Social media influencer Emily Austin visited Israel last week so that she could experience the pain of the people of Israel firsthand.
She traveled to southern Israel and along the Gaza border communities, witnessing the destruction of the kibbutzim that Hamas infiltrated on October 7.
“It was like visiting the concentration camps. I needed to see it with my own eyes,” Austin told The Jerusalem Post the day after she returned to the US from her five-day trip that was organized by Israel Friends US. She was in Israel December 12-17.
Austin is a young American actress and model. She built herself up not only on her beauty and wits but also on her Judaism: She keeps Shabbat and shares about it. She has 1.6 million followers on Instagram and 35,000 on Twitter.
Pictures are unable to capture the horrors
Austin told the Post that seeing pictures or reading newspaper articles was not the same as being in Israel and experiencing the neighborhoods – the smell of death even months later, the black rooftops, and more. Seeing how empty Ben-Gurion Airport was and praying at the Western Wall when almost no one else was there were also telling.
There was the burned container of her favorite cottage cheese that she saw on the ground in someone’s home.
There was also the moment when, while visiting a local hospital, she saw a helicopter carrying a wounded soldier from Gaza landing on the pad. Austin said she broke into tears watching the stretcher being taken from the plane.
“This was someone’s son, brother, or friend fighting for his life. It broke my heart, and I cried all night,” she said.
“I have American-dominated platforms, and I want to get to my followers before the rest of the world,” she added. “I am a big believer in ‘show, don’t tell.’ Rather than tell them what happened on October 7, I want to show them the kibbutzim. Then, let them [the anti-Israel community] look me in the eye and tell me this was resistance.”
Austin posted dozens of times on her social media platforms from Israel and since she returned home. In one post on X, she wrote: “Spoke with these amazingly brave women. Raz & Ella Benami. Raz was recently returned from Gaza, and her husband remains a hostage. My heart is with these women and the State of Israel as we mourn & heal together.”
Austin filmed the inside of someone’s home in a southern kibbutz and posted it as well.
“Bearing witness to the atrocities of October 7,” she captioned the video. “Pictures and videos will never do justice to depict the evil that occurred this day. I could not imagine waking up on a Saturday morning, and instead of drinking my morning coffee, terrorists are in my home on a murder rampage (to say the least).
“A normal person could simply not understand these horrendous actions. We must never forget. And I will never forgive these horrible acts. Despite this, the Israeli people live. They always have, and they always will.”
On Instagram, she shared similar messages, including a photo of herself standing in someone’s home with her hand over her mouth in horror at what she saw. There is also a picture of her wearing a hard hat.
Backlash received for standing up for Israel
Standing up for Israel has earned Austin accolades from some members of the Jewish community, but she said she also receives hate messages every day. Some are downright nasty, such as cursing her that she would miscarry every time she gets pregnant or praying that she would die.
In addition, she lost her job as a judge for the Miss Universe contest when she wrote to the organization asking it to condemn Hamas’s rape of innocent women in Israel. She also dropped out as a brand ambassador for Puma.
“If they cannot support Israel, why should I dare support them?” Austin asked.
To fight growing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, she said, the key is education.
While she does not directly answer hateful messages, Austin said that sometimes she encounters people who seem very bright but are very uneducated.
“I want people to know that Israel is not the bad guy, and it never has been,” she concluded. “If people would spend 25 to 30 minutes studying history and facts and not going off [of] emotional, factless responses from Palestinian propaganda, the truth would reveal itself.”