Arab Advocates for Israel Speak Out on Social Media

Born in Damascus to secular Muslim parents and raised in the village of Chtaura in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Rawan Osman, 40, was on her fourth trip to Israel this year when we dined outdoors at a Jerusalem restaurant in mid-September. She plans to move here for good. In preparation, she spent two months this summer studying modern Hebrew in Jerusalem. (“I’m at Level 4,” she told me in Hebrew, during an interview otherwise conducted in English. “I attended an intensive ulpan.”)

Osman has been a vocal advocate on social media for Israel and against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—including launching an Instagram forum, Arabs Ask, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, to answer questions about Israel in Arabic. She’s a central figure in a new documentary, Tragic Awakening, about the plague of antisemitism. In May, while visiting Israel on an all-female European delegation, Osman addressed a parliament committee and condemned Hamas’ rape of Israeli women during the terrorist group’s invasion. “I never felt prouder,” she told me. “When I spoke at the Knesset, I officially and publicly announced my recovery from antisemitism. That day was an act of atonement for me.”

Osman is also in the process of converting to Judaism; when we met, she was wearing a gold necklace with a Star of David pendant.

It’s been a dramatic evolution for a woman reared on what she considers the brainwashing of youth to despise Israel and Jews, and who admits to having been an antisemite. Only after moving to France and then Germany, where she lives now, did Osman realize that her parents and teachers had lied to her.

Osman experienced several turning points in her understanding of Jews and Judaism. The first point came in her mid-20s, at a grocery store in Strasbourg, France: When she realized that the other shoppers were Jewish—the first Jews she’d ever encountered—she ran out of the store. But back at her apartment, Osman felt ashamed of her reaction. She returned to the store and, in a conversation with the Jewish shopkeeper, revealed her background.

“On that day, he converted me from an enemy to an ally through kindness,” Osman told an audience at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center across town a few hours after our meal together.

Another Jewish man would play a pivotal role in her reorientation. At a German university, Osman took a course on Judaism. The teacher, a rabbi, taught that “to be a good Jew, you have to become a better person every day,” she told me. “It hit me at my core. I had an epiphany. I was thinking about what he said. Months later, I told him, ‘Judaism is real. Judaism is humane.’ The recipe—everyone can work with it. You can work on yourself bit by bit. There’s no standard [to meet]. It’s you who have to be a bit better.

“It is open for everyone, and the universal morality that Judaism brought to the world is open for everybody,” Osman continued. “It is idiotic to destroy the source that brought order and kindness to the world.”

The experience, she said, “showed me the way back home, the source of light.”

Her final turning point came on Oct. 7, 2023, she said, when she understood after the Hamas massacre that everyone “had to choose” between evil and good—and she went all-in on Israel and the Jewish people

The post-Oct. 7, 2023, darkness enveloping the United Nations, European city centers, American university campuses, and Middle Eastern streets is enough to depress Israel partisans with the certainty that moral pollution is rotting the earth, that Orwellian doublespeak is the world’s new language, that the struggle between right and wrong is lost.

But then, six months ago, Osman appeared in my social media feed, advocating for Israel and against barbarism. I heard her high-pitched voice speaking English fluently in an Arabic accent, and sensed her no-nonsense eyes, determined mouth, and empathetic heart delivering wisdom through Arabs Ask’s short video clips—filmed in places like her Heidelberg apartment or a Jerusalem market or a burned-out shell of a home of a kibbutz that Hamas terrorists had desecrated.

Some of the clips are personal, like Osman explaining why she left the Middle East—“Back where I come from, we don’t demand. We are grateful if we find the means to feed our children”—but most tackle broader themes: Is antisemitism embedded in the Arab world? Are Jews evil? What is a kibbutz? Are all Israelis white?

Take the video clip of Osman’s meeting in January with Ayelet Levy Shachar, whose soldier-daughter Naama Levy was kidnapped on Oct. 7. “I think it’s important for the Arab world, for women, for mothers, to hear your voice and to understand that this could happen to any of them,” Osman told Levy Shachar in English, with simultaneous subtitles appearing in Arabic.

Hers was a breath of fresh air fumigating the stench of inhumanity. Maybe not representative of Arab masses or their leadership or their advocates worldwide, but a necessary crutch to navigate the minefield out.

Osman is sure other Arab allies are out there. She said she hears from supporters, most communicating privately due to safety concerns.

Cairo native Dalia Ziada, another Muslim woman I interviewed who publicly, including on social media, supports Israel and opposes Iran and its anti-Israel military proxies, stated that she, too, hears from Arabs who back her but fear saying so aloud. Israeli Arabs Joseph Haddad and Jonathan Elkhoury, both Christians, stridently speak and tweet on the subject. A British-American Muslim, Elica Le Bon, has appeared regularly on television interviews and on social media to denounce her parents’ homeland of Iran and support Israel’s fight. So has Matthew Nouriel, a British-American Jewish activist whose parents also are Iranian. Another stalwart has been Mossab Hassan Youssef, a Muslim-turned-Christian native of Ramallah who in 2010 attained asylum in the United States and whose father was a founder of Hamas.

For now, they are among the anecdotal examples. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs think tank, believes others, perhaps many, are in Israel’s corner, or at least oppose the “axis of resistance,” but surreptitiously.

It’s a sentiment that Brigitte Gabriel, a Christian Lebanese émigré who’s long been an outspoken critic of radical Islam, understands. Gabriel said she’s been able to freely speak out—she lives in Virginia—since her parents died and other close relatives no longer live in Lebanon, so she needn’t fear repercussions on them.

