When Melinda Strauss landed in Ben Gurion Airport last week, a woman she’d never met rushed over to say hello.

“She follows me on social media,” Strauss said in an interview with The Times of Israel. “She’s Christian, and she’s excited to be visiting Israel for the first time. I get people coming up to me with things like that all the time.”

For Strauss, a cheerful, fast-talking New York–based food-blogger-turned-Jewish-educator with 1.7 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, moments like this have become a regular part of life. Since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and sparked the two-year Gaza war, the Jewish food blog Strauss started 14 years ago has increasingly become a vehicle for her to debunk misinformation about Israel and teach followers about Judaism.

“So many people just don’t know anything about Jews,” she says. “We’re a mystery to them.”

While Strauss and other pro-Israel influencers like her get plenty of hateful comments online, many of those visiting Israel last week as part of the Israel Up Close delegation of influencers, organized by the Or Ofir Foundation, told The Times of Israel that the rewards of their work far outweigh the downsides.

Or Ofir is an organization working to help develop young Jewish leaders and strengthen connections between Israel and Diaspora communities. It is dedicated to fulfilling the life’s work of Ofir Libstein, an activist and community leader who was killed defending his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. The non-profit’s programs work to connect small Jewish communities around the world, empower elder members of kibbutzim around the Gaza Envelope, and provide leadership training programs, according to its executive director, Ofer Dahan.

“For this delegation, we tried to build a group that is very diverse, with influence in different areas,” Dahan said.

The delegation visiting this week is one of several organized with the Foreign Ministry in recent years to showcase Israel’s story for popular online personalities. Members of the trip spoke with The Times of Israel at Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance about their lifestyles and challenges of representing Israel to online audiences that aren’t always friendly.

As a local authority on interior design, Shai DeLuca was already a television and social media personality in Toronto before October 7. Since then, though, the IDF veteran and activist has dedicated his public life to speaking about Israel.

Today, he speaks frequently around Canada to audiences that include student groups and TV viewers. Security threats often require him to be accompanied by bodyguards to protect him at events, he said.

“It’s gotten really bad in the past........

© The Times of Israel