In this conversation, Quillette’s Pamela Paresky speaks with Israeli entrepreneur and advocate Hillel Fuld in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attacks. Fuld, who lost his brother Ari to a terror attack in 2018, reflects on his personal experiences, the trauma of ongoing conflict, and his transition from a tech-focused career to full-time advocacy for Israel. The discussion explores widespread misconceptions about Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the role of social media in shaping narratives, and the moral and psychological challenges faced by Jews in Israel and around the world. Drawing on personal loss, religious tradition, and historical memory, Fuld speaks with urgency and passion about truth, unity, and resilience.

Pamela Paresky: I’m going to start by asking you to tell me what your experience was on October 7.

Hillel Fuld: So, it’s important to understand a little background, which is that I unfortunately lost my brother to terror five years ago. He was murdered by a sixteen-year-old Palestinian boy. So, unfortunately, I’m part of a club that I never asked to be part of, which is families that have lost loved ones in Israel. While, you know, terror is generally a pretty triggering thing for anyone, it’s a different level of triggering for someone who’s already experienced it. So, whenever there’s a terrorist attack, ever, I’m horribly triggered.

On October 7, I was in a synagogue. I didn’t have my phone on me. The siren went off in the middle of the prayers. We ran back to the bomb shelter. Then we went back to the synagogue and the siren went off again, so we went back to the shelter. We knew something was going on, but we didn’t think anything too extreme.

PP: You were in Jerusalem?

HF: I was in Bet Shemesh, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Then all the kids, and when I say “kids” I mean eighteen-year-olds, started to get called up to the army, and then we knew something was very wrong. But I didn’t have my phone, so I didn’t know the extent of it. There were rumours. One of the symptoms of trauma is selective amnesia or selective memory. After my brother was murdered, I don’t remember what I did the next day at all, and in a very weird way, I remember hearing the rumours about October 7, I remember springing into action with my Israel advocacy, but I do not remember the moment I found out. I literally do not remember the moment when I turned on my phone and discovered what had happened. I completely blocked it out. It’s wild. That’s trauma.

I didn’t think much the next day. I just jumped into action. I shut down my tech business and just jumped into Israel advocacy. I was a tech guy before, I mean, I’m still a tech guy, but before, I was focused on tech.

My audience is highly diverse, I would even say left-leaning, more liberal, because tech is a pretty liberal world. I’ve leveraged that audience who trusts me. Even though they might be anti-Israel, they’re listening to me. Mainly on Twitter, but on other platforms as well, I’ve surpassed half a billion impressions, which, to me, is the biggest sign that I need to be doing what I’m doing. Because I’m a one-man show. I just hired someone yesterday for the first time. I never scaled my operation. It’s just been me. I’m getting messages from people by the thousands saying to me, “You don’t understand, I did not know that’s what Zionism was, and you just completely blew my mind.” There are people who are a lost cause, for sure. I mean, people send me the most horrific messages on Twitter. There are definitely people who are a lost cause. But I believe that ninety percent of people, whether they might be anti-Israel, pro-Israel, or indifferent, have integrity. They’re willing to listen and that’s my target audience. So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing, just around the clock since October 7.

PP: What is it that you’re saying about Zionism that’s reaching people?

HF: People, first of all, fundamentally have to understand that truth is still a virtue. Don’t tell me to stop using critical thinking. Let’s look at facts. For better or for worse, Israel makes mistakes. We’re not perfect. But let’s look at facts. Don’t tell me things that have zero accuracy in history books. Don’t tell me things that have logical fallacies or completely illogical foundations. If A causes B, and you remove A, then B should no longer exist. So, if occupation causes terror, then there should not have been terror before the occupation. But there was. There was terror before the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1929, Arabs massacred Jews in Hebron. Why? What were they massacring Jews for? For the future occupation? So, all these things that people say and repeat over and over again, “We’re occupying Gaza,” how can you say that? There’s not one Jew in Gaza. Not one.

PP: Except hostages.

HF: Right. We even removed our dead. People don’t know that. We dug up our dead when we left in 2005. So, first and foremost, if we want to have a discussion, we have to agree that truth is the foundation of any discussion. If you’re not going to stick to the truth, then we can’t have a conversation.

When it comes to Zionism, I say: listen, “Zion” is a word. Zionism isn’t just a random couple of letters people put together. Zion is a thing. What’s Zion? It’s Jerusalem. That’s what Zion means. So, by saying that Zionism is racist, what you’re saying is you’re denying the Jewish people’s connection to their indigenous homeland, which they’ve always been connected with for thousands of years, and you’re doing it based on historical fabrications. I talk about the fact that Jews prayed to Zion for thousands of years three times a day. We longed for Zion. I once heard a story I really loved. A very big rabbi moved to Israel, and the students said to him, “What do you miss most from America?” and he looked at them and said, “The longing for Israel.” So you can’t tell me that, after thousands of years of praying and crying for Israel, from the depths of Auschwitz, I don’t have a right to this land. Debate? I have no problem with that. But don’t ignore history. Don’t make things up. That’s mostly my message.

PP: What’s the most common misconception you think that people have?

HF: Pre-October 7 or post-October 7?

PP: Let’s do both.

HF: Post-October 7, it’s that we’re committing genocide, because that was given legitimacy by the International Court of Justice. The people who believe that, oftentimes, there’s no talking to them. You can show them that the ratio between innocent and civilian deaths is the lowest it’s been in any war in decades maybe centuries. You can show what Israel does to avoid civilian casualties. You can show that Israel is losing hundreds of its own soldiers in order not to put Palestinians at risk. These are all facts. When a person says, “It’s genocide,” and I come at them with those facts. If they don’t accept reality, then there’s nothing to talk about.

Pre-October 7, it’s the claim that we oppress them. “75 years of oppression.” It’s like, what are you talking about? Apartheid? Really? How can you say that? Millions of Arabs live in Israel. Arabs are Supreme Court justices and members of parliament. They’re in every component of Israeli society. Apartheid?

