Israel is facing a 'wave of misinformation and vicious propaganda,' says former government spokesman Eylon Levy

“The man, the myth, the legend. Eylon Levy, the voice of Israel” is how one of his Facebook friends describes him. Born to Israeli parents in London, Eylon Aslan-Levy has been called many things at the ripe old age of 33.

“Israel’s Defender: The Unstoppable Spokesperson Eylon Levy,” read one headline at the Jewish Journal.

“An eloquent, glib, and annoying know-it-all” read a Haaretz headline.

Levy, an Oxford and Cambridge University graduate, is the co-founder of the Israeli Citizen Spokesperson’s office. He spoke with Christian journalist Paul Calvert of Bethlehem Voice Radio, where he explained the logic behind the new initiative.

“Israel is the only country in the world that finds itself constantly under attack, having to explain and justify itself all the time to everyone. And therefore, we’ve decided on a brand new concept of citizen spokespeople. You’ve heard of citizen journalists, people who take their phones and go to document critical events. We’re citizen spokespeople, ordinary people, people have normal jobs who will go on camera to defend our country, to the world.”

As the former Israeli government spokesman and international media advisor, Levy is known for his straight-talking and his unwillingness to pull any punches.

He told Calvert that Israel has been facing significant media challenges, including misinformation. His new team aims to equip global supporters with essential tools to advocate for Israel.

“Israel is fighting for its life now against Iran and its proxy armies on seven different fronts. Not only that, but a wave of misinformation and vicious propaganda against Israel. And so I’m building a team that will do a live briefing every day on all social media platforms to break down the news, get down into the details, and equip our supporters around the world with the tools that they need to make the case for Israel, including the messages that they won’t necessarily be receiving from the mainstream media, but that they need to go out and fight for us as we fight for our lives.”

At the start of the war following the Hamas invasion and attack against Israel on Oct. 7, Levy explained that he was a private citizen conducting interviews. Within the remarkable blanket of tight solidarity and war-footing attitude that enveloped Israel after the shocking massacres, Levy quickly found himself in the volunteer role of an official Israeli government spokesman.

He described to Calvert what it was like at his home in Tel Aviv on the morning of the Hamas terror attack.

“[At] 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday, the sirens started blaring in Tel Aviv. They’d been blaring in the rest of the country for an hour since 6:30 in the morning, and like everyone, I was asleep. I jumped out of bed. I ran into my building’s rocket shelter. In Israel, many buildings will have a rocket shelter in the basement. All new apartments, by the way, built in the last 35 years, have their own rocket shelter in the apartment. And suddenly hearing explosions in the sky because Israel was under a massive missile attack from Gaza as part of the October 7 massacre."

“Part of the reason the war started was not only to bring back the hostages and stop another October 7 is to neutralize Hamas’s ability to keep shooting rockets at Israeli cities, as if that’s something normal that we just need to accept."

“It took time watching the news to understand the magnitude of what had happened. News about the massacre at the music festival only started dripping in in the afternoon, and you see the ticker on the TV rising: ‘100 people feared dead…’ ‘200 feared dead…’ ‘Hundreds wounded…’ reports of ten hostages taken into Gaza. And it took a few days for the shock to subside and understand the magnitude of the event that we were in, that Israel was now at war against the Iranian proxy army in Gaza.”

Eylon Levy (Photo courtesy)

Levy represented Israel to the international media in an official capacity for the first six months of the war, but even after leaving the Prime Minister’s Office, he wanted to continue using his experience to advocate for the country.

“After I left the Prime Minister’s Office, I was looking for a new way to continue making an impact on the global conversation and decided to take the team of volunteers who’d been working with me in the war to say, ‘We’re going to make our disadvantage an advantage. We’re going to speak from civil society. We’re not official. We don’t represent the government or the army. We’re speaking freely as private citizens, and we’re going to continue fighting this war for Israel’s legitimacy and its right to fight against the enemies threatening us with extermination that are still holding on to hostages.

