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Vivace: Exposing Social Media's anti-Jewish policy while fighting for the Hostages

  • Writer: Elyte Studios
    Elyte Studios
  • 6 days ago
  • 10 min read

Meet Vivace.

A survivor: of Iran, of domestic abuse, of rape.

A warrior: for the hostages, for Jewish Americans, for Israel.


“I came from an extremely abusive, violent environment, which informs what I do now for the hostages. To me, it’s directly related. It is extremely important for me given my background to take a stand for these people who have no agency over their mind, their body, their space, their safety; the people, the men and women who have been sexually assaulted.”


Everything in Vivace’s life led her to be prepared for this moment in history.


Vivace was born into a Jewish family in Iran after the revolution, under the weight of an Islamist terrorist regime. Her family life was colored by severe domestic violence, and she recounts her young life as being in a state of constant chaos. “It was very unpredictable, I was terrified every single minute of every day. There was a lot of abuse directed towards me and my mother by my father.”


The horrors of home were echoed outside. The Ayatollah lived within walking distance of their family home. “Whenever we would walk out of our home, we would have machine guns pointed at us.” Vivace and her brothers had to pretend to be Muslim while at school. Her family tried to leave Iran, but were not allowed to. Ultimately, they received permission from the Department of Health to leave due to her mother’s failing health.  The family was able to escape Iran for London, England.


“We lived in London for a while, I went to school in London. And then we moved to Los Angeles.”


Vivace always asked her mother if they could leave the abusive home. Fearing her husband, the answer was always no. But the night that they arrived in Los Angeles, after another round of abuse, Vivace’s father gave them a window to leave on the condition that whoever left left with nothing, and who ever stayed with him got everything.


Vivace and her mother left that night with nothing, petrified and crying, alone in a new city. “We were in a foreign country. He kept our IDs, gave me $100 and told me it was my savings. We left the hotel. We didn’t know where we were because we just got there at night. We went to the hotel next door, and then to a phone booth. We didn’t know what sort of denomination we needed to make a phone call. We stood at the phone and cried, and a man gave us a dime. My mom called her relatives that she hadn’t been allowed to be in contact with for years. We stayed with people I had never met before for two weeks.”


Vivace and her mother were homeless, bouncing between relatives until her uncle, her mother’s brother, allowed them to move to New York to live with him in a one-bedroom apartment.


Vivace was determined to always be in control of her own life. “My mission was that no man would ever control me.  I went to college here, I studied biology, which I hated, and went to Cornell Medical School. I graduated as a surgical Physician's Assistant, which gave me the confidence to believe that I would be financially independent from a man.”


Another pivotal moment in her life was when she was drugged and raped. “It was terrible. It was the worst night of my life.” The trauma led Vivace to become suicidal because she was unable to process the violence she had endured. “I have tremendous amounts of compassion for people who seemingly look good, but you never know what’s happening with them, because no one knew what was happening with me.”


Vivace switched career paths and began a coaching practice. “I speak a lot about rape, domestic violence, and suicide awareness. It’s incredible how many high-functioning people are struggling. The majority of my clients are professionals; high achievers who haven’t paused to process the trauma that they had in their lives.”


October 7th shook Vivace to her core.


“After everything that had happened, I was extremely triggered, especially by the rapes. The thought that these men had raped these women... and gang-raped them... and recorded it. I couldn’t understand how the whole world wasn’t rallying for these women.”


Vivace was never an active user of social media before October 7. She had followers after being a guest on different news stations and TV shows over the years, but she wasn’t someone who broadcasted her life online. “I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think it was for me. I was so busy with coaching and my clients and I didn’t need it. I started to post more after being on TV.”


“I posted a still shot of ‘I stand with Israel’ after October 7th, and noticed a few people followed me, and a few thousand unfollowed me. I couldn’t understand why.”


