Arutz Sheva spoke with pro-Israel activist and Facebook video star Chloé Valdary at the Israeli American Council (IAC) National Conference in Washington, DC.

Valdary has been a pro-Israel activist for six years, thanks in large part to her upbringing in New Orleans. She founded a pro-Israel student group, Allies of Israel, while a student at the University of New Orleans.

She noted that she always had an interest in film as an art form and that “in college, I was really interested in Israel from a political perspective and fighting against anti-Semitism, and so what happened was that my two passions happened to merge and come together as a result.”

“The reason why Israel is so compelling,” explained Valdary, “is that Israel provides lessons on the human condition, on what it means to be a human being, and that means that I can look at Israel and I can look at the struggles of Israelis and the dilemmas Israelis face and learn something about what it means to be imperfect, what it means to yearn for things, what it means to build a society that is trying to contribute to the flourishing of human beings.”

The responses to her work are “more positive as I get away from the political and into the human realm. Both Jews and non-Jews respond very positively to this, because what I'm essentially saying is that this is a universal story. It's really about the particular, the individual, and showing how we can have universal values from that.”

Despite not being Jewish and being raised as a Christian, Valdary said she “grew up observing Shabbat and keeping kosher style and keeping all the holidays, so my identity, in a very existential way, was rooted, weirdly enough, in Judaism or love and appreciation for Jewish customs...my Israel engagement work is very much attached to who I am, in a non-conventional way.”