On the one hand, it’s our job to debunk the lies. On the other hand, we have to know that we have finite resources and that if I’m spending time trying to convince someone on Twitter who just sent me a “Heil Hitler” tweet, I’m wasting my time. Instead, I should be doing something more effective.

But the list of misconceptions about Israel is never-ending. I’ve written tweets about this. Here are things that only can be said about Israel. It’s just endless. It’s a very clear, blatant double standard. Unfortunately, that’s something many Jewish influencers focus on in their social media, how it’s a double standard. I don’t think that’s effective at all. If the world hates us, then telling them that they hate us doesn’t make a difference. Focus on the good, and don’t focus on double standards and antisemitism. 

But yes, those are some misconceptions, among a list of a hundred.

PP: The claim of genocide predated October 7, so I think there was something about October 7 that brought things to the surface that were just sort of lying underneath. What have you noticed since October 7th that surprised you?

HF: The most fundamental thing was that on October 8th, I said to myself, “If I could find some silver lining, because I’m an optimistic guy I need to find some silver lining, it’s that at least now the world will stand with us.” Like, there’s no scenario, in my wildest dreams, in which the world denies October 7th. They live-streamed it in HD video. How could you deny that? I literally believed, in my naivety, that at least now the world is going to stand with us. A week later: gone. So that still shocks me to my core. It shocks me to my core how otherwise intelligent and otherwise moral people, truthfully good people, smart people, are so blinded by their Jew-hatred that they’re just, for lack of a better term, straight-up idiots. 

All the things they say make no sense. You know, there’s an investor in Silicon Valley and he’s widely regarded as one of the top investors in the world. His name is Paul Graham. He started Y Combinator. He’s a legend in the tech world, one of the smartest investors in the world. He is a blazing, flaming antisemite. What he says on Twitter is just lunacy. 

Someone just asked me, “What do you say to people who say that there are 25,000 dead civilians in Gaza?” What do you say? So I say, “First of all, where did you get that information from? Tell me, what is the source of your information?” It might take a minute, might take two minutes, but eventually, we understand that the source of that information is actually a terrorist organisation. You’re quoting figures from a terrorist organisation? But, let’s just say that it’s accurate. Well, let’s think about these numbers. Twenty-five thousand people dead. Innocents, right? We’re all innocent. Children, women right? Great. I accept that number. Just tell me: how many combatants? How many terrorists have we killed? Zero? Oh, well clearly, that’s inaccurate. So if Hamas says everyone’s innocent and we killed zero terrorists, then clearly those numbers are not in any way credible.

I go back and forth every day on social media. Am I just talking to myself? Is anybody even listening? I know that’s not the truth. I know there are people listening, because I get thousands of messages from people. It’s hard when the world keeps repeating a lie over and over and over again, just lies and lies and lies. You’ve seen these videos, they go over to protesters: “What river? What sea?” You know it’s absurd. And that phenomenon exists in no other conflict in the world. If you’re going to protest on the streets about something, you presumably know a little bit about that thing. Not here. So it’s a crazy, crazy, twisted, backwards world. And it is not easy to maintain moral clarity when everyone around you is morally bankrupt. So it’s our job to not let that into our soul, not let that seep in, because it’s just pure immorality.

Unfortunately, there are too many Jews that are anti-Israel and it’s crazy to see. Because we know, in history, when the Hitler of our generation, whoever that may be, is going to come after the Jews, they’re not going to be spared. They could side with the Hitler of our generation all they want, they’re not going to be spared. Just like the assimilated Jews in Germany weren’t spared.

So, you know, their thought process of “I’m going to be just like them” just doesn’t work. I mean, look at history books.

PP: There are a number of conspiracy theories about October 7th, some of them being propagated by Jews. Then, of course, we have the issue on college campuses in the US, where people being chosen for these committees are Jewish, but they’ve written and espoused anti-Israel views.

HF: We’re always the worst. We’re our own worst enemy. Always, throughout the generations. Again, we have to remember this isn’t a new phenomenon. Do you know what percentage of the Jews left Egypt? God brought the ten plagues on Egypt and brought the world’s leading empire to its knees. He blatantly revealed himself. You’d think 100 percent of the Jews would leave. They saw God. Twenty per cent left. Eighty per cent stayed behind. How is that possible? How is that possible? What was their narrative. What were they telling themselves? I’ll tell you what they were telling themselves: “I’m Egyptian. I was born in Egypt. My parents were born in Egypt. Don’t tell me about some fantasy of a land of milk and honey, walking through the desert. Leave me alone. I have a roof over my head and food on the table in Egypt. Leave me alone.” That’s what they told themselves. That’s what Jews are telling themselves today.

PP: Well, I’m certainly no Torah scholar, but I do remember one part of the Exodus, when the Israelites complained, “It was better in Egypt, at least we had meat.”

HF: Yes. This is what we do. We don’t see what’s right in front of our faces. There are so many stories that show this. I mean, the twelve spies, we sent in twelve spies, right? God said, “Go into the land. I’ve done everything for you. Go into the land.” But we insisted, “No, we need to send spies.” Fine, so twelve spies went in. Twelve leaders of the generation, twelve of the most important rabbis. Two came back and said, “Yes, it’s a beautiful land.” Ten came back and spoke badly about Israel. How could that be? We were punished for generations because they spoke ill of the land of Israel. That’s something I’d learned my whole life. But I’d never stopped to consider: what was their narrative? How could it be that ten of the leaders of the generation criticised Israel? Where’s the logic? 

