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Magazine I Interview

Noa Tishby, Israel’s unofficial ambassador to the world and one of the country’s best advocates and most sought-after speakers on all things Israel, is launching her second book. We asked her how she went from dreaming to be an actress and a singer in America, to becoming a passionate hasbara expert and one of today’s most influential Israeli voices / By Dalia Ben Ari “Advocating for Israel is my passion”

“And if someone were to offer you a lead role in a movie, would you stop doing hasbara and go back to acting?”, I ask at the start of my interview with Noa Tishby, Israel’s unofficial ambassador to the world, an activist to her core, and one of the country’s most influential advocates (important note: she does this independently and entirely voluntarily). Tishby, 48, razor-sharp, confidence-inspiring, and impressively eloquent, for whom hasbara has become the center of her life, answers without a flinch: “I get offers all the time, but I’m not interested. If I were to go back to acting, it would have to be something really special and in some way connected to my activism. And even then”, she stresses, “it would mean doing the job, and getting back to my hasbara work. It comes before all the rest”.

US congressmen and senators. Next month, her second book, “Uncomfortable conversations with a Jew”, also published by Simon & Schuster, will be coming out. The book is a conversation between Tishby and Emmanuel Acho, an African-American football star and radio host, in which Acho asks all the questions – among which: what is Zionism, what is antisemitism, etc., a sort of conversation you’d have with someone who doesn’t know much about Israel but is eager to know more. Tishby packs in all the answers into a comprehensive, easy to read, and informative text. She’s recently spent time in Israel, where she worked non-stop interviewing families of abductees and abductees who have returned from captivity, visiting military bases and injured soldiers in hospital, and uploading dozens of social media videos along the way. Tishby has millions of online followers, and her content gets tens of millions of views, thanks to likes and shares. Do you feel like what you’re doing is really influencing the conversation? “Yes. Both in the Jewish and non Jewish world. Good advocacy can change minds. But the work I do inside the Jewish community is

the most important. For years, we Jews have felt alone, unable to take pride in who we are, but now, young Jewish kids have a voice. And the content I put out helps them feel proud to be Jewish. I was at the University of South California, and a 19-year-old quoted what I say in my book about the BDS, and about Jewish pride, and he said that I “had given him words”, words he’ll pass on to others as well. On another occasion, I was in Atlanta at a college conference, and a girl who identified herself as Muslim American told me that she read my book with the student reading group she had created, and that after reading it and doing more research, she realized her group was anti-Israel and antisemitic, and that she had been wrong about Israel. Many people, including celebrities, have been wary of discussing these subjects. My job is to change people’s minds, and things are starting to happen”. An authentic powerful voice I speak to Tishby as she is in her home in Los Angeles, getting ready to leave for Washington, where she’ll be giving a speech in Congress in front of American congresswomen and female

Influencing the Jewish community Tishby has also become a

highly sought-after speaker on all things Israel. Her first book, “Israel – a simple guide to the most misunderstood country in the world”, published by Simon & Schuster, was a New York Times bestseller and recommended by

20 ATMOSPHERE MARCH 2024