Tamar Schwarzbard, the head of digital operations at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about representing Israel online.
“What's important for people to understand is we have all the facts that work in our favor. There's a lot of fake news that takes place online, and our job as the Foreign Ministry is to make sure that we share the story of more than nine million Israelis online.”
She gave a brief overview of the Ministry’s operations: "The Foreign Ministry online is active in six different languages: Hebrew, English, Spanish, Russian, Persian, and Arabic. We have about fourteen million followers, and since October 7th we've had more more than three billion organic impressions. That means that our content has been viewed more than three billion times. Our goal is to reach people wherever they are, all over the world, on every platform, and to share Israel's story.”
She spoke about online hate against Israel: “The hate is bad. I have to say it's definitely not a pleasant feeling to wake up in the morning to hundreds of antisemitic comments wishing terrible things upon you and your family. Our love for one another is so much stronger than any amount of hate that we receive. We know that the truth is in our favor, and we will continue working around the clock to make sure that the story of Israel is told online.
She called for individual users to join her Ministry's efforts: “Every single human being has a voice. I think, for those of us in the Jewish community and in the pro-Israel community, we each know someone who has been a victim of October 7th, whether we're talking about someone who was taken hostage, someone who was killed, someone who was injured, and it's our jobs to make sure that their stories do not go untold. I would say to each and every one of you tell your personal story, because it's a lot easier to relate to a person than a government or an entity. Each and every one of you are our soldiers on the online battlefields."
She also addressed the growing use of ‘bots’, automated social media accounts frequently used to spread misinformation. “When we post something, we'll instantly see a thousand responses from bots, including ‘Free Palestine’ and similar things. A lot of the comments are exactly the same, and a lot of the accounts have no followers, so we know that they're bots and ignore them. From our perspective, more people who respond to our posts and to our content are only helping us make sure that our messages are reaching more and more people. At the end of the day, our goal is to influence and we'll keep doing that.”