I never had an answer to that question until a few months ago. I was eating dinner at a friend’s house. He’s a bit more Ultra-Orthodox than I am. He’s not anti-Zionist in any way, shape, or form, but he’s a little more ‘yeshivish,’ as we say. We were having dinner, and his wife, Zionism must have come up, I don’t remember exactly, looked at me and said, quite seriously, “You think all Jews belong in Israel?” I said, “Do you not read your prayers in the siddur every morning, where it says we’re going to come back to your city of Jerusalem?” We say it in our prayers every day. You study it. Of course every Jew belongs in Israel. What kind of question is that? Now, does that mean every Jew needs to pack up and move right now? No. But what we should know, as Jews, is that this is our home. And she says to me, “Yes, but Israel is a secular country, and my kids are very religious. If I bring them there, they’ll become less religious.” And then it hit me, something I’ve been taught my whole life. What was the narrative of those ten people, those ten rabbis? They’re like: “I’m in the desert right now. We have food from God, direct from God. We have clouds of glory around us. We have a direct line of communication. We are religious. I’m not going to go into Israel to build an economy, to build an army. Leave me alone. I’m religious. I’ll stay here in the desert.” Except God said to them, “Guys that’s not your job. Get into Israel.” And they said, “No, no, no, I’m going to stay religious.” We’re seeing that same narrative again. God says, “Get into Israel” and people respond, “No, no, I’ll stay in Boro Park. I’ll stay in Lakewood. I’ll stay religious. If I go to Israel, I’ll become less religious.” 

It’s the same narrative, repeated generation after generation. Every holiday we celebrate as Jews, it’s the same story. Near genocide. They tried to annihilate us and we won. But at the time, it was a horrible tragedy. Purim was a near-genocide of the Jewish people. It was horrific. And if I’d told you, at the time of Purim, that one day we’d celebrate it, you would have said, “You are the most insensitive person,” but here we are. 

We’re in a war right now and it’s devastating. It’s hard to see. But I think it’s our responsibility to take a step back, mourn our losses, cry, embrace the devastation, but also to recognise that we’ve been through this rodeo before, and we will dance again. That’s it. We will. We always do. It’s horrible. We will always cry for the people we’ve lost. We will always cry for the horrible tragedies we’ve endured. But we will dance again. We don’t see it, though. We never see it. We need to see it. We need to take a step back, open our eyes, and see what’s in front of our eyes.

This entire war, from beginning to end, is supernatural in a very real way. If I told you that 3,000 terrorists marched into a country smaller than New Jersey, with eight and a half hours of free hand and unlimited access to automatic weapons, how many people would you expect them to kill? 50,000? 100,000? 200,000? Not 1,200. Not 1,200. Now, I would never, God forbid, say that the atrocities they committed were a miracle. That would be a horrible thing to say. But had they not acted like animals, pardon my aggressive phrasing, had they not committed those atrocities, they would have taken over Israel. Israel would have been wiped off the map. So again, I could never say that was a miracle. But it could have been a lot worse. 

Some might say that’s a pretty controversial statement. So forget that. But let me ask you this. Try to step back. Imagine there’s no war, and you’re simply observing the reality. If I told you that 25,000, or whatever the actual number is, rockets were fired into a country that’s a speck on the map. Each rocket has the potential to kill, say ten people. Twenty-five thousand rockets. And they all fell in empty spaces? Are you serious? What empty spaces? Where are there empty spaces in this country? This is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. There are no empty spaces. Where are these rockets landing? I don’t know. It’s unbelievable. So you could look at it and say, “Yes, their GPS isn’t very great,” or you could say, “Look, God is like protecting us.” People say, “Oh yes, but there’s the Iron Dome.” Sure. The Iron Dome has 95 percent accuracy and it’s a system that intercepts rockets mid-air. That’s a miracle. That’s not a natural thing. That’s the clouds of glory. That’s the Iron Dome, it’s protecting us. It’s what we had in the desert. That is what the Iron Dome is. The inventor of the Iron Dome, Daniel Gold, told me. He went to the government with the idea. They said it was impossible. He went to the army. They said it was impossible. He went to the US government. Everyone told him it was impossible. And so he built it. These are miracles. But when we’re in it, we don’t see it. And that’s the story of our nation. We have to see it. We have to open our eyes.

The world has clouded our morality. We need to stand our ground and maintain our moral clarity. Look at things from an objective perspective and realise that we are a light unto the nations in a very real way, not in an abstract, voodoo kind of way. In a very real way. Cancer research? Israel leads the way. Natural disasters? Who’s first on the scene? Israel. You could go on for hours. We are a light unto the nations. How many Nobel Prizes have Jews won? You need to own light. The world is a very dark place. Our narrative should be light. We own light in the world.

HF: We’re living in this country debating with the world is it our country, is it not our country? You walk outside, you are walking in the footsteps of King David, in a real way. Not in a metaphorical way. Down the block is the road that people walked on pilgrimage to the Temple. You can see the road. You can see the footsteps. You say the words boker tov, “good morning,” and these are words from a language that existed thousands of years ago. There’s never been a language that was revived like Hebrew. I’m not saying that you can dismiss what the world believes, because you live in the world. But how do you debate that? When a person says, “This isn’t your country,” and you’re like, “Dude. This is my language, man. My great-grandfather walked here. What are you even talking about?”

It’s very frustrating. I’ve got to be honest. I’m torn every day. It’s like, should I even waste time? These guys are just nuts. There’s no logic, there’s no reason, there’s no truth. They don’t even view truth as a virtue anymore. I spoke to someone the other day, true story, I promise, not kidding, who told me that in his kid’s college, they wanted to put up a pro-Israel booth to give out material, and they said no, it’s too controversial. And in his kid’s class, there’s someone who identifies as a cat and they need to refer to him as a cat. True story. I promise. We’re living in a very backwards world where black is white, white is black, terrorists are freedom fighters. We live in the world, so we need to shield ourselves from this moral bankruptcy. There’s no other way to describe it.

PP: There are two narratives about Jews in Israel. There’s a counter to the indigeneity argument, and a counter to the legitimacy of the claim to the land. So, the one narrative is the narrative that it’s a lie and that Jews were never here, that the Temple wasn’t really a Jewish temple. This is the sort of thing that’s taught in UNRWA schools and to children through TV shows. We see the videos, if people look they can find the videos, teaching children that what Jews are doing is digging tunnels underneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to make it collapse. Not in order to find, you know, archaeological, interesting artefacts of the Jewish connection to the land from thousands of years ago. And then the other narrative is: “Okay, yes, but that was thousands of years ago, it’s meaningless now.” What are your thoughts about those two?

