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Hayvi Bouzo works from the U.S., knowing she is considered a traitor by many in her home country.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Hayvi Bouzo is a Syrian journalist trying to promote peace between Israel and the Arab world by using her online platform, which is based in the U.S. because her views make her a traitor in the eyes of many in her home country.
The atrocities Hamas-led terrorists committed during their invasion of Israel last October 7 galvanized her to bring the Israeli side of the war to over three quarters of a million followers who watch her weekly podcasts on Yalla, a show she cofounded to “counteract the deep-seated rhetoric that incites violence, antisemitism, and hatred” in the Middle East, as she told The Jerusalem Post in a March interview.
Bouzo has interviewed many Israelis so far who lost relatives on October 7 as well as family members of hostages, such as Thomas Hand, the father of a nine-year-old, Emily, who spent some eight weeks in Hamas captivity before being freed among dozens of women and children in the only hostage deal to date, last November.
“I had to be composed with him during the broadcast,” she told Ynet in an interview published Saturday. “It’s not an Israeli audience that identifies with this terrible story. My job is to use the force of the story to convince my audience. They can hit me with thousands of horrific stories on the Palestinian side, but I know that my audience is also shocked by [these] stories.”
What comes across in the interview is that Bouzo feels a sense of mission.
“There are hundreds of TV channels in the Arab world, none of which present the Israeli side. There’s no mention of the hostages or their families,” she noted.
The story that most affected her, she said, was that of the kidnapping of Shiri and Yarden Bibas and their four-year-old Ariel and nine-month old, Kfir, the youngest hostages still in captivity. It is not known if any of them are still alive, and Bouzo said she “cried through the whole interview” with their cousin, Yifat Ziller.
“I thought of my own two children, Gino (11) and Talia (8),” she said. “I told my husband Hans that I couldn’t imagine how I’d keep it together if a disaster as horrific as that ever happened to us.”
She has received venomous messages in reaction to such podcasts, she said, but feels relatively safe in the U.S., while saying, “I live under the illusion that they don’t know exactly where I live or where my studio is.”
She knows she would have been dead “long ago” had she stayed in her home country. She and her family fled in 2012 after they received death threats following a Facebook post she wrote about a “horrific massacre” the regime carried out towards the beginning of the civil war in Syria, which
“started off with arresting children and carried on to chopping off hands and feet during interrogations,” she said.
In terms of Israel’s ongoing war, she expressed great satisfaction with how the Israelis have decimated Hezbollah, considering the amount of “blood on their hands” they have of citizens not only of Israel but also Lebanon and her own country as well, she said.
“I’m glad that you’re setting Lebanon ablaze to get rid of Hezbollah,” she said.
She believes the fight against Hamas is also just, framing it as a battle against terrorism that has affected Palestinians in Gaza no less than Jews in Israel.
“Assassinating a creature as evil as [Hamas head Yahya] Sinwar is an important step toward freeing the world of the threat of terrorism,” she said. “His bloody regime has caused the deaths of so many Israelis, and he’s also killed Palestinians – innocent people.
“His assassination conveys a message to anyone seeking to disseminate terror,” she continued. “The regime in Tehran is shaking in its boots and any terrorist organization is feeling the pressure right now. Sinwar’s assassination is a victory for justice and brings the world one step closer to a safer and freer world.”
Bouzo also believes that most Palestinians want peace with Israel but that “the initiative has to come from the Israeli side – talking about peace with the Palestinians and taking steps toward peace – because you’re the strong side.”
She is trying to do her part on her show, she said in her March interview.
“By bringing attention to shared histories and modern realities, Yalla fosters empathy and dialogue, striving for a future where humanization and mutual respect prevail between Israel and its Arab neighbors and amongst Jewish and Muslim communities worldwide,” she said.
English (US) ·