For a moment, it was hard to believe that the soft-spoken young woman in a modest, high-necked sweater and nearly floor-length skirt, who could easily have blended into the crowds of seminary students at the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem at twilight on Wednesday, was Ariel Martin, better known as Baby Ariel, a sassy, playful social-media influencer with a combined following of more than 50 million on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube (@BabyAriel).Known for wildly popular videos where she lip syncs to upbeat and sometimes silly or sexy songs – which have garnered more than 1.9 billion views on TikTok and won her a place on Time Magazine’s 2017 list of the most influential people on the Internet – as well as clips where she shares moments from her life, Ariel has broadened her focus in recent months to talk about the October 7 massacre by Hamas and Israel’s right to defend itself.Now, Ariel, who is Jewish and who has family here, is traveling around Israel sponsored by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a global coalition with more than 830 partner organizations that tries to find fresh ways to fight an ancient hatred. She has been visiting sites that are connected to the October 7 massacre and trying to learn as much as possible about Israel and the war, so she can better speak to her followers abroad about the facts.
Although posting serious content is not completely new to her – she has urged her followers to go out and vote and has called out antisemitism in the past – in recent weeks, she has devoted more and more time on her platforms to trying to clear up misconceptions about the war, even explaining why anti-Zionism cannot be separated from antisemitism.“To me, posting about it was the least that I could do. With what happened, with the horrific traumatizing events, I noticed right afterward that the world responded in such a disgusting, negative way, even people close to me. And I thought, if even people close to me are responding like that, then people everywhere are responding that way.
Ariel visited Israel to gain new insight
Ariel, an actress, has a role in the upcoming film Suncoast, starring Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, and Nico Parker, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She could have continued her social-media fight from the US. But she said she felt that she needed to come to Israel and gain new insight. “It’s one thing to be just sitting in my house in L.A., but I started to feel that I need to go to Israel. Because I spend my days fighting with people, arguing with people, and I wanted to just experience it for myself, and the number one thing I’ve seen since I arrived is how diverse Israel is, genuinely accepting of everyone,” she said.Before we met, she had visited United Hatzalah, the volunteer emergency medical services agency, and heard stories from them about being first responders on October 7. She also met with hostage families and visited the site of the Supernova Music Festival, where about 360 concertgoers and festival staff were slaughtered and another 40 kidnapped. Other stops on her itinerary were Rahat, the largest Bedouin city in Israel, where she got a chance to view coexistence up close, and army bases, where she spent time talking to soldiers.She also made time for the traditional sites, such as the Western Wall and museums, many of which were familiar from previous visits. “Literally, everything we’ve seen on this trip has been so powerful and so important that I don’t want to leave, I want to talk to everybody forever,” she said. “Coming after October 7 and seeing the way the Israeli people came together . . .Every single place we’ve been to, they have talked to us about civilians who stepped up. You know, if the IDF wasn’t there right away or the police couldn’t be there, civilians stepped up like in two seconds to support their people. Seeing so much love and unity and the bravery of everybody in the face of something so horrific was inspiring.”One thing that surprised her, she said, was how the survivors of the massacre maintained their composure while telling their stories to visitors. “The hostage families I spoke to, I spoke to young girls, telling the stories of their family members who were kidnapped, and it just breaks my heart. They shouldn’t have to be in that position,” she said.
She was especially moved by the recently erected memorial at the Supernova Music Festival that shows the faces of those who were killed. “That was powerful because we were walking among them,” she said. “I’m 23, they were all so young. My brother, he’s 19, he’s the kind of person who would go to a festival like this. These kids were the most peaceful, loving people, who just wanted to dance. . . the most loving beautiful people who went to this festival. . . I absolutely do identify with them. That’s the thing I want to get across, having an audience that is so young, 16, 17, 18, of an age to go to these kinds of festival, it’s not a political issue, it’s a humanitarian issue. These people are kids! And it’s important for people to understand that it could have been anybody.”Knowing that there has been much criticism that people today are getting their facts from social media, she agreed, saying, “Most people don’t do the research. The second you go online and you want to learn about Israel’s history and the Jewish people’s history, it’s all there. It’s at your fingertips, yet people are going out and talking about something that they have no idea about. And they’re learning about things from TikTok and from Instagram. And that’s why I try to meet people where they’re at, and that’s why I’m using my platform to talk about it and, hopefully, people can connect to someone who is their age.”Although she has been to Israel before, after the experiences on this trip, “I am 100 times more furious at everybody who is not pro-Israel and who isn’t fighting for the hostages to come home and for Hamas to surrender...To be in the homes [that were attacked on October 7] and to see the bullet holes, and to hear the stories of the families who found out that their sibling was kidnapped from a Hamas live-stream, there’s no denying it, and I’m just so much more angry and I’m going to go home and advocate a million times more, as much as I can.”