For more than 20 years, Lebanese friends have been “afraid to say” anything against Hezbollah, she said. But Gabriel told me that these friends have encouraged her to speak out on their behalf, saying, “Please be our voice.”

“There are many goodwilled, intelligent, wise, forward-thinking, moderate Arab voices, and [social media] influencers, who recognize the truth about these terrorists, that they are as threatened as Israel is by [them],” Diker said of people throughout the Middle East with whom he and his staff have spoken. Among Christians in the Middle East they’ve been in touch with, he estimated that 5%-10% identify with Israel far more than with Muslims. One reason, Diker explained, is that “the Muslims treat the Christians with the same disgust and rage as they do the Jews.” Osman doesn’t know the backgrounds of the Arabs who contact her, but said that Muslims open to dialogue “are in most cases secular or ex-Muslim.”

Osman said, “It is easier for persecuted minorities to relate to the Israelis or the Jews. By that I mean even Muslims if they are nonbelievers or gay. That said, it surely is more significant to meet someone who is or was a Muslim, who grew up in that culture and had an antisemitic upbringing and yet managed to break out of it and emerged a righteous person.”

Diker said that some, like Ziada, a senior fellow at the center, “feel safe enough to weigh in and heavily criticize the Arab extremists and side with Israel. The problem is that people are afraid.”

They represent a “Jekyll and Hyde syndrome in the Arab public,” said Diker, a native of Manhattan. “In a large part of that public, they suffer from a type of psychiatric syndrome, a split-personality syndrome: Half support what Israel is doing and are afraid to come out and say it. Some are still victims of Islamic and Arab propaganda.”

On a video call, Ziada, 42, told me that she feared for her life after condemning the Oct. 7 attacks and secretly fled Egypt hours after a fatwa, or religious edict, called for her death. Ziada said she notified Cairo police officials, who refused to protect her on the grounds that she supported Israel. She’s since lived in Washington, D.C.

Ziada’s journey began 24 years before, during an anti-Israel protest at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, where she studied English literature. Along with burning Israeli and American flags, the crowd torched an Egyptian flag. That flummoxed the patriotic Ziada. It was a “cognitive dissonance moment,” she said. Ziada researched Israel and Judaism, and discovered that Jews were accomplished citizens of Egypt until being evicted a few decades before. “Since then, it’s been my mission to fight against radical Islamists and for Arab-Israeli dialogue, with the understanding that this will bring stability to the region,” she explained.

Just since May, she’s spoken at about 20 American campuses to both Jewish and Arab groups, delivering pro-Israel talks to Israel advocates and pro-Palestinian talks to advocates of the Palestinians. Ziada said she’s dismayed by Jewish students’ isolation but also by their lack of understanding of the threats against them and of the Middle East’s reality. She’s since worked to “help them see the truth, to see how the other side is thinking,” to combat their threats, she said. “It will not happen overnight, but we have no option [other] than to keep pushing for the change to happen.”

Ziada’s image as a practicing Muslim—she wears a hijab, including during our interview—might enhance her credibility. “I have an advantage: the fact I’m Egyptian,” she said. “They’re disarmed. I’m not a conservative Muslim woman; I’m liberal. I keep my religion. I’m proud of my religion, but at the same time I don’t force it on other people. This appearance makes me more approachable.”

Signs hint at the Arab rank and file becoming emboldened by Israel’s dramatic gains over the past month that include the air force’s destroying thousands of Hezbollah’s missiles and killing its leadership up to Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine; Israeli intelligence pulling off the beeper and walkie-talkie caper that decimated thousands of Hezbollah operatives; Israeli ground troops continuing to uncover Hezbollah tunnels and weapons-storage depots near Lebanon’s southern border; and Iran bracing for Israel’s expected strike to avenge Tehran’s launching of 181 ballistic missiles against the Jewish state on Oct. 1. Even before Nasrallah’s assassination, videos made in Lebanon mocked him for some Hezbollah strikes against Israeli farms that killed only hundreds of chickens. Christian villages in northern Lebanon reportedly are refusing admission to Hezbollah officials seeking refuge there. Ordinary Lebanese and Iranians are said to be cheering on Israel’s victories that, the thinking goes, could ultimately topple Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic, respectively. All of that is on top of the moderating influence of the 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords that brought peace between Israel and four Arab countries and heralded a breakthrough for the Jewish state with Saudi Arabia that many see as imminent postwar.

Altering attitudes takes time, though. Gabriel said that those she knows in the region have become more cowed in the past two decades because the “Islamic influence has gotten worse.” Paul Gross, a senior fellow at the Begin Center, said: “I think it’s going to be a very long game. I don’t think in the short term there’ll be a lot of change in the Arab world.” Ziada is optimistic about continued, small steps toward moderation, saying that “it doesn’t matter in terms of numbers, [but] the mere fact that there’s an alternative” to radical Islam being articulated.

Osman related that her mother, who lives in Europe, wouldn’t speak with her for eight months after Arabs Ask was launched. “She couldn’t believe. These were her words: ‘You can’t seriously believe Muslims would do this!’” Osman said of the Oct. 7 massacre. The two have since reconciled.

But Osman is ready to move on from Germany, where things got so bad that authorities recommended that her son not invite friends over so they wouldn’t know the family’s address. In Germany, she said, “I don’t feel at home.”

“In Jerusalem, I’m at home. I’m pretty sure I’ll get married here. I’m pretty sure I’ll replace all the friends and relatives I lost with better relatives and friends,” Osman said before adding, as Israeli Jews sometimes do when wishing for God’s positive intervention: “B’ezrat Hashem.”