courtesy Rabbi Avi Schwartz
strong>The Question That Haunts Me
I am writing this from a place of deep frustration—and deep hope. For nearly three years, I have watched – we have watched Israel win every military battle while losing the war that actually matters. I have seen our soldiers destroy Hamas tunnels with precision, our intelligence services outmaneuver our enemies, our technology dominate the region. And yet, every night, I watch the world turn against us. Every morning, I see another generation of Western youth convinced that Israel is the villain.
This is not a military problem. This is a **narrative problem.** And we are losing it catastrophically.
In 2019, I wrote an article in these pages titled “Jew Season.” I warned then that a generation was being brainwashed by BDS – the Free Palestine Movement and TikTok to see Israel as a pariah. No one listened. Today, the “Global Intifada” is on our streets. Synagogues are under siege. Jewish students are afraid to wear their identity on campus. The failure isn’t just in the schools—it’s in our leadership’s total lack of strategic communication.
But here’s what keeps me awake: **We know how to fix this. We just haven’t done it.**
How a War of Necessity became perceived as a War of Choice.The Trump Lesson: A Policy Without a Public
In 2018, Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. It was the right policy. Iran had been a terminal threat to Western civilization for 47 years—funding terrorism, developing nuclear weapons, destabilizing the entire Middle East. The policy was sound. The decision was correct.
But Trump made one catastrophic mistake in the recent war against Iran: **He moved on the policy before he won the narrative.**
He didn’t spend the six months prior preparing the American people. He didn’t show them the evidence. He didn’t make the case. He didn’t build the coalition of public opinion that would have made the withdrawal stick. Instead, he acted unilaterally, and the American public perceived it as a “war of choice” rather than a “war of survival.”
What happened? The policy collapsed. The international community united against him. Iran has won the negotiations and the money it seeks to rebuild. And today, after the damage is done, Trump is finally making the case he should have made years ago. It’s a classic case of **too little, too late.**
The lesson is brutal: **A policy without public support is a policy destined to fail.**
The Hamas Trap: We Won the Tunnels, We Lost the Minds
Israel has fallen into the exact same trap—but with far higher stakes.
Bibi moved into Gaza for political and military reasons without realizing a fundamental truth: **An all-out military war without a coordinated PR war is a suicide mission.**
Here’s what happened:
Hamas lost the military battle. Our soldiers are the finest in the world. Our intelligence is unmatched. Our technology is superior. We destroyed their tunnels, eliminated their commanders, degraded their capabilities. By every military metric, **we won.**
But Hamas won the propaganda war. And that victory is worth more than a thousand tunnels.
They baited us into a conflict where every missile we fired became a recruiting tool for their cause. They positioned themselves as David against our Goliath. They flooded social media with images—real and fabricated—that turned our military superiority into a moral liability. While we were focused on destroying tunnels, they were focused on destroying our legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
Think about what happened on TikTok. Think about what happened on Instagram. Think about the narrative that spread through Western universities. A generation of young people who have never been to Israel, who have never studied the history, who have never heard our side of the story—they now “know” that Israel is committing genocide.
They don’t know this because it’s true. They know it because Hamas won the narrative war.
And we didn’t even show up to fight it.
The Coming Betrayal: The Superpower’s Choice
Here’s what terrifies me most: The next American president is being brainwashed by the same anti-Semitic narratives that have infected the youth.
In 2030, when the next generation of American leaders comes to power, they will look at Israel and make a choice. It won’t be based on our military strength. It won’t be based on our technological superiority. It won’t be based on our legitimate right to exist.
It will be based on **the narrative they absorbed from TikTok, from their university professors, from the global consensus.**
And they will say: *”I don’t care about your military strength. I will treat you as a pariah.”*
They will justify a betrayal of Israel because they have the “moral high ground” provided by Hamas’s PR machine. We are making our own weapons now, but **weapons are useless if the world community is united against you.**
History shows us this truth: Rome fell not because it lost a military battle, but because it lost the support of the superpower that sustained it. Israel will face the same fate if we don’t win the minds of the Western world.