What made things even more perplexing was her firsthand experience living with and experiencing terrorism firsthand while in Iran. “I couldn’t understand how in America people weren’t rallying behind the victims of terrorism. I still cant wrap my mind about how there are American hostages, and people aren’t lining the streets demanding their release. I’m shocked as an Iranian national, I’m shocked and disturbed that Americans don’t know their names because the media doesn’t cover them. I would have hoped that the President would have started every day naming the Americans held hostage and demanding their release, but this didn’t happen. I cant understand how they are not household names.”


Vivace has dedicated her activism to the hostages. Her fight is their fight. It is her mission that every American knows the names of the American hostages:

Omer Neutra (Z"L)

Idan Alexander (Returned to Israel in deal orchestrated by President Trump)

Sagui Dekel-Chen (Released in Hostage exchange deal)

Keith Siegel – now returned to Israel

Hersh Goldberg – Polin (Z”L, has been recovered post execution and buried in Israel)

Gadi Haggai (Z”L) & Judith Weinstein Haggai (Z”L) (bodies have been recovered by Israel)

Itay Chen (Z”L)


She also advocated for every woman who was held in hostage by Hamas in Gaza, who have now been returned to Israel in the January 2025 Ceasefire deal:

Liri Albag

Karina Ariev

Agam Berger

Amit Buskila

Daniella Gilboa

Romi Gonen

Naama Levy

Doron Steinbrecher

Ofra Keider

Emily Damari

Arbel Yehoud

Those who have been returned in coffins:Shiri Bibas along with her children Ariel and Kfir

And those who are still being held: Inbar Hayman (Z”L)


There are many parallels between what is happening in America today, and what happened during in Iran during the revolution. Iranians will be the first to tell you how distressing it is to see history repeating itself. As a child in Iran Vivace was used to seeing American and Israeli flags being burned. “To see that happening on American soil is extremely shocking.”

 

The aftermath of October 7th transformed Vivace into the activist she didn’t know she was. She began attending every rally she could. Every Sunday she participates in the ‘Run For Their Lives’ in Central Park to demand the release of the hostages. She has rallied outside of the private residence of the UN secretary general, where she personally asked him to do more to release the hostages. “I told him that he has done more for UNRWA than for the hostages. He said that wasn’t true.” She began to rally outside of UN Women and outside of the Qatari consulate. She repeatedly asks those “in charge” ‘why isn’t the UN doing anything?’ and ‘why isn’t the Red Cross visiting the hostages? Why aren’t they getting their medications?’, despite those questions going unanswered.


Vivace dedicated her entire social media presence to the hostages. “It has gotten to the point where people don’t know that I actually have a business. I’m a life coach, but people think that I’m just a Jewish activist.”


It is deeply personal to her.  She is a rape and abuse survivor. “I know how it feels to be terrified every day. I know how it feels to have no agency over your own body. I can only imagine what these hostages are going through, and it’s important to talk about. It’s also important to talk about post-traumatic growth and that recovering from horrific trauma is possible. I use my page and my voice to take a stand for the hostages and to be unrelenting about demanding their immediate release.”


Vivace cant help but be horrified at the parallels that she is witnessing play out on college campuses across America. “University administrators are allowing this. The government is allowing this. There should be greater regulation over funding. The National Guard should have been called in [to put a stop to the terrorism that seemed to be taking hold]. Everyone who allowed this to happen should be fired. This would have never been allowed to stand against any other minority group.”


Since October 7th, Vivace’s voice has emerged among the loudest on social media. However, her intent was never to become an “influencer” nor was she prepared for the violations of the freedom of speech against which she would battle.


Vivace famously fought against censorship at Meta.


“I was new to Instagram. I didn’t understand how to properly use it, I didn’t understand collaborations, but I learned little by little. I was blocked from being able to collaborate. Then I realized that people weren’t able to see my posts. My account was blocked for 45 days. I had many interactions with customer support through text chat – when you’re Meta verified you get access to a live text chat with many, many different people. What I was told didn’t come from one crazy agent – it indicated company policy.


