Llilaq Logan in front of Iron Dome battery. (Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Office)
Prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and terror attack in Israel, 25-year-old Lilaq Logan had no plans to become a social media influencer. Frustrated with the media bias against Israel in the weeks following the war, she posted a video on social media that went viral.
“I was speaking out of frustration, saying that this is not a reality that we should be getting used to,” Logan told The Jerusalem Post about her post.
“Most people who started doing online hasbara [public diplomacy] are people who saw videos that were far from the truth and were so frustrated with it that they had to go out and debunk it in a way,” she assessed.
Logan now regularly posts pro-Israel videos to her 75,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok, but she is no mainstream Israel advocate.
As a member of the African Hebrew Israelite community, a group of approximately 3,000 African-Americans who reside in the southern Israeli city of Dimona, Logan says she feels strongly connected to the wider Israeli society.
The group which arrived in Israel in the 1960s, has struggled for decades with Israeli authorities to be officially recognized as part of the Jewish people. In addition, members of the African Hebrew Israelite community have faced police violence and threats of deportation. However, Logan said has personally not felt discriminated against.
“I live here, and this is a part of me,” she said. “I’m not doing anyone any favors,” she added. “I don’t think that I’m standing up for anything. I just think that I’m doing my duty as a person who was born and raised here.”
“I get a lot of messages saying, ‘Thank you for standing up for us,’ and ‘I’m like, I am you. I’m part of you,’” she added.
While Logan is openly pro-Israel, she stresses the need to make the Middle Eastern debate less toxic and respect the lives of all individuals, regardless of their background.
“We can be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine and stand up for our people by any means necessary without wanting the deaths of other people.”
Logan believes that there is widespread ignorance about the Jewish state that predates Oct. 7.
“I feel that the majority of the people didn’t even know where Israel was on the map before this war,” she shared. “If we were dealing with people who had the ability of understanding and wanting to learn and understand the truth, it would be different. All we can do is try to get our truth across in the best way we know how to.”
Israel has been struggling for years with a media bias that tends to judge it by a harsher standard than other countries, which has affected the younger population on social media.
In December, more than two-thirds (67%) of young Americans aged 18-24 embraced the narrative that presented Jews as “oppressors,” according to the Harvard University poll. Of those surveyed, 51% of the young respondents reportedly responded that the solution to the current conflict is for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
