Not much was funny in the weeks following Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel or the Jewish world. The news, conversations, and, of course, social media were overwhelmed by the stories of the atrocities of the Hamas attack on southern Israel and fears surrounding what seemed to be an inevitable war in Gaza.
And then, a video started making the rounds on social media – of a man standing on the rocks at a beach in Tel Aviv wearing flip flops and a tank top and yelling through a megaphone to the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, which had been moved closer to Israel in the wake of Oct. 7.
“Welcome to the best Mediterranean Sea in the universe,” Tel Aviv resident Tal Raviv yelled out to sea in a thick (and fake) Israeli accent.
“I explain to you something,” Raviv went on, shouting into the megaphone in his “broken” English. “If you see a floating pink bag that says ‘Rami Levi,’ it’s like Prada, but for inexpensive tomatoes.
“If your ship is moving slow,” he yelled to the US Navy strike group, “it’s because the water is 8% tahini, 12% cola Zero, 8% sunscreen, and 78% husky urine.”
He thanked the US sailors before telling them that they needed a sticker for their ship, as “any vehicle that has more than 40 people in this country needs to say on it ‘Taglit’ [Birthright].”
It was a very funny video. It was a moment of levity and a break from the crushing fear and sadness that followed the Hamas massacre, but it wasn’t escapism. It was a clip that found a moment in the new, and incredibly difficult, post-Oct. 7 reality and pointed at an absurdity in a way that allowed Israelis to laugh.
The video wasn’t Raviv’s first. The 38-year-old American oleh, who came to Israel 12 years ago, has been creating content since middle school.
“Anything I have ever done – there has always been a content side to it,” he explained, adding that this is a way for him to express himself and process ideas.
Raviv doesn’t have goals for his content creation, doesn’t work with a content schedule, and didn’t have a moment where he felt that he became a content creator. When he makes videos, it’s because there is an idea or a concept he needs to put out into the world.
Every video he makes feels like the last. Every time he puts a thought out in a video, he feels he has said his piece and can move on.
“I’ll make it and be like ‘Phew, cool. I have nothing left to say,’” he explained.Inevitably, however, something “crazy” would then happen in Israel, making Raviv feel like there was more that needed to be said, and providing his followers with more content.
This pattern held true for the hasbara (public diplomacy) content Raviv has been making since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War and for the material protesting the 2023 attempted judicial reform he was making up until the war started.
Before he began making videos about the controversial plan for reform, he had never been part of political protest. “Anything that involved a political party – I just was like, ‘Leave me out of it. I vote: That is my participation,” he said, adding that “if I get polled or if I vote, I form an opinion. I think about it.”
But when Raviv heard about the judicial reform, “Like a good American who grew up with civics and US history and three branches of government, red lights went off – and I think I realized: this transcends politics, this is constitutional stuff.”
A lot of the content he made on the topic “came out of dissonance.” He would hear a news podcast about the stages of the planned reform and think to himself, “How is nobody in the street?” This would compel him to try to inform people about the damaging impacts of the reform and get them to attend protests against it.
Raviv thinks that this model of running into ideas and feeling the need to respond to them on social media is also a common thread for the hasbara content he created. He would see a claim about the war online and feel that he had to address it or explain what bothered him about it.
Raviv's content is moderate and nuanced
Another common theme in Raviv’s videos about the judicial overhaul and his hasbara is the emphasis he places on staying moderate. It is what he is most proud of: In spite of his understanding of how social media algorithms work – and, to some extent, the human brain – he didn’t resort to making hateful ones.
“Social media and the algorithm and people’s brains hate moderate content – it’s boring,” he said, explaining that humor is one of the few ways to get around this.
“I’m proud that I stayed moderate, and I think that is where humor comes in.”
Much of Raviv’s content about the judicial reform features him and his megaphone at protests or other recognizable locations around Israel.
In one video, he stands near the Temple Mount.
“Hi God, it’s me, Tal,” he shouted through his megaphone into the open air overlooking the Dome of the Rock, before launching into a conversation with God about foreign funding sources of the Kohelet Forum – a policy forum that advocated for the judicial reform.
In another video, Raviv, in a Birthright shirt and bucket hat, leads a “tour” of the nature reserve of “Israel that used to be.”
“Behind me is a woman with a profession,” he explained to tour participants. “If we are lucky, we may even see an LGBTQ couple,” he adds, hamming it up while describing the fears many felt regarding the potential impacts of the judicial reform on the rights of women and minority groups.