“This isn’t a war that is Netanyahu’s war or the right-wing government’s war. Hamas declared war on us. It’s threatening to do October 7 again and again until Israel is destroyed. It’s as if it could go back in history. If it could turn back time, it would commit the atrocities of October 7 again and again. They would, if given half a chance. And we’re fighting for global public opinion to stand by our side as we fight to free the hostages and bring Hamas to justice.”

Aside from the physical battle on the ground in Gaza, Calvert asked about the propaganda war.

“Hamas is winning the propaganda war because it has no problem lying,” Levy explained. “And those lies are amplified very quickly, including by UN officials and international NGOs that didn’t say on October 7, ‘Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas.’ And since then they’ve become critical about how Israel is doing it.

“They didn’t want Israel to exercise self-defense against the Hamas terrorists and rapists at all, and they’re now abusing their positions and their influence and public discourse to try to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself against Hamas.”

Levy took the example of the recent allegation that Gaza was on the brink of imminent famine.

“Israel said, ‘...Far more food is entering now than before the war. We’re facilitating so much aid the UN is drowning under, it isn’t able to distribute it. What are you talking about?’"

“But the headlines went around the world that Gaza was facing imminent famine. If those predictions were true, you would now be seeing 12,000 people a month dropping dead of starvation. It’s not happening. And the UN just admitted in another report that the data simply isn’t there to support the original predictions.”

Regarding the IDF's ground offensive, Levy said: “Israel faces an urban battlefield that no country in the world has ever had to confront, and Israel has had to innovate new ways to try to keep civilians safe when their own government, Hamas, deliberately puts them in harm's way. And that’s because Hamas isn’t using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It’s using them as human sacrifices."

“Its leaders have been very clear that they will sacrifice twice as many martyrs as it takes to destroy Israel. Hamas is a death cult. It’s a death cult run by fundamentalist Islamist psychopaths. And we need the whole world to stand up against Hamas.”

Calvert asked whether he thinks the world has forgotten the 120 hostages that remain in captivity in Gaza.

“The world is forgetting the hostages, and the world is forgetting the hostages because there are many people who have an interest in making them forget it,” Levy explained.

“They want this war to go away. They want Israel to stop the war and leave Hamas on its feet. And they understand that Israel cannot end this war while there are still hostages inside Gaza, that Israel is committed to getting them all back from the inhumane satanic conditions that they are being held in."

“Immediately around the world, activists started putting up posters of hostages and people started ripping them down. They couldn’t bear to see the face of an abducted baby of a hostage child, because it told them: ‘This is the reason that Israel not only has a right, has a duty, a basic moral obligation to prosecute this war in order to get the hostages back…’”

Regarding the countries that have now started officially recognizing a Palestinian state, Levy told Calvert: “The governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain are not only rewarding the October 7 massacre, they’re directly encouraging the next one. Instead of telling the Palestinians, ‘Barbaric terrorism has absolutely no justification. It will lead you nowhere. It will set you back,’ they are telling them, ‘This will take your national cause forward.’

“The government of Ireland is telling the Palestinians to abduct more Jewish babies. The government of Norway is telling the Palestinians to rape more Jewish women. The government of Spain is telling the Palestinians to burn more Jewish families alive. ‘Because we will give you a prize.’ The Palestinians must not be allowed to think of October 7 as a national holiday that advanced their cause…”

As for his prayer for Israel at this time, Levy said: “Strength and resilience for its people, as they look around the world and see so many people mobilizing against them who do not want them to defend themselves, who do not want them to live, to remember the power of love and solidarity within the Jewish world and from our allies around the world.”

Levy can be followed on 𝕏 and Instagram @EylonALevy. The Israeli Citizen Spokesperson's office can be found on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. The office has a daily briefing at 3 p.m. Israel time, 1 p.m. UK, 8 a.m. EST, including an opportunity to ask questions live.

Click below to listen to the full interview with Paul Calvert.