HonestReporting is proud to have hosted the Hasby Awards on the panoramic rooftop deck of our International Headquarters in the heart of Jerusalem.
Started by the active pro-Israel social media personality who goes by the pen-name and Twitter handle, “Elder of Ziyon,” the Hasby Awards honor and recognize some of Israel’s greatest activists who work tirelessly to defend Israel against lies and bias, and to share Israel’s real story.
“Hasby” is a play on the Hebrew word “Hasbara,” which is the phrase commonly used in Israeli parlance to describe the concept of public diplomacy.
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Notable attendees included four of the JTA’s top 25 most influential people on “Jewish Twitter”: Arsen Ostrovsky, Avi Mayer, William Daroff, and the IDF’s Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. We also hosted representatives from organizations such as NGO Monitor and StandWithUs.
We were pleased to welcome international law scholar and Northwestern University Professor Eugene Kontorovich, active social media influencers Brian of London from the Israellycool blog, terror attack survivor Kay Wilson, Jerusalem Post columnist Evelyn Gordon, spokesperson for the Jewish community of Hebron Yishai Fleisher, Israeli Greek Orthodox Priest and co-existence advocate Father Gabriel Naddaf, journalist and activist Yisrael Medad, and many more.
And of course, in attendance were HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams and the HonestReporting team.
William Daroff, Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington Office of The Jewish Federations of North America praised the event saying:
By hosting this event HonestReporting is really showing that we can move beyond the organizational lines and organizational limits by coming together as one Jewish social media community. That’s what I love about social media, it does make the world a smaller place and gives us the opportunity to work together.
During the evening we spent several hours as the #1 trending topic on Twitter out of Israel, showing just how powerful we can be when we all come together.
For more details on the proceedings and the winners, you can read a report in the Jerusalem Post as well viewing video footage from the event on the Elder of Ziyon blog.
Here are a few photos of the event: directly from our rooftop to your laptop.
(Click on the arrows to scroll through our photo gallery)
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