Aby: Fighting both on and off the battlefield

Meet Aby.

A Mexican-Canadian Oleh Chadash (new immigrant) to Israel who came to Israel on a gap year after high school and decided to make Aliyah and join the army.

Originally from Mexico City, he moved to Toronto, Canada at a young age. He attended both Hebrew day schools and the Public school system. He joined after school activities with NCSY, and became an active member of the Toronto Jewish community.

He would visit Israel when he could, through summer programs or for family events. He recounts his family life as a very strong Zionist home, steeped in Jewish values and traditions. A core memory that shaped Aby occurred when he was 7 or 8 years old. It was his first time in Israel. “We were here for my cousin’s bar mitzvah. I remember my brother pointing out my t-shirt of Spider Man or some superhero. He looked at my shirt and said ‘that’s a fake superhero. Over there is the real thing.’ He was pointing at Israeli soldiers.” Several of his cousins joined the IDF before him.

Aby followed in his brother’s footsteps by coming to Israel after completeing high school. About halfway through his year he decided to join the army. He found friends who ultimately became family within the lone-soldier community.

Given that Aby speaks English and Spanish as primary languages, he thought that he would be a good fit for the spokesperson unit. “It was a debate at the beginning of my service whether I should go into the spokesperson unit or into combat.” Additionally, he has knowledge of photography, having learned from assisting his father photograph weddings and bar mitzvahs. In the end, he decided to go into combat, “because I can, and it’s needed.”

After he finished his mandatory service, he enrolled at Reichman University and studied business and entrepreneurship. Aby was involved in different clubs, one of which was DiploAct, an organization for Israel advocacy and public diplomacy around the world. “They offer a very intense one year training program for how to become a better Israel advocate and public speaker. I did their program and right after we finished a few people in the group planned a delegation trip to Denmark.”

Aby continued traveling the world as a delegation member for DiploAct throughout the war. A metaphor he liked to use when he delivers presentations about his military service is “just like for a soldier, a combat soldier, to be able to stand guard and know how to shoot his weapon, there’s a certain amount of training that is necessary. There is a lot of dedication and time to be able to be a good soldier. The same dedication and training needs to be applied for the battlefield around the world, for advocacy and the knowledge war as well.”

People around the world are waking up to the fact that they need to speak up, yet many feel stuck and don’t know what to say. “They don’t know how to defend, they don’t know what to do, and that comes from a lack of knowledge and skill sets, and a lack of confidence within their knowledge. But knowing how to defend Israel is equally as important as the battle being waged in Gaza and Lebanon, because world opinion has a big impact on us in Israel.”

On October 7th, he was spending Shabbat and Simchat Torah with his parents. “They woke me up saying that they were watching the attack happening on the news, and that they received a lot of alerts on their phones. They told me to check my unit for reserves.” He started making content right away.

“I used Snapchat and was able to see the stories and content being shared by location. I clicked Gaza on the map and saw raw, live footage of what was happening there. I saw the videos of people celebrating, all while missiles were constantly being shot at Israel.”

“At the same time, my cousin and his pregnant wife were locked in their bunker in Sderot. They were in there for at least the full day, if not the night, too.

Aby was drafted to his reserve unit, and was sent to the Northern Border. He’s a commander in reserves. He was in and out of reserves for the entire duration of the war, serving both in Lebabnon and in Gaza.

“We went to the north. It was pretty intense because we felt like sitting ducks. You’re waiting in case someone invades, but in the meantime you’re being shot at by their (Hezbollah) artillery, and we’re shooting back, but you don’t always know whose is whose, so you’re always on alert. We had tents, but we didn’t have a bunker at the beginning. We had to dig trenches with shovels because we didn’t want to bring in excavators – which would make us a target.”

He recounts one of the hardest moments for him during the early days of the war was when their phones were taken away from them. “We were probably going in. I think it was the second or third day of the war. They told us to make our calls. It was scary to call family members not knowing if that would be the last call I would ever make to them, consciously knowing that could be that call.”

The soldiers would then get into a routine of “guard duty, of staying awake, our tanks firing, their tanks firing.” In April, an artillery shell hit one of the buildings of one of the platoons within Aby’s unit, which injured many soldiers, and killed one. “He was newly engaged, he was supposed to get married. He was studying law and government. I knew him from university, and from the reserves. He was a good guy. Throughout the war I would hear of other friends who were killed or injured. That’s always tough.”

His unit was active in dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon as the war progressed.

Aby is always ‘on’. He is either fighting on the physical battlefield or on the digital one. Because he understands how the algorithms online work, he can understand the rage and vitriol he is met with when he comes to Israel’s defense – both online and while traveling to American cities and college campuses.