Then Oct. 7 put a crashing halt to the judicial overhaul, the protests against it – and Raviv’s protest content related to it.
Like many others involved in protests against the judicial reform and organizations orchestrating them, Raviv quickly shifted his attention to helping supply IDF soldiers with gear. He raised funds for and delivered NIS 170,000 ($47,000) worth of supplies.
His social media content also shifted from anti-judicial reform videos to ones fundraising for gear and hasbara.While the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War saw a slew of new Israeli public diplomacy content, what set Raviv’s apart was his focus on nuance. This was just the next expression of his insistence on keeping his content moderate.
Bridging divides through hasbara
The result was hasbara that had the potential to actually bridge gaps and inform audiences who would not have otherwise watched a video with anything positive to say about Israel.
Raviv’s videos show the reality Israelis face; many are personal and include the impacts of the war on his own life. His videos are unapologetically outspoken against Hamas, while at the same time speaking out about the symbiosis between Israeli and Palestinian extremists, criticizing Israeli government policies, and grappling with his own biases.
Asked about the nuance in his hasbara and about its potential to close divides, Raviv said it’s about “appealing to the common denominator.”
“Let’s put aside labels, parties, identities, all that stuff. We agree on these values: If you were in this situation, you would do the same – just speak to that.”
In recent months, the pace of Raviv’s social media posting has slowed to a virtual stop. Impacted by the long months of war and living in a reality where fellow citizens are held hostage, trust in his country’s leadership is at an all-time low, and there is no end in sight. He isn’t sure what he can say to change things – or even if he really stands behind what he thinks he wants to say.
“I think that in the past six months to a year, I haven’t made a lot of content, if any, because I’ve had a lot of thoughts where I’m like, ‘I should probably think more about this before I share this. I should calm down,” he explained.While at first Raviv was waiting to see if the ideas he was having for a video stood the test of time, even when it was clear that they did, he didn’t post them.
What he finds in his notes now is an idea for a video that would have caused him to unfollow himself, if he had made it two or three years ago.
“There are a bunch of things and principles that I am willing to sacrifice right now because it’s the least sh**ty option,” he said.
The creator finds himself wanting to offer solutions to the Israel-Hamas war that he can’t imagine himself ever having accepted before.
“I think that international law is broken,” he said, explaining that it doesn’t offer tools to deal with actors such as Hamas. “It’s like a total hack in the system,” he said, adding that because Hamas don’t “care about their people’s lives or welfare or quality of life,” they have nothing to lose. This means they have “no incentive not to start a war.” For organizations like Hamas, “it’s like a free jackpot machine – you don’t have to put any coins in.”
Questioning and looking for solutions
The solutions he couldn’t have pictured himself considering but is now willing to contemplate aren’t good, he admitted, adding that he doesn’t like to think about them. But he does, because they feel like ways to possibly put an end to violence that he says is far worse.
After 18 months of war with no long-term resolution in sight, Raviv, like many Israelis, is ready for a solution, even if it’s not ideal. “I live here – let’s solve this,” he said. “I don’t have to solve this perfectly.”
Asked how it feels to be planning a video that expresses ideas he previously wouldn’t have accepted, Raviv stressed the question marks that are still present for him.
“I just hesitate a lot more. I’m like, ‘Do I really think that?’” he asked himself. “Am I just being emotional? Am I being really angry?”
Raviv has also been left questioning what the right thing is, given the return of the judicial reform proposals.In recent weeks, members of the governing coalition have said that they are rekindling the reform and have advanced some of its laws.
The coalition has also moved to fire Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Ronen Bar – firings seen as an attempt by the government to consolidate power as part of the overhaul.Raviv doesn’t feel the same vigor to fight the return of the reform that he felt when protesting before the war, but this is not because his opinion on the reform’s potential harm has changed.
He is convinced that the pre-Oct. 7 protests were the right tool at the right time, and he doesn’t buy into the narrative that they are what caused Hamas to attack Israel.
“Blaming the protest movement for Oct. 7 is like a bad driver whose car is hurtling toward a tree with his Mobileye beeping loudly to warn him, blaming the Mobileye for distracting him when he hits the tree.”
While still deeply concerned about the potential impact of the reform, Raviv also feels that the protest movement’s messaging is too extreme and that demonstrations may not be the right tool to fight the overhaul at this time.