HF: So, like any argument, you need to know who you’re talking to. You need to know your audience. If your audience is willing to listen, we can talk about a lot of things. But if they’re coming at me and saying, “Jews never existed in this land,” is this a person you’re going to get through to? A person who says that, there’s that level of dishonesty, it’s just my word against yours. It’s like, “No, you weren’t here.” “Yes, we were.” “No, you weren’t.” We’re not going to get anywhere. If you don’t believe basic fundamentals of history and facts, what can I possibly say to you?

PP: Well, in that case, there are people, I mean, that isn’t necessarily an inability to deal with facts or truth. It’s an ignorance, because of being taught things that are false. So, if somebody is genuinely interested in why you think there is a legitimate claim other than in the Bible?

HF: That’s a pretty easy question to answer: 1948. You’re quoting to me all day long about how the UN passed fourteen resolutions against Israel in 2023, and the rest of the world only seven, which is absurd, but you’re quoting to me how we are occupiers and colonisers, right, because the UN said so. Okay, so we’re accepting the UN now? You accept the UN as an authority? Fine. The UN gave us a state in 1948. Leave me alone. That works for both of those narratives. 

And let’s go even further. They gave Arabs a state too. You want a state? You had it. In 1947, they gave a partition plan, they gave them a state. That’s it. They didn’t take it. They attacked. And what happened next? We won. And they attacked again and we won. They attacked again and we won. Does anybody say the Americans have to give America back? Forget thousands of years ago. 1948, we got a state. We were attacked multiple times. We won multiple times. We got land. We gave it away, in many instances, for peace. What do you want from me?

PP: Including Gaza.

HF: Yeah. So I’m saying, if you’re going to tell me that I have to give this land back, then go tell America they have to give their land back. The hypocrisy is staggering. It’s staggering. Have a little integrity. But when it comes to Israel, when it comes to the Jews, there is no integrity. The hatred runs so deep that it blinds people. The hatred just takes over. I’m unfortunately at the forefront of it. I mean, if you read any of the replies to my tweets, you wouldn’t believe it. 

You know what someone did to me yesterday? I met someone two days ago. You ever hear of the Twitter account called Libs of TikTok? I met her. I met her two days ago for breakfast. We took a nice picture. We were in the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv and I took a picture in front of the beautiful beach. An antisemite on Twitter yesterday photoshopped us out of the beach background and put us in the background of Gaza. Meaning rubble is behind us, destruction is behind us, and they said, “Look at these Jews smiling in front of Gaza.” This guy has a million followers. It went crazy, like hundreds of thousands of shares, millions of views. And, you know, someone reported it to Twitter, and Twitter said, “Everyone understands that it’s just parody.” Like, look at the replies. No one believes it’s parody. Twitter left it. They declined my report. It’s crazy.

So I’m at the forefront of the crazies. It reminds me very much of a dog with rabies. They’re just foaming at the mouth. Like, October 7th happened, boom. Our antisemitism can rise to the surface now. Before, we had to be ashamed. But now, even before Israel attacked, right, even before anything, somehow, on October 7th, we were massacred, and we’re the oppressor? Like, what? No logic. Because they’re foaming at the mouth. The hatred guides them. Right? It’s just, I don’t see anything other than hatred. I would love to engage every person, but there are some people, unfortunately, that you could say to them beyond any shadow of a doubt, “The sky is blue,” and they just will not believe you. So what are you going to do about it?

PP: In contrast to the genocide claims, the army has taken great pains, and has put their own people at risk, to avoid civilian casualties. One of the things I remember, I’m not a very observant Jew, but one of the things I remember is the idea that when your enemy is killed, you’re not supposed to celebrate.

HF: So interesting. I just wrote a post about this two days ago. It’s a broader phenomenon. I call it the “As a Jew” Jews, because when a Jew is self-hating or antisemitic, he starts the sentence with, “As a Jew.” You ever see these people? “As a Jew, we don’t celebrate.” And by the way, I hear what you’re saying, and I’ll address it in a second. But it’s a deeper thing of Jews always siding with the enemy. Always. Always. So when I post a thing on Facebook or wherever, about us eliminating a Hamas leader, I get a ton of “Yeah!” and there’s always one Jew, always, who comes and says, “No, it’s not our nature. It’s not our nature.” So I wrote a post to that, an extensive one, you can read it, and I went into the details of the issue. 

What you’re referring to is a commentary on the Torah that said when the Egyptians were drowning and the Jews started to sing, God said, “These are My creatures, my creations, drowning. What are you singing about?” That’s the common perception of that commentary. But it’s inaccurate. And I’ll tell you why it’s inaccurate, because the people who quote that literally start in the middle of a sentence. They forget the first part of the sentence. The first part of the sentence is that the angels in heaven wanted to sing. And God said to them, “What are you singing about? My creations are drowning and you’re singing?” He didn’t say that to the people. He said it to the angels. It’s black on white. The people, we sang on the sea. Not only did we sing, not only did God appreciate it, it’s become part of our daily prayers. In the morning, we sing that. It’s called Az Yashir, and it’s a prayer that was literally what they said on the sea. 

So not only is it okay. It’s encouraged. When evil is eliminated from the world, of course you celebrate. The world is safer. We have less risk. There’s no question about it. In fact, there is an actual verse in Proverbs that says, “When evil falls, you must rejoice.” Literally. So people often quote that, and to be truly fair those people come from a good place. I believe that. They come from a compassionate place. And the truth is, it’s not our nature to celebrate death. It’s really not. But when we celebrate the elimination of evil, we’re not celebrating death. We’re celebrating life. Those people are bringing death. We’re celebrating life. And so, you know, sometimes, oftentimes, unfortunately, Jews throughout history have been holier-than-thou. We’ve always had that tendency. And again, I get these messages every time I post about a Hamas leader, one or two Jews will inevitably come at me saying, “You’re acting like them.” That’s the line: “We’re lowering ourselves to their level. You shouldn’t celebrate death.” Let me tell you what celebrating death actually looks like. On 7 October, during the festival, one of the survivors said he played dead, just lay there pretending, and he heard what was happening. As they carried out those atrocities, they were laughing. That is celebrating death. Us celebrating when a Hamas leader is eliminated? We’re not celebrating death. We’re celebrating life. It’s a very fine line, but it’s also a fundamental difference. Does that answer your question?