“The algorithms exist to keep a user engaged. The platforms make money by keeping a user engaged for longer.” Emotions like fear, anger, and jealousy tend to keep users on platforms longer. The different platforms then push this content onto people, and coupled with the money being funneled into the online war from Qatar, Hamas, and the Iranian regime, has created and spread the narrative that we have seen overtake college campuses and progressive movements around the world.

“A lot of funding has been put into misinformation and lies. There are a lot of parallels with the morality of this war in terms of the soldiers on the ground and the way it’s being fought online as well.” Aby explained that every soldier receives something called ‘The Spirit of the IDF, which outlines the values that the army holds. “Theres the value of life, the purity of arms, when and when not to shoot, purity of the mission. Every soldier has to swear on them and has to understand them in basic training - before you can touch a gun, before you get your uniform. We abide by these values as a soldier on the ground.”

A similar code is adopted by those who do Hasbara – Israeli advocacy. “We have a moral code. We’re not going to share lies. We’re going to research the truth.” However, a lie spreads much faster than the truth ever could, and billions of people see a lie before the truth comes out, and the damage is done.

“Once you understand the system, patience is the most important element when doing Hasbara.” Aby understands the perspective that people are seeing. He can understand why they are furious. “You’d be furious too if you were seeing what they are because these things are genuinely horrific.” It is his mission to find a rapport with the people he is talking to, to humanize himself, to create a connection before starting the conversation. “When I say I’m a soldier, that automatically dehumanizes me and puts me as an occupier, etc. I try to get them to understand that I’m a human. That every soldier on the ground is human. And that every terrorist and person in Gaza is also a human. It’s understanding that the conflict is being painted as straightforward when it’s actually quite complex, and that the different sides are abiding by different motives.”

Aby references a classic book as a key to his success in connecting with people while doing Hasbara. “I take a lot of techniques from Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ To get someone to listen to an argument of a very complex situation, and to hear a different perspective that what they are seeing, and to be interested enough to start asking questions is the main goal. If you can get to that point, then you have gained an ally.” There are techniques to be more concise and effective with your arguments, with your information, to be able to rebut different topics.

He has been met at times with pure hatred. “I am at the point where it doesn’t faze me. An easy way for people to get to the point of standing strong and aware is knowing your individual personal values and understanding how they align with the Israeli values and the justice of us fighting this war. Once you are fully, wholeheartedly connected to the war, you can stand by your argument no matter what.”

When doing advocacy work, Aby has learned to use basic traffic rules to categorize people. By using a traffic light – red, yellow, and green – as a metaphor for the people he encounters. The reds are those who are completely anti, they aren’t worth the time of trying to convince them. The yellow comprises the vast majority of people, while the greens are those who are already supportive. “For each audience you have to act accordingly. If someone messages me or engages with me that is already the opening of a door to conversation. I want to take advantage of that and try to do something with it.” Aby recounted a story where he slowly managed to open a “Middle East Expert’s” eyes with patient and deliberate conversation of what he was experiencing in real time. After years of conversations, he has seen shifts come, even from fervent anti-Israel activists, who reached out to him in the days following October 7th to let them know they were praying for his safety.

“It needs to be an actual understanding of values, a human to human element. That’s the only way we’ll get somewhere. I wholeheartedly believe in the values of Israel (I don’t support every policy of the government), in the ideas of the Jewish state, what we stand for and what we’re here for, and the people in the society. Because of this I’m already going to win every argument if I have enough patience for it.”

“I think most people in the world are good people and have good intentions. People want to do this good thing and say Free Palestine because it’s the easy way of filling your good-person points for society. But it’s much more complex and we need to give the situation the respect that the complexity warrants and not simplify it and pick sides blindly. It’s not a zero sum game.”

Aby likes to encourage everyone to speak up and do their part in the fight against Antizionism. He understands that most people feel like they only know the buzz words but don’t know how to back them up. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves so that we can stand up and fight in a conversation. “It’s doable, but we have a responsibility to rise up to the challenge.”

“I want to live my normal life, but I have to go to reserves. Just as I have to go to reserves, people need to stand up for the truth and our reality. That’s my biggest pushing force to get the Jewish world – and the non-Jewish moral world – to wake up and fight for justice and to condemn the real enemy with is terror, Hamas, the Islamic Republic in Iran, etc.”

Aby began doing videos to explain what was happening in Israel in Spanish which was a niche that was underserved. “There aren’t many people doing advocacy in Spanish. We are looking to expand our operations in Spanish with delegation trips to Mexico and Latin America.”

He has received strong support from friends and family. He allows the hate messages he receives to slide off him, although sometimes he replies because every interaction is an opportunity for a meaningful conversation.

If he could leave you with one key takeaway it would be not to underestimate the power of your voice and the impact you can make. “Even if you have only 100 followers, or even just one friend – the ripple effect from making a connection in conversation can be astounding. We do not have the luxury of staying quiet and living our normal lives. It is important for us to be a part of the impact and to rise up to the challenge we are facing.”