Produced by a group of university students, a series about four Israeli 20-somethings intends to show the true face of Israel.
By Avigayil Kadesh
Meet Savannah Zwi-Navon, a singer-songwriter born in Sydney, Australia; Yair Tayar, a Capoeira instructor raised in the Samaria (West Bank) settlement of Beit Horon; Israel National Basketball Team member Shay Doron; and Ayman Daw, an Arab-Israeli clothing salesman at a Tel Aviv mall.
These four 20-something Israelis agreed to be followed around on camera this summer, not as part of a reality show but for Is.Real, a video project launched in early August by 23 Tel Aviv University students.
“Through this project, we intend to show millions of our peers around the world Israel’s true, beautiful face as never seen before,” says project coordinator Or Shahar, 27. “We gave four young Israelis 90 minutes to tell their stories.” Each stars in five short episodes released through YouTube, the Is.Real website and Facebook.
Influencing opinions one at a time
Savannah Zwi-Navon tells viewers that she fell in love with her adopted country at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, and has spent the last few years in Tel Aviv garnering a fan base for her raw emotional ballads, jazzy upbeat numbers and tension-filled rock.
She’s performed with the Ashdod Symphony Orchestra and is working on translating contemporary Israeli songs into English versions with a jazz-oriented twist.
httpv://youtu.be/iqtMP9qyaEA
Savannah Zwi-Navon is a 27 year old singer-songwriter. She is a native of Sydney, Australia and first arrived to Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, where she fell in love with the country. She ventured her way to Tel Aviv, where she has established a loyal fan base. Savannah dreams of musical success both in Israel and abroad. Her musical style combines raw emotional ballads, jazzier upbeat numbers
and tension filled rock. She is currently working on a project, “Call from Home”, of poetically translated contemporary Israeli songs which she delivers in English with her own jazz-oriented twist.
httpv://youtu.be/rxAOFqWzXbY
Yair Tayar is 26 years old and grew up in a religious family in the Jewish settlement of Beit Horon (West Bank). He is currently studying to be a tour guide. He speaks fluent Portugese and Spanish and already guides tours around the country for tourists from Brazil. He practices Capoeira (a Brazilian form of martial arts combined with music and dance) and also provides instruction to at-risk youth at a community center in Jerusalem. Through his Capoeira studies, he learned to play several instruments and accompanies his brother’s Reggae band.
Shay Doron was born in Israel but considers herself a citizen of the world since she’s on the road most of the time. One of the most prominent and successful female basketball players in Israel, she’s played for leading teams including the Women’s NBA, the WNBA, in the United States. This year, she led her Israeli team, Elitzur Ramla, to the championship game in the Women’s European Basketball League.
“I feel I represent Israel outside of Israel, so this project was a perfect fit for me,” says Doron. “If we can change even one person’s perspective on Israel and Israelis, it will be worth everything.”
httpv://youtu.be/jpOH5LrzBj0
Ayman Daw, a Christian Arab Israeli, studied design in Haifa and moved to Tel Aviv, where he works as a salesman for the fashion chain Castro and dreams of someday pursuing a career in styling and fashion design.
Shahar says the producers strove to be entirely objective. “Ayman says in the promo, ‘It’s not easy being an Israeli Arab.’ We had a dilemma whether or not to use this line, but it shows our objective is not one-sided advocacy. Viewers can decide for themselves whether to find out more about what really goes on here, and form their personal opinions based on fact.”
httpv://youtu.be/pV2zxsF6cXk
Buzz from both sides
The group approached influential bloggers and members of the press to launch their project, and have been gratified by the response even when it’s not entirely sympathetic.
“I am surprised at the amount of buzz it’s generating in Israel and in the United States,” says Shahar, a third-year law student. “Also very important is the counter-buzz coming from groups that work with the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement; someone opened a counter project called Is.Palestine. That doesn’t upset us, because it gets us to places we might not have been able to get to before.”
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The plan is to release one episode per week for each of the four personalities, with the hope of picking up Facebook followers and going viral. “Because it’s an internet project, I believe it can last a long time,” says Shahar.
Six students were put in charge of finding the right young Israelis to feature. They were searching for camera-friendly people who were interesting in their own right and would exemplify the diversity of youthful Israeli culture. From a long list, they whittled the candidates down to four. “Shay was hard to reach, but we contacted her through a friend. Ayman we found when one of the students was passing the Castro store and saw him. I went there and explained the project to him and he agreed,” says Shahar.
Is.Real was the culmination of a yearlong diplomacy and leadership fellowship program sponsored by StandWithUs. The non-partisan group works with students on six university campuses in Israel to train them in making a positive impact on global public opinion through the use of innovative technologies.
The fellows got together every two weeks during the school year for lectures and field trips. The video project was voluntary and the students had to raise the funds to see it through. The Israeli Student Union offered advice on logistics. “We discovered a huge potential for improving Israel’s public diplomacy efforts around the world through this creative and groundbreaking project,” said Maayan Friedland, a Student Union spokesperson.
“The project will take advantage of the great power of the internet,” says Shahar, “using a dedicated website and social media networks to widely distribute the videos to a truly diverse and global audience. Thanks to this platform, the series will reach an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers.”
