In between rounds of public diplomacy meetings in New York City earlier this year, former government spokesperson Eylon Levy took a brief break from talking about Israel to enjoy a bit of escapism at a Broadway play.
While out in public there, the London-born Levy wore a COVID mask to keep a low profile for security purposes. But when the lights dimmed in the crowded theater, Levy figured he could heave a literal and figurative sigh of relief when he removed his mask.
A few minutes later, a female usher approached him and said, “Sir, are you Mr. Levy?”
Levy tensed up for a moment, worried he’d be identified by one of the many in the city hostile to the Jewish state. Much to his relief, the woman – who was wearing a State of Israel necklace – gushed that she was an avid follower of Levy on social media, thanking him for his work.
That woman was but one of the many thousands of followers who have jumped on the Levy bandwagon since Oct. 7. To date, he has amassed 260,000 and 208,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter, respectively, as he stepped into the role of government spokesperson with a bang.
Always quick with an eloquent, elegant rejoinder, in the first months of war the unflappable Levy thrilled Anglos on the daily, articulately ripping many an anti-Israel media figure to shreds in real time (most famously, raising his eyebrows at a particularly outrageous hostage-exchange implication by Sky News anchor Kay Burley).
However, becoming an influencer overnight is a bittersweet achievement for Levy – who knows he rose to fame because he stepped up during Israel’s darkest hour.
Levy, who made aliyah from the UK 10 years ago, rolled up his immaculately tailored sleeves and sat down with us in his Tel Aviv office-studio to talk about his surreal rise to fame and why Israel’s approach to public diplomacy needs to be overhauled, as well as sprinkling in a few references to the Broadway smash musical Hamilton, which we’re happy to echo in the article herein. (While Levy is headquartered in Tel Aviv and not in Jerusalem, his efforts on behalf of Israel’s capital, the country, and the Diaspora make him an honorary Jerusalemite in our book.)
Outgunned, outmanned; outnumbered, outplanned
“There’s a painful dissonance,” the 32-year-old Levy acknowledged of his newfound stardom. “I did an event with Jewish National Fund students who were here as part of a solidarity mission. I gave them my pep talk, and there’s this long line for selfies with me; they treated me like I’m a rock star – this is how football players and actors get treated, not former government spokespeople.
“It feels wrong and out of place because my job was to go on TV and defend the conduct of Israel in the middle of war,” he said. “Suddenly, I found myself getting mobbed for selfies, and it doesn’t feel right. The situation is bad; this is not a red carpet.”
As such, Levy is still his jovial and witty self, but it is clear he’s haunted, or perhaps even burdened, by the responsibility that’s been put on his shoulders ever since Oct. 7 – when he was unceremoniously thrown in front of the cameras in the early days after the Hamas attack.
“There was no official vetting process in my hiring. Nobody asked me about my background information,” Levy says of his first few days after he showed up at the Kirya in Tel Aviv as the public diplomacy directorate set up briefings for the media in several languages. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser (and former ambassador) Mark Regev saw Levy in the building, he put him to work. The PR man was instructed to review the interviews Regev had already done, don a suit, and get in front of the green screen.
“I was told to watch a few of his interviews, and then I’d be on my own. There’s no other country in the world where it would work like this,” he said in awe. “That showed the best and the worst about our country because we know how to be flexible in times of emergency – but it shouldn’t work like this. I should not have been able to fall into the role the way I did.
“At the time Mark was inundated with requests, and they needed all hands on deck. So I put on my suit and tie, and I was the government spokesperson because that’s what the country needed.”
Levy was no novice, having previously served as international media spokesman for President Isaac Herzog. Yet his approach to interacting with the press in this war era was somewhat revolutionary and got people to pay attention.
“We are outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned, so we need to be as loud and creative as possible,” he said, in his first reference to Hamilton. “Sometimes, I’d get a slap on the wrist and be told I’ve gone too far. But during this war, as we’re getting aggressively attacked, I’d rather go a little bit too far and be told to tone it down than be timid and take the punches.”
Not throwing away his shot
That unconventional approach eventually got him in trouble with the powers that be, and in March Levy was suspended from his official government duties until further notice, much to the confusion and chagrin of his English-speaking audience.
“I definitely took liberties in a very deliberate and strategic way. By now everyone understands the context of my departure from the role. It’s not a secret that the prime minister’s wife wanted to have me removed,” he said candidly.
Although Levy has never met Sara Netanyahu, he suspects reports claiming she wanted him gone because of his prewar involvement in the judicial reform protests and that someone at the Prime Minister’s Office leaked stories to the press against him.
“The following week, I get a call that they’re talking about me on the news. It said a final decision was made and my contract wasn’t renewed – but I never had a contract. So someone at the PMO is briefing against me while I’m sitting at home waiting to be called into action,” he said.
“At this point I understood they wanted to bury me, so I jumped. I was already in the process of starting an NGO to handle the financial side of the podcast.”
