Musing On The Cool

The biggest hasbarist you will meet
The biggest hasbarist you will ever meet

Hi to all Israellycoolers.

As I am new here, let me introduce myself and provide some background info. If you don’t want to read it all, I wont be offended but I may just <censored> 🙂

My name is Uri Gobey, I am 36 years old and was born in South Africa and yes I grew up there during the actual Apartheid as opposed to a non-existent Apartheid. I attended one of the best private Zionist Jewish schools in South Africa named Herzlia and when living in SA, I worked for the private Jewish security agency called CSO. I made Aliyah nearly 9 years ago and I am currently living in Yavne, which is within the mid-range rocket zone from Gaza.

I started my blog, Israel Muse, back in 2010 just before the Mavi Marmara incident took place. It’s purpose was to mainly be a central source to find information on various topics surrounding Israel (News, Technology, Medical, Agricultural etc etc) but after the Mavi Marmara incident occurred, it just pissed me off really badly, that I started posting more aggressively to the blog and started to focus on political issues instead. During that time I was featured in an Irish newspaper for actively engaging the creator of “The invasion of Jews in Middleton” page on Facebook.

At some point I started multiple campaigns to remove anti-Semitic material from Facebook and Youtube, which proved successful as I was working directly with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who at that time had a contact at Facebook that would instantly review and remove content the moment we sent it to them. This was during the time when the “Kill a Jew Day” events were being created on Facebook and I was using our contact at Facebook to remove these events as quickly as they came up. The creator of these events contacted me via Facebook chat as he was pissed at me for removing the events but didn’t believe that I had a contact at Facebook doing this, so I requested to call him on Skype. He accepted. Turned out that he was just some bored British kid who was doing it for “LOLZ” and that he had never met a Jew before but knew these things pissed us off. So to convince him that he was wasting his time creating these events, I told him to create one while on the Skype chat with me and then I would have it removed within 5 minutes. He did and it was removed and well the rest is history. He decided to start pissing off Muslims instead if I recall.

Then in 2011 Mr Aussie Dave hosted the International Pro-Israel Blog-off competition on his Israellycool site and attracted a handsome amount of creative Pro-Israel bloggers. I decided to enter it by posting the pictures of Gaza that made Gaza look completely normal in comparison to what the world media shows. I found those images some time before the competition and I believe I was the first to post such images as a part of Hasbara, so I thought what the hell. That post got me through to the next round but I then realised that now I need to write something and make it really good! So I wrote my first article for the competition which got me through to the next round, then again another article and then finally one more article to face off with one of the greatest Pro-Israel bloggers out there, Elder of Ziyon…(don’t worry Aussie Dave you are in my top choice of greatest bloggers out there too but you didn’t enter your own competition 🙂 ) To be honest, I was petrified to be up against him but I was confident that my articles would appeal to the public as much as Elder’s and Israellycool’s did and still do to this day. Well I did it, I managed to win the competition which I initially thought I wouldn’t pass the first round of and thanks to Honest Reporting, I received an iPad as a prize.

A few years later I ended up inviting Elder to give a talk in Herzlia at the same place I met Aussie Dave and Brian of London recently, for the Ryan Mervin Bellerose talk.

Fast forward to more recently, I then opened a new blog called IsraDocuMentalist, which is a site to find loads of documentaries and short clips surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian situation, Iran, Islam etc etc – this took off pretty well but is still growing.

I also run a private strategy group on Facebook which focuses on anti-Semitism in South Africa but we are slowly expanding to focus Internationally also. Our group, “Stop the JNF SA – Exposed”, was responsible for getting the BDS backed campaign known as “Stop The JNF SA” to back off from boycotting a Jewish owned toy franchise in South Africa. We decided to start Exposing them and all their affiliates such as BDS SA and MRN (Media Review Network)…so far doing very well… Another organization we work side by side with is called SpotLighting, the founder was responsible for the successful “Free Karabus” campaign which was related to the freeing of Prof. Cyril Karabus from the Abu Dhabi prison. I went to school with the Prof’s kids, so we did what we could to help him both behind the scenes and in public. Members of this private group are also involved each year in the countering of the Anonymous #Op_Israel hack attacks on Israeli websites. We specifically counter their false reports in real time so that the audience questions their reports immediately.

I have always been involved in one way or another in various places, whether online, offline, in public or behind the scenes but I do look forward to this new chapter with Israellycool. So thank you Aussie Dave for inviting me to your wonderful blog and I hope your readers enjoy what I have to offer 🙂

Here are a list of links:

http://www.israelmuse.com/
http://isradocu.blogspot.co.il/
https://www.facebook.com/StopTheStopTheJnfSouthAfricaOrg
https://www.facebook.com/IsraDocuMentalist
https://www.facebook.com/groups/israelmuseportal

1 thought on “Musing On The Cool”

  1. Ryan Bellerose

    awesome to see you on here Uri. I think networking is amazing and its some pro israel activists need to do more even though its already very effective. we have such a wealth of knowledge that we can access. it was awesome to meet you finally and I know I benefitted from the help of everyone. I hope people join Israel muse as its a great place for news from israel and about Israel.

    RJS- the talk was organised by a friend of mine Named Bat Zion, and unfortunately space was limited, i had no idea so many people wanted to come. I will be back soon and I will try to organise something and invite everyone. again, my apologies.

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