PP: It does, and there’s also a difference between celebrating the elimination of evil Hamas terrorists and celebrating innocents being killed. That, I think, is a distinction that often gets missed. I do recognise the deep pain involved in what’s referred to in war as “collateral damage.”

HF: That’s a very important point you just made. I think people like to throw out numbers, babies, women, journalists. But how many women and children were killed in Germany when the world de-Nazified Germany? No one asked that question. How many civilians were killed in Afghanistan or Iraq? Nobody asks that either. Only when it comes to the Jews do they ask that question. Innocent people die in war. It’s horribly tragic. But war is never something we’ve wanted. This war was forced upon us, and it is very sad, and we are going to extraordinary lengths, one might say too far, to minimise civilian deaths. We are putting our own children at risk. There’s no reason an IDF soldier should go into Gaza on foot, other than to reduce civilian casualties on the other side. Otherwise, we would bomb from the air. So we’re putting our own people at risk in order to minimise risk for our enemies. We can debate whether we should, but it comes from a place of morality. 

So, if you’re going to tell me that thousands of innocent people have died, first, tell me how many innocent people died in other wars and if you can’t do that, then you’re applying a double standard. More importantly, tell me your source. If you say 25,000 people died in Gaza, fine, I’ll accept that. But tell me where that figure comes from, because there’s no source for it besides Hamas. So if you’re a rational, logical, moral person in the Western world, and you’re quoting a terrorist organisation, then something is very wrong with you. Furthermore, tell me how many terrorists were eliminated. Zero? I don’t think I need to explain how ridiculous that sounds.

So, the world can say what it wants, and we are doing what we can to minimise civilian deaths. But we can’t do more than we need to do. We need to win this war. Civilians die in war. It’s tragic, but that’s the reality of war.

PP: There’s a saying I hear a lot from Golda Meir.

HF: “If the Arabs put down their weapons, there will be no more war. If the Jews put down their weapons, there’d be no Israel.” It’s 100 percent true. In fact, someone said something similar the other day: if the Arabs can survive by simply not killing Jews, and the Jews can survive only because they have a defence system, then the Jews aren’t committing genocide, they’re committing genocide on the Jews. All the Arabs have to do is put down their weapons. That’s it. You want a state? We’ve offered you a state fifty times, and you keep rejecting it. You want a state, take a state. Stop attacking. Stop the violence. Stop the incitement. So, if one group incites, murders, terrorises, rapes, and beheads and the other side, the recipient of these atrocities, fights back, who is committing genocide? This is another example of a fundamental falsehood that doesn’t require rocket science to see. It’s right there, in high-definition footage. And yet, the world believes what it believes.

Again, I’m torn. Every day it’s like: do I fight this fight? Don’t fight this fight? They’re not listening. They aren’t listening. Because the world, they’ve just lost their compass. Their moral compass is broken. It’s tragic.

PP: What do you think that’s about?

HF: It’s a good question. I think the answer is that history repeats itself. In Nazi Germany, what they did, from their perspective, was the epitome of morality. Saving the human race, as far as they were concerned. We look back and say, how could you think that was moral? We’re going to look back at our Western civilisation and say, how on Earth did we think that was normal?

I play this scenario in my head often. After 120 years, hopefully, I meet God, and we start talking, and He says to me, “Look at the world. Does that make sense to you?” And I look at my world from Heaven, and I’m like, “Wow. We are one messed up species. Like, what on Earth?”

A comedian has a thing about that. He says God gave us the world, and you go up to God and God’s like, “What did you do to your world? What is that?” And the guy’s like, “It’s oil.” God says, “What do you need oil for?” “I need to go faster.” “Where do you have to go faster?” “I have to have a job.” “What do you need a job for?” “Food.” “I gave you food. There are fruits and vegetables. Eat them.” It’s a joke, but the reality is we’ve taken not only the physical, materialistic world but the moral world, and we’ve just done a 180-degree turn away from any logic or morality. It’s just like, how? How do you believe that? Do you really believe that? I mean, it’s one thing to have social and cultural challenges. It’s another thing to glorify them. We’ve taken things that, for billions of years, were considered deviations from normal society, and now in Western society, in the last thirty seconds, we’ve decided that morality is different. But is it? 

Some things are advancements. Some things are good. Don’t misunderstand me. Women’s rights, women didn’t have rights for zillions of years. Now they do, and that’s fantastic. But something in human nature is that we go too far. We go too far, and we turn immorality into morality. We justify everything because it fits our agenda. To me, it’s scary. It really is scary. There’s no moral direction anymore. It’s just, yeah, anything goes. Anything goes. I heard a therapist, a professional, literally say, “We need to stop calling them paedophiles and call them ‘minor-attracted adults.’” Literally giving a term to justify paedophilia. I really believed the world was going to be like, “How could the world stand behind paedophiles? There’s no way that’s going to happen.” And here we are. The world is standing with paedophiles and rapists. How did we get here? We got here because, for the past five decades in Western civilisation, we were told, “Do not use your brain. Don’t tell me that what you see is truth. It’s not. I’m going to tell you what’s truth.” We were told to stop using critical thinking, and we have. And now we’ve lost our minds. 

PP: Who told us all that? 