It’s no coincidence, then, that when asked what line from a Broadway show encapsulates this tumultuous moment of his life, Levy responds with, “I’m not throwing away my shot,” another reference to Hamilton, where the title character proclaims he’s going to seize the day and take every opportunity given to him so he becomes a formidable part of his country’s history.
Who lives, who dies, who tells our story
And thus, the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office was born. Levy was determined to continue telling Israel’s story, even if he didn’t have official government backing – because Israel’s public diplomacy strategy, he argued, is in need of a complete overhaul.
“The model doesn’t work. Who are you expecting to do your public diplomacy for you? The embassy spokesperson who may not speak the language or have proper media training because their previous job was to be the cultural attaché to somewhere else, and their next job will be to be an ambassador to a country with a different language?” he asked incredulously.
“Israel needs a fleet of spokespeople in every language and time zone. You need to have sitting around one table, government spokespeople in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Swedish who are getting briefed and will use similar soundbites and will be able to plug into local conversations.”
Moreover, Israel isn’t going to make gains in the diplomacy world by being polite and passive.
“We understood we’re not going to win if we play by the rules and wait for CNN to call and answer questions politely. No, we needed to reinvent what it means to be a spokesperson,” he asserted. “We’re going to blur the lines between being a spokesperson and being a political commentator and content creator. I was aggressively tweeting and commenting, and sometimes The New York Times would quote me because of something I tweeted.”
As such, the nascent Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office is already a well-oiled machine, and Levy gave us a tour of his Tel Aviv office and well-appointed and equipped studio where he films his podcast and his daily briefings.
With the motto that you “don’t have to be an official spokesperson to speak up for Israel,” he encourages every person invested in Israel’s future to do their part and defend it in the public and social media sphere.
“We’re citizen spokespeople – ordinary people who are speaking out for our country and our global nation at a critical time,” he said in one of his videos that served as an open invitation for people to join him on his mission.
WHILE THE podcast receives funding from the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Levy believes the organization can reach even greater heights with some additional funding: “This isn’t a simple operation. We put out three to four podcasts a week, plus the daily briefing.”
He hopes those who invest in this work will plant the seeds for the future of Israeli public diplomacy, which will be based on a dialogue between individual citizens around the world in every time zone.
Furthermore, such a model should exist during peacetime as well, so that Israel isn’t yet again caught off guard and scrambling to come up with a PR strategy in mid-crisis.
“You can’t wait for Hamas to attack, and then look for someone who can speak for Israel. I was doing interviews with Colombian radio that needed simultaneous translation. Why isn’t there someone who can speak for Israel in Spanish in Western Hemisphere time?” he stressed.
“And when Israel isn’t in the news, these envoys can be used as roaming ambassadors to go to communities and campuses. Even if they’re not activated full time, you’ll gain from having them on standby; even when you know we’re at war every six months anyway, you need these people in place.”
That said, even the most well-intentioned spokespeople have their work cut out for them when they’re operating in an arena where many Hamas assertions are taken at face value, while Israel often must prove and justify its claims.
When asked to name the most grating anti-Israel voice on social media, Levy smiled.
Former MSNBC broadcaster and founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Zeteo “Mehdi Hasan really rubs me the wrong way,” Levy laughed. “But I do think in another lifetime we could have been friends. I admire his creativity and his utter chutzpah. He’s very smart.
“Sadly, I think someone who set up an entire media outlet essentially for the purpose of waging an information war against Israel is someone who is psychologically very deeply invested in a particular narrative. I don’t know what drives his viewpoint that Israel is just purely, irredeemably evil. But who knows – maybe this is something that can be solved over a beer or a refreshing beverage.”
The room where it happens
While Levy has his hands full with the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, he also has grand plans for his future – some that don’t even involve diplomacy or politics.
“I didn’t want to be a spokesperson when I was growing up, I wanted to be an actor – and there are several musicals I want to write,” he grinned.
“But once here, I knew I wanted to be part of Israel’s public diplomacy arena and found myself as the right man during the wrong time. However, I don’t see myself running for Knesset – the Jewish people have suffered enough,” joked Levy.
“This war isn’t going away any time soon,” the citizen PR person predicted. “Even if Hamas accepts a ceasefire and we wind this war down within two months, it still leaves the North. This is not a local war with Gaza, it’s a war with proxy armies on eight different fronts if you include the Diaspora. Are you going to allow this goodwill and mobilization in the Jewish world to dissipate? Or [will you] slip into complacency?”
In the above-referenced Broadway production, Alexander Hamilton’s nemesis Aaron Burr sings about how, like Hamilton, he yearns to be the one who is in the room where decisions have been made. At one point, Burr bellows, “God help and forgive me, I wanna build something that’s gonna outlive me, I wanna be in the room where it happens.”
While Levy may not have a desire to run for politics, it’s apparent that whatever room he occupies in the future will be one where messaging, talking points, and public diplomacy strategies aiding Israel and the Jewish world will be painstakingly crafted to serve his country and his people.■