My kids think I am too old for social media. They might be right.

Since the war started on October 7th, I have been posting on Facebook about Israel, antisemitism, and the shifting dynamics across the Middle East. Nothing fancy. No strategy. No content calendar. Just a guy in Modiin with opinions, a keyboard, and a need to say something when the world seemed determined to say nothing. Or worse, say the wrong thing.

Then one day, a post went viral.

And then the next one. And the one after that.

I stared at the screen showing 100,000 views on a single post and did what any normal person would do: I told my family. My kids responded with the kind of support only teenagers can offer. “Abba, you are literally the worst influencer ever. You are too old to do social media.”Fair enough. But something was happening. People were reading. People were engaging. And then I looked at the comments.

5,000 Comments and a Mirror Into Madness

The engagement was staggering, and not in the way you might hope. Buried in those thousands of comments were messages directed at me that I never imagined I would read in my lifetime. I have been called a murderer. A baby killer. I have been accused of drinking Arab babies’ blood. Someone accused me of blowing up a Hatzolah ambulance in London for insurance money.

Read that last one again. A volunteer ambulance service. Insurance fraud. These are the kinds of accusations people type out, hit “post,” and go about their day.

So I did what seemed like a good idea at the time. I responded.

I gave facts. I called them out. I went down the rabbit hole, and every response of mine generated more comments, which generated more responses, which generated more hate, which generated more facts from me. It became a loop with no bottom.

The Ignorance Is the Real Story

What has amazed me most is not the hate itself. Hate is old. Antisemitism has been around longer than any of us. What gets me is the ignorance. The complete, unshakable, proudly held ignorance.

People post things that are factually, demonstrably, provably wrong, and they do it with total confidence. Today, someone commented that it is “fake news” that Israel sent Iron Dome systems and soldiers to help the UAE. Their evidence? Hypersonic missiles from Iran are “destroying Israel” and Iron Dome “does not work.” They shared videos from Twitter showing explosions, claiming Iran is leveling the entire country.

I am sitting in Israel. I can see outside my window. The country is standing.

But on social media, someone in another country watches a video with dramatic music and explosion footage and decides they know the ground truth better than the people living here. And this is the part that should concern all of us, on every side of every issue: social media allows anyone to construct any narrative they want, package it with stolen footage or AI-generated content, and present it as fact. With AI improving by the day, the ability to fabricate convincing video and images is only accelerating. We are entering an era where seeing is no longer believing, and most people have not caught up to that reality.

One of my posts was recently picked up by a reporter at Sky News Australia. He built an entire segment around it. The post was about liberal musicians performing at festivals while ignoring what happened at the Nova music festival on October 7th. He turned it into a pro-Israel segment that reached an audience I could never have accessed from my Facebook page.

I was proud. Genuinely proud. But I also learned something important from the experience.

For months, I had been asking myself the question that every person who posts about Israel asks: what difference does one post make? Who am I? I am not a journalist. I am not a politician. I am a marketing guy in Modiin who runs two nonprofits for soldiers and their families. Why would anyone care what I think?

The Sky News segment answered that question. Every post makes a real difference. You do not know who is reading. You do not know who is watching. You do not know which reporter, educator, activist, or undecided person is going to see your words and be moved to act, speak, or simply reconsider.

The Math That Matters

Yes, you will get hate. You will get trolled. Bots will follow you. People will call you names that would make your grandmother cry. Someone will accuse you of crimes that exist only in medieval conspiracy theories.

But for that one person you educate, it is worth all of it.

That is the math. Not the 100,000 views. Not the 5,000 comments. The one person who reads your post and thinks, “I did not know that.” The one person who sees your facts and checks them and finds out you were right. The one person who stops sharing a fabricated video because your post made them pause.

We are in an information war, and the other side is loud, organized, and shameless about making things up. The answer is not silence. The answer is more voices. More facts. More people willing to be called the worst influencer ever by their own children.

So post. Comment. Respond. Share. Be loud. Be factual. Be relentless.

Your kids will make fun of you. Post anyway.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)