“My account was being limited and/or blocked because I was posting about the hostages. Period. They warned me that if I continued trying to follow up, it would constitute spam and my account could be permanently disabled. Someone mentioned that according to the Copyright Act that I had a right to post, so I asked customer support to call me one more time, and I recorded part of that conversation. The agent told me that the restrictions were because I was posting about the hostages, that I had to remove all of my pro-hostage content otherwise my account would remain restricted and disabled. I told her that I have dedicated my page to the hostages and that I will continue to post.”


Vivace posted the recording of this conversation to Instagram, and it went viral. An executive at Instagram tweeted and emailed and apology for the censorship and immediately restored every function. However, it was short lived and since then, her account has continued to be shadow banned.


“They told me that I am promoting terrorism, that every time I speak up for a hostage I am promoting terrorism. I wanted to go live when the IDF rescued Noa Argamani, Almog Meir, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv, but I couldn’t. I was asked to share a video by the family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, but I couldn’t. I can also see the engagement on posts drops by 90% during the times I am banned.”


“Because I come from violence, I  refuse to post anything about violence specifically because I don’t want to trigger other victims of violence. But I have been unable to support the families of the hostages of all nationalities and take a stand for the Jewish community, and that’s frustrating.”


We have seen a silencing of Jewish voices on social media platforms. “I don’t understand how Jewish creators with massive platforms and followings have not been able to have a direct meeting with Mark Zuckerberg. There are hundreds of us who are being silenced, while at the same time we are receiving tons of horrific death threats and comments and those accounts are rarely found to be in violation. Hateful accounts aren’t being restricted from attacking us on our pages, but when we try to support each other, those helpful comments are being redacted. There should be congressional hearings into how Jewish voices have been censored, there should be class action lawsuits against Meta for silencing Jewish voices, which is basically a violation of the First Amendment.”


It's not all bad news, however. This time in history has resulted in an unprecedented unification of the global Jewish community. “We’ve all come together, it’s been so beautiful. I have met so many incredible people that I wouldn’t otherwise have met, and I am so grateful. For the thousands of people who unfollowed me, there were thousands more who did follow me and sent messages of support from Israel, Argentina, Brazil, India – all over the world. I’ve been getting so much love from people who are standing with Israel. Even many of my coaching clients have become deeply invested in the fate of the hostages.”


“Many people are scared to speak up. They are being myopic and focusing on the short term consequences and not looking at the long term pride and confidence that they would gain from using their voices. You can’t be confident in yourself if you’re silencing yourself or editing yourself. Self esteem is tied to your words and ability to speak your truth. Resilience comes through practice. If you don’t take a stand now for your children, what are you teaching them? The pro-terrorists that we see in our cities and on our campuses are using fear and intimidation to silence us, and we must learn as a community that we cannot allow ourselves to submit to fear or intimidation.”


As a rape survivor, Vivace’s triumph over trauma gives hope to those returning from Hamas captivity.


“When you have been raped your body becomes a crime scene. Your relationship with your body changes, your relationship with your sexuality changes, your relationship with hugging  people or being touched by people can change – even a little touch on the knew can create a hyper vigilant response.” She has reclaimed her life and has been able to move forward, even if she has never been able to return to who she was before. She knows that there is hope for the hostage upon their return as well.


“Talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it. It’s not your shame. Give the shame back to the perpetrators. Everyone’s healing journey will be different, but you can get to the other side. For anyone – it’s a long journey. Get help. Find a therapist who understands you and is helping you. Don’t give up on finding that right person. Ask every therapist what the biggest trauma they have transformed is. If that story moves you, then you have found your person. Always stand up for yourself, defend yourself, put your pride aside and get help. Always remember that if someone has done something to you the shame is theirs, not yours.”


We all wish that the hostages be returned quickly and safely, and that they all find healing as the begin their journey to recovery and returning to their lives.

 
 
 

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