AL MONITOR
by Shlomi Eldar
April 29, 2015

It all began as a personal project by a young Israeli Arab who lives in northern Israel. He wanted to use social networking to convince other Israeli Arabs that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are not some “army of evil” and that its soldiers are not as bloodthirsty as they tend to be portrayed in Arab propaganda films. He soon learned, however, that in the digital age, there is no end to surprises. Instead of messages and responses from the Israeli Arab audience he was targeting, he began receiving messages of peace and love from young Arab men and women from across the Arab world….The photos and video clips sent from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries can be found on the Facebook page “BeTzaHaL” (“In the IDF”), and there are lots of them….One Egyptian police officer took it a step further by including his police cap along with his passport in the shot and wrote in Arabic, “We love, love, love Israel and its army.” He even added a picture of a heart with a Star of David in the middle of it. READ MORE