The Solution: Building the Narrative Iron Dome
So what’s the answer?
For the next four years, our main war is not military. It is **political and propaganda-driven.** We must convince the Western population that Israel’s survival is **their** survival. We must show that Zionism is the only force of progress in a region of darkness, and more importantly how it freed Arabs and upgraded their lives.
This requires a complete shift in strategy:
First: We must move from being **victims of the algorithm to being masters of it.** We need to understand that TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are not just social media platforms—they are the battlegrounds of the 21st century. The side that controls the narrative controls the world.
Second: We need a “Narrative Iron Dome” that protects the truth as effectively as our missiles protect our homes. This means:
– Coordinated content creation across all platforms
– Influencers and creators who tell our story authentically
– Data-driven messaging that reaches Western youth where they are
– A counter-narrative to every lie before it spreads
Third: We must make this personal. Not government propaganda, but **authentic voices** of Israelis, Jews, and supporters telling the real story. Your story. My story. The story of a people fighting for survival.
This is why I am built **Defend Jewish Pride.** We are not waiting for the government. We are not waiting for institutions. We are building a movement of creators, entrepreneurs, and warriors who understand that the next war is won on screens, not in tunnels.
The Choice Before Us
As the Sages warned regarding Rome: *Do not push the superpower without a strategy.*
We have the military strategy. We have the intelligence strategy. We have the technological strategy.
But we don’t have the **narrative strategy.** And that is the strategy that matters.
If we don’t win the minds of the youth today, we will be voted out of existence by 2030. Not militarily. Not economically. But **politically**—by a world that has been convinced we are the enemy.
The “Jew Season” is here. The question is not whether we can win battles. We can. The question is: **Are we going to keep walking into the trap, or are we going to start fighting the war that actually matters?
The answer is up to you. The answer is up to all of us.
Join us. Build with us. Fight with us.
The future of Israel depends on it.
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Rabbi Avi Schwartz is a filmmaker, strategist, and founder of Defend Jewish Pride, a movement dedicated to reclaiming the narrative of Jewish pride and Israeli legitimacy in the 21st century.
Rabbi Avi Schwartz is an individual who has made contributions in various fields. He is the son of Motke Eish HaGarzen, also known as Motke the Axeman, a legendary figure in the Palmach. Motke Eish HaGarzen led a group of 21 Palmach Warriors who successfully conquered Har Tzion (Mount Zion), rescuing 1,700 Jewish men, women, and children from the Jordanian onslaught in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.
Rabbi Schwartz himself is a Black Hat Rabbi and activist, dedicated to upholding Jewish traditions and values. Alongside his religious pursuits, he has also found success as a filmmaker and writer, with his works featured on platforms such as Red Coral Universe Apple TV, Tubi of Fox Corporation, and Netflix.
Notably, Rabbi Schwartz’s movie “The Quest” has received high praise from none other than Pat Boone, a Music and Hollywood Icon. Boone, known for his illustrious career as a singer, actor, and television personality, has publicly commended Rabbi Schwartz’s film, acknowledging its quality and significance. This endorsement from Pat Boone further solidifies the impact and recognition of Rabbi Schwartz’s work within the entertainment industry.
Beyond his artistic endeavors, Rabbi Schwartz has been at the forefront of the battle against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has developed two groundbreaking apps, “Fight BDS” and “BDS Myth Busters,” aimed at countering BDS propaganda and raising awareness about the realities of the movement. The notable Hollywood icon and anti-BDS activist, Roseanne Barr, sponsors the app “BDS Myth Busters.”
Additionally, Rabbi Schwartz holds the position of Vice President of Digital Marketing and serves as the Director of Energycite, a revolutionary technology in energy conservation. His involvement in this field highlights his commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility.
Furthermore, Rabbi Schwartz has established the Torah Teen Palmach Center, a transformative initiative that trains teenagers to become future leaders in the spirit of the Palmach. Through this center, he imparts invaluable leadership skills and instills the values of courage, determination, and resilience in the next generation.