Honest Reporting: Fighting BDS – The Power of Pro-Israel Images

Fighting BDS – The Power of Pro-Israel Images

March 25, 2014 14:43 by Alex Margolin

Anyone who spends time online, and especially on mega-sites such as Facebook or Twitter, can’t help but notice the centrality of images in the fight over Israel’s legitimacy. Shareable images or memes – usually photos or graphics that contain pithy  slogans -  may well be the most effective form of communiciation in a world of media overload.

In a recent article, Grant McCracken called photos “the secret ingredient of the Internet Economy”:

The reason they really matter is that they are the single, smallest, richest, cheapest, easiest token of value and meaning online.  We mint them.  We trade them.  We accumulate them.  We treasure them.

In short, photos and images get a message across quicker and with more depth than other media, including video. And when you’re fighting for hearts and minds against supporters of the BDS movement, that makes all the difference.

Uri Silberman who, along with Adrian Cojocaru, runs The Israel Network, which has produced some of the most striking images in the pro-Israel community, said pictures get better results on Facebook than text links or videos:

A picture or meme is something that quickly captures your attention, doesn’t require any extra mouse clicks, and isn’t time consuming. Most people run through their News Feed and only stop at something which captures the eye. What we are trying to do is to capture their attention within the span of a few seconds.

Most recently, The Israel Network has been capturing a lot of attention with a poster series featuring Israel supporters from all different religions and ethnicities, including some who are not associated with Zionism, such as Israeli Arabs, stating why they support Zionism. It’s the perfect antidote to the BDS lie that Zionism is racism.

“We want to make as many of these as possible in order to show the world that Israel supporters are diverse and come from very different backgrounds,” Silberman said, adding that he has been getting requests daily from people who want to be part of the series.

After all, if photos are the currency of the Internet economy, you can never have too many.