenter was right and that I do have murderous ambitions, only the person who finally made me cultivate them is Gal Gadot's stylist.
The good news is that she took down the like and blocked me. I mean, she saw what I wrote about her. The bad news is that now I have to monitor her from my spouse's phone. The Guardian of Israel will not sleep.
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