HF: Woke culture. My dad says, “People have such open minds that their brains fell out.” A rabbi once said something fascinating to me. You know, there were two temples. And on Tisha B’Av, one of the saddest days of the Jewish calendar, we commemorate the destruction of those temples. We talk about the baseless hatred that was among the Jewish nation, and that’s what led to the destruction of the Temple. And the rabbi said: 

“Only one of the temples was destroyed because of baseless hatred. The other temple was destroyed because of idolatry, murder and promiscuous relationships. We’re not guilty of baseless hatred today. Yes, there’s a lot of hatred among Jews, but it’s not baseless. Today, we’re actually doing what the second Temple was destroyed for. We’ve taken all the isms, liberalism, feminism, wokeism, some of them are legitimate and good things. Feminism is a great thing. But we’ve turned them into a religion, and it’s become modern-day idolatry. Not only is no one addressing them, but you can’t even talk about them without being cancelled. It’s a very scary world out there.” 

People have tried to cancel me, from Muslims on X to people who are jealous. There are a lot of very small people out there.

But our job, and when I say ‘our,’ I mean logical, rational people in the Western world, is to fight very hard to not let it seep in. It’s not easy because you’re surrounded by it. And it’s our moral responsibility to maintain our moral clarity. Because if we don’t, we’re the last frontier. And if we lose, then that’s it. There’s no morality.

PP: Yeah, you know, when you call it murder, we’ve called cancel culture ‘social murder,’ right? And people are afraid of that. And because they’re afraid of that, they don’t speak up for things they know to be true and right and morally good. Why do you have the courage to do that? Why are you doing that instead of working on your tech business, which I’m sure is lucrative?

HF: That’s a great question. Not only am I doing this and not working on my tech business, but I’m on no one’s payroll. I have no income. Literally. I’m like, “This is what I need to be doing right now.” God’s been good, and people have supported me, and it’s okay. But I don’t feel like I have a choice. To give an analogy from my old world, the tech world: if you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t have a choice. You can’t work a 9-to-5 day. You have entrepreneurship in your veins. It’s in your DNA. You have to build. I can’t not do this. This is who I am. This is what I believe. 

I don’t view myself as a hero. I’m just speaking truth, and I don’t feel like I have a choice. In a very real way, I feel like everything I’ve done until now has brought me to this moment, this stage that I’ve built. I feel like I’m channelling my late brother. I don’t have a choice. I need to be doing this. In a very real way, it’s impacting millions of lives. I’m getting messages from people on every continent saying to me, “You literally changed my mind,” or “I lit Shabbat candles because of you for the first time.” I never said a word to this person. I don’t even know them. They just see my posts. I talk a lot about Judaism. I own my Judaism. And it inspires people. People are hungry for light. They really are. We don’t realise this, but it’s a very dark world, and that darkness manifests somewhere very specific: in our social media feeds. People are hungry for light. Some people don’t realise they are, but everyone’s hungry for it. If we can be that source of light for them, we win. You just have to know how to communicate that source of light.

PP: Can we talk about your brother?

HF: Sure.

PP: Tell me about your brother.

HF: So, I’m one of five boys. Ari was one above me, so we grew up together, basically. He was a very passionate human being, about everything. He came to Israel by himself, just picked up and came here. Volunteered for the army, climbed the ranks. Then he volunteered for reserve duty and climbed those ranks too. He got his exemption papers, ripped them up, and continued to volunteer. He was a fourth-degree black belt. He was a big dude. He was online 24 hours a day defending Israel, literally, all day, every day.

PP: When you say “online,” what do you mean?

HF: On social media. Just fighting with antisemites and being Israel’s biggest advocate. He was a very outspoken advocate for Israel. His wife and kids live outside Jerusalem, in Efrat. He was shopping for his family the day before Yom Kippur, and a sixteen-year-old Palestinian kid came from behind and stabbed him in the main artery. He was basically dead immediately, no blood in his veins. But somehow, miraculously, and I mean that literally, he was able to chase down the terrorist, jump over a wall, and shoot him. The terrorist was inches away from his next victim, a woman named Hila, who has a falafel stand. She’d just given him a falafel five minutes earlier, not knowing he was a terrorist, obviously. She was going to be his next victim. Ari shot him and saved her life. She’s become a part of our family since, obviously. He received an award from the State of Israel as a national hero because in his last breath, he saved someone’s life. 

He was very outspoken online, had many followers. But the truth about him only came out after he was gone, that he impacted millions of lives. Literally, millions of lives. From his phone. I get messages from people you wouldn’t even believe. A woman wrote to me, I kid you not, from a village in Africa. He’d obviously impacted her. She wrote, “Get me out of here.” I was like, “What?” She said, “Your brother promised to get me out of here.” I don’t know what happened in that conversation, but he clearly touched her life. The stories haven’t stopped. It’s been five years, and they keep coming. People say to me, “I moved to Israel because of your brother,” “I’m religious because of your brother,” “I converted because of your brother.” Literally. 

He left many legacies, but I would say the biggest one is this: every person has the ability to impact millions of lives. Every person. Especially if you have a keyboard, you have the ability to change the world in a very real way. Not in a Tony Robbins kind of way, but in a real way. Not like, “Oh, I’m being an inspiring motivational speaker.” No, you genuinely have the ability to change the world. And he capitalised on that ability in a very real way. He lived and breathed the Jewish people, the Jewish state, the Jewish Torah. That was his life. 

His name was Ari. Ari means “lion.” So he’s become known as the “Lion of Zion.” That’s his thing. His brand. Someone even made a logo. He has thousands of videos on the internet. People still watch them. He really made a difference in this world. In 46 years, he made a difference.

One of the many lessons I take away is, someone once made a joke: if you think you’re only one person and can’t make a difference, try going to sleep in a room with a mosquito. You’ll see. One small thing, and you can’t sleep. Every person, if they capitalise on their abilities can make a difference. People often think, “I’m in my echo chamber, it’s not worth bothering,” but that’s just not true. That’s what he taught me.

It was a horrible, horrible day, that Sunday morning.

PP: What year was that?