“I don’t know if it’s me or if they got more extreme,” he said on the movement’s messaging, adding that this leaves him feeling like he can’t get behind it in the same way, regardless of how concerned he is about the reform.
These concerns have left him torn. “It kind of feels like the judgment of Solomon,” he said, referencing the biblical tale in which the king orders that a baby, whom two women claim as their own, be cut in two so each woman can have half.
While one woman agrees to the judgment, the baby’s mother tells Solomon to give it to her, not wanting her baby to be killed, so the king rules that the baby be given to its mother.
Looking at the state of the country today, and the option of continuing to protest the reform, “it’s like: just don’t kill the baby,” Raviv said.
“I know what needs to be done. I have a very strong opinion about it,” he said, adding that knowing what is right doesn’t matter if the tools he has available are infighting, extreme messaging, or fighting with police.
“Even if I think I’m right, I think I’m more likely to surrender, I guess. I don’t know. It’s a sh**ty feeling.”“What’s going to destroy Israel more?” he asked. “These very concerning moves on the part of the government, with tons of very scary conflicts of interest at the constitutional and security level, and [incidents like] Qatargate – is that more dangerous, or is it more dangerous to have these extremely divisive messages?”
The moderate creator sees examples of this polarization spreading through society in alarming ways. “The other day, I heard kids in the street in central Tel Aviv, like a gang of nine- or ten-year-olds, and they were talking about which politicians to kill – and if you could kill one, who would it be. They were all like ‘Yeah, we should kill Bibi,’” he said, adding sarcastically – “I wonder where that came from.”
Where is the red line?
While all of this means that it could be exactly the right time for more moderate messages, like his own, Raviv said, he doesn’t feel he has anything to add that the public doesn’t already know.He also no longer knows where he draws his red line.
“I keep moving my red line. Is it when the Supreme Court literally says something that someone doesn’t follow or goes against?” he asked. “Is it that somebody promises in advance of the ruling that they are going to go against it? Is that my red line?”
Asked if he doesn’t know what it is because it was crossed or because things have changed so much, Raviv said that he “probably would rather pretend it wasn’t crossed.”
“I don’t know what the implications [of it being crossed] are.”He is also careful to distinguish the current political protests from those for the hostages, emphasizing that it is not his place “to make any judgment about anybody who has a family member held hostage in Gaza.”
Though he expressed confusion and frustration regarding what to do now – how to defend Israel’s democracy without sowing division – Raviv expressed a clear vision of what Israelis need: They are hungry for a productive way to reach out across divides.
“I think what everybody is looking for is some indication [that the] questions and these debates [causing division within Israeli society] can be settled for the long term and not repeat themselves,” he said. “I think we can create a constitution that acknowledges historical wrongs against different groups and establish safeguards and checks and balances that reassure all groups.”
Raviv believes that a constitution created by a wide coalition of Israelis has the potential to be part of what is needed now – a way to resolve the country’s conflicts without tearing it apart.
Finding hope
After nearly 19 months of war that have left him grappling with his principles and contemplating ideas he couldn’t have imagined – that have left him caught between a risk to his country’s democracy and participating in a protest he worries might do more harm than good – Raviv still finds hope in Israelis themselves.
“The actual people, during their day-to-day, don’t hate each other. They are full of energy; they are full of optimism about the future, looking for things to invest in and to build,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense that anybody is building anything in this country, given the conditions. Why are there cranes? Why are there skyscrapers? A wave pool opened up,” Raviv said.“Who builds a surf wave pool during WW3?” he joked.
Just after the coalition altered the reasonableness standard law during a peak of the judicial overhaul, “there was just this mood in the country of ‘What did we do? Was it worth it?’” Raviv recalled.
While a peak of contention and division over the judicial reform is a surprising moment in which to find hope, Raviv said that it was a moment that reassured him that Israelis care for one another deeply.
It was also a moment when he saw one of his most moderate videos go viral – a conversation with a friend who has very different views from Raviv, which had previously garnered little attention. Seeing just how many Israelis connected to it in the aftermath of such a divisive moment in the country’s history only reaffirmed this hope.
“It was like a family – everyone got into a fight, everyone went to their rooms, everybody felt bad, and I think that just feels really special,” he said.
“The reason that week, that vibe, and that mood existed was because we ultimately all feel like a family.” ■