HF: Five years ago. So, we’re in 2024 now, right? So probably 2018.
His wife is a hero, unprecedented. She’s basically become an activist for Israel. Amazing kids. And he left a big legacy. My parents came here as hardcore Zionists. They gave up their cushy life in America, and never in a million years did they think they’d lose a son to terror. They’re obviously devastated, but they’re also heroes. They’re unbelievable, my parents. We were dragged into a club we never wanted to join.

PP: And you stepped into his legacy, right?

HF: I didn’t before the war, but now I have, yes. And, you know, I’m not prepared to make any announcements or declarations, but I don’t see myself going back to tech. People ask, “Are you going back to tech?” I’m like “Maybe, maybe not.” But I don’t see myself going back to tech. In terms of meaning, I just feel that what I’m doing now is what I need to be doing.

I had this conversation with one of my employees the other day. A couple of weeks ago, we read the portion about Joseph, how his brothers sold him into slavery, he went to Egypt, solved dreams, became a dream-solver. We know Joseph, as a young man, had a big ego. He had dreams about everyone bowing down to him. The commentaries say he used to play with his hair constantly. He was an egomaniac. But when he got to Egypt and interpreted dreams, the Pharaoh said, “Wow, Joseph, you’re amazing,” and Joseph responded, “It’s not me. God’s giving me this ability.”

In a very real way, what’s happening with me on the internet today feels miraculous. I don’t know where these ideas I have come from. I said to my employee yesterday, I send him content, he designs it or edits it, and I said, “The stuff I send you just lands in my brain. I don’t know where it comes from. God is just giving me content every day.” Every day for five years, I’ve written a Torah insight on the weekly portion, with a lesson for leadership. I’ve done more than four complete cycles, every week, every Friday, for five years, all of it just landed in my head. It’s really crazy. I’m not trying to be falsely modest. It genuinely isn’t me. God just plants these things in my head. So, I’m producing a huge amount of content during this war. 

PP: From one perspective, that might sound like false modesty, but from another, it might sound grandiose, like I think I have a direct line to God. 

HF: But what I mean is: where are these ideas coming from? The other day, for example, I made a list of things that would be non-controversial in a normal world, but are controversial today. I titled it, Put the anti-Israel crowd into cardiac arrest. Things like: babies should not be kidnapped. How can that be controversial? Or: all women should be believed, remember, that was the slogan thirty seconds ago. But now it’s Jews being raped, and suddenly not all women are to be believed.

So, I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t mean it in a grandiose way. I just mean that these ideas pop into my head daily, and I don’t know their source.

PP: Is there a Jewish concept of people on Earth being able to connect with people who have passed away? Could your brother be giving you messages?

HF: Okay, disclaimer, I don’t know, I’m not an expert on this. There are different layers to Judaism, and that’s part of the secret, mystical layer. But I do believe there’s such a concept. We know the Torah often attributes human qualities to God. It talks about His nose. Obviously, God doesn’t have a nose, right? So, there’s some kind of human experience or expression up there. Again, I don’t know how it manifests, but I feel like I’m channelling Ari on a daily basis 100 percent. Where exactly that concept comes from in Judaism, I don’t know.

PP: If Ari were here, if I were interviewing him, what do you think he’d say about what’s happening now?

HF: He’d probably be a lot less polished, a lot less politically correct. I think he would probably say, “We need to flatten Gaza.” Again, we’re not going to get into the full debate, but the question of whether we should be sending in our children is a real one. I don’t know of any other war in which a country sends aid to an enemy state. That doesn’t exist in history. I’m not saying, God forbid, that we should kill innocent people, and I don’t think Ari would have said that either. But he would have said our lives, and our children’s lives, are more important than those of people who attacked us on 7 October and massacred our children. I’m sorry this is happening to you, but you brought this on yourselves. Yes, we’ll do everything we can to minimise civilian deaths, but we won’t put our own children in danger to do so. That’s just not how war works. He’d probably have been a little more militant than I am. And again, I’m not saying I disagree, or anything like that. I would never say the words “flatten Gaza.” And neither would he have, by the way, but he would have been very upset with the government and the IDF for doing what we’re doing right now. The world is saying we’re doing what they accuse us of, genocide or ethnic cleansing, and yet we’re putting our kids in danger. A part of me is like, you know what? We have the Air Force. Yes, we should use precision to avoid killing innocent people, and if we see a child walking near a terrorist, then absolutely do not open fire. But we should be using the Air Force more and relying less on ground troops.

Yes, there’s the issue of the hostages, and it’s not that simple. I’m oversimplifying, but you know, the line between morality and immorality is very thin. And sending people, children, into harm’s way, is that moral simply because you want to save your enemy? I don’t know. 

I wouldn’t want to be in Netanyahu’s shoes right now. It’s incredibly difficult. You have the hostages’ families saying that’s the top priority. I can’t pretend to understand what someone in that position is going through. I can’t even imagine the pressure he’s under. But from where I’m sitting, the State of Israel has defined two war objectives that are mutually exclusive. You can’t achieve both. Either you get your hostages back by negotiating with Hamas, or you destroy Hamas and kill the hostages. You can’t do both. You just can’t. If you’re set on destroying Hamas, they will kill your hostages. And if you’re retrieving your hostages, that means negotiating with Hamas. So, the objectives of destroying Hamas and recovering the hostages are mutually exclusive, which is typical Israel. You know, it’s like, “Oh, let’s just throw out objectives.” Think about what you’re saying. It doesn’t make any sense. 

Yes, there’s obviously a lot of anger and disappointment in the government and everything, and that’s a discussion that will have to happen the day after. It’s a very important discussion. We still don’t know how all of this happened. But for now, the Jewish people are united like never before. The last time we were this united was at Mount Sinai. Literally, at Mount Sinai. We know that 600,000 men stood there and received the Torah. And the Torah says they stood there, it says the actual verse in the Torah, not in the commentary, it says they “parked” at the bottom of the mountain. But it uses the word “park” in the singular. It should have said they all parked, 600,000 men. Why is it singular? The commentaries say they were like one heart, one man with one heart. They were completely unified. That’s what the commentaries say, 600,000 men, unified. If you think about it, 300,000 people were recruited to the reserves in Israel, and 300,000 Jews marched in Washington. That’s 600,000 Jews, unified. We’ve never seen unity like this, real unity. We have a responsibility to maintain that unity. And it’s horribly tragic that it took Hamas doing what they did for us to gain this unity. But the worst thing that could happen is for us to lose that unity once the war ends. We must ensure that doesn’t happen. There was a lot of hatred before, you know, the judicial reform, there was a lot of hatred. No pluralism, no acceptance. Just, “You’re wrong, and I’m right,” on both sides. That must not repeat itself. 

And by the way, to be very clear, I would never, ever, ever, God forbid, say that someone deserved for something to happen, that’s a horrific notion. And when rabbis say that about the Holocaust that it happened for some reason, I think, “You’re ridiculous. You don’t know how God works, so stop pretending you do.” 

Trying to phrase this diplomatically, if I were God, and I looked down at my creation, the Earth, the world, and I saw my children not letting each other pray on Yom Kippur in the streets, and just all this horrible, horrible hatred, I’d be very upset. What are you doing? I gave you everything. Just get along. I’d be very upset. And, you know, the analogy I tell myself, which is a very childish, oversimplified analogy, but I believe it to be true, is this: when I take my infant to the doctor to get a shot, he looks at me and says, “Dad, what are you doing? You’re stabbing me with a needle. What kind of father stabs his child with a needle?” We, as adults, understand that he needs that shot. But to him, no matter how much you try to explain it, from his perspective, you’re a terrible father or mother. I don’t know why we needed this shot. I don’t know. But I do know that God is good. I know that God loves us, and I know that God does what’s best. How can I possibly say that 7 October is what’s best? I can’t. Because it’s a shot. I don’t understand it at all. It seems horrific, immoral. How could you do this to me? But we’re infants who don’t get it because we don’t have the capacity to get it. It’s beyond our finite mental abilities to comprehend God, who is infinite. 

So I remind myself constantly: I don’t know why this had to happen, but somehow, one day, we will understand. Not to say, and I want to be very clear, not to say that the Holocaust happened so we could have the State of Israel. God forbid, I would never say that. But the State of Israel did happen because of the Holocaust. I’m not saying the Holocaust was justified or good or anything like that. But, you know, I don’t know if we would have the State of Israel without it.

PP: Well, I mean, it was already conceived of through international agreements before the Holocaust.

HF: Oh, really?

PP: Yes, like the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

HF: Yes, but it wasn’t a practical political movement, right. Anyway, my point is, I’m not, God forbid, connecting the two. I’m just saying that I believe, this is my belief system, my faith, that God is good. And it’s very hard for us to see beyond our tiny little cubicle. We’re just little. What do we know? We can’t understand these things. It hurts when we lose someone. It hurts. But I can only repeat something someone once told me. I have a terrible memory, but I remember this vividly. A friend of mine’s uncle died in one of the wars. Every year, on the anniversary of his death, the family would go to the cemetery. I went with them, he was a very close friend. The mother gave a speech and said, “God wants the righteous ones by His side.” You know, it’s not a coincidence that every time you lose someone, somehow that person was an angel, right? So when we lose these soldiers, I mean, it’s unbearable pain. Unbearable. But I have to tell myself there’s a reason this happened. I have to for my own sanity. I’m not preaching to anyone else. People can believe whatever they want. But for me, I have to believe there’s a bigger plan. 

Do you know the famous story about the man on the roof during a flood? There’s a big flood. A man climbs onto his roof. People are leaving in boats. He stays and says, “God will save me.” A boat comes and says, “Dude, get on.” He says, “God’s going to save me.” Then a helicopter comes and the pilot says “Get in.” He refuses and says “God’s going to save me.” The water rises, he drowns. He goes to heaven and says, “God, I had faith in you. Why did you let me die?” And God says, “What do you mean? I sent you a boat. I sent you a helicopter. Why didn’t you get on?” So God’s saying, “I’ve sent you the Iron Dome. I’ve sent you 20,000 rockets falling in empty places. I’ve sent you these crazed terrorists who couldn’t even carry out what they planned because of their own savagery. I sent you these signs. Open your eyes.” But we don’t see it. It’s hard. And I don’t mean that in a judgemental way. How can you see clearly when you’re deep in sorrow and devastation? You can’t. But we have to. We must take a step back. We must look at our history.

PP: You’re actually making me think of the golden calf. 

HF: It really is unbelievable. After everything God did for them, everything, the ten plagues, everything. Ten seconds without Moses, and they bow to a golden calf. How is that possible? Because that’s our nature. 

I love my nation, but we’re a really dumb nation. We make the same mistakes over and over. It doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes sense. This war doesn’t make sense, from beginning to end. And I’m reminded of this week’s Torah portion: God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. There’s no way that intelligent, rational people truly believe the things they’re saying about Israel. God has hardened their hearts to hate. Why? Maybe it’s to reveal Himself, like He did in Egypt. I don’t know. But there’s no other way to explain it. You cannot understand what's happening right now through a human, rational lens. You just can’t. You’ll lose your mind. None of it makes any sense.

PP: Do you think it’s to unify Jews?

HF: Maybe. I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. I don’t know God’s ways. That’s clearly something that has happened. God could have unified Jews another way, without this horrific whatever. But I don’t know the answer. I just know, or I believe, that God is good and wants what’s best for us. And you know what? There are verses in the Bible where God says, “I am with you,” the Jewish people. “When you’re in sorrow and pain, I am there with you.” And I believe God is feeling the pain just as we are. He is here with us. I don’t know why He’s not removing the pain. I don’t know. I ask Him every morning. Every morning I pray and say, “What are you doing? We’ve unified. We’re giving tzedakah (charity). We’re praying, people who have never prayed before in their lives. What more do You want from us? What are You waiting for? It’s time.” I don’t know. I don’t know what He’s waiting for. But hopefully, it will happen soon.

PP: Thank you very much.

HF: We will dance again. 

PP: We will dance again.

HF: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.