If you’ve followed me for a while, you might have noticed I’ve been quiet on Twitter and Bluesky over the past year. That’s unusual for me. I used to be very active, but things changed. I want to share why I stepped back and why I’m coming back now.
Why I Stepped Away
It all started on October 7th, 2023. I was still in Israel at the time, and I will never forget that day. We had just gotten back from a family vacation in Crete when the first image appeared on social media: a bus of slaughtered retirees in Sderot. I remember thinking, “This can’t be real.” The next few hours were a blur of doom-scrolling, frantically calling family members to make sure everyone was safe, and moving supplies into our home shelter. Then, it was back to more doom-scrolling, seeing more horrific images that are now etched into my brain forever.
That was the day Israel endured a vicious and horrific terror attack. So many were killed and kidnapped—women, babies, and the elderly. As if that wasn’t enough, much of the world on social media turned against Israel for simply defending itself. The hostility became personal a few months later when I was doxxed for expressing that a slide in a CVPR workshop talk, which mentioned a “Genocide in Gaza,” was offensive to me as an Israeli. My comment was level-headed and respectful. The response I got? Death threats in my DMs.
A Reality You Might Not Know
I was in shock. I couldn’t understand how so many people, including some I knew personally, were so misinformed and unwilling to consider another perspective. Maybe it’s hard to understand the Israeli side if you’ve never lived there. So let me share a bit of what it is like to grow up and live in Israel.
I was just a child, sleeping in my bed, when my parents rushed me into our “home shelter” and put a biohazard mask on me. Everyone was terrified of biological missile heads back then, so we had to tape all the windows in the house shut. I remember waking up, seeing my entire family in hazmat masks, and thinking I’d been abducted by aliens.
We had to carry those masks with us everywhere, especially to school and kindergarten. Can you imagine? “Honey, don’t forget your lunch and your hazmat mask.” We even tried to normalize it by decorating them. I remember being jealous of my sister’s mask box for having such great stickers. It became a strange kind of fashion statement.
When I was in junior high, in 2000, I remember the news showing a terrorist proudly waving his bloody hands from a window in Ramallah after he and others had brutally beaten two Israelis to death when they accidentally took a wrong turn. Later, in high school, suicide terrorists started blowing up buses. One of those buses exploded in my hometown, Hadera, right in front of the pizza place we all went to (Cassa De La Peppe). A classmate of mine saw it happen in real time.
It’s hard to understand that reality if you’ve never had to ask yourself if walking four miles is safer than taking the bus—and whether it’s worth the risk. It’s hard to understand if you’ve never headed out to a party just to arrive and see that everything was canceled because a terrorist attack had killed people two blocks away. It’s hard to understand if you’ve never visited a town where someone casually points to a house and says, “See that? That’s where a terrorist slaughtered a baby with an axe.”
Living through all of this, I eventually moved to the US because I decided that I don’t want my kids to grow up in this reality. To be honest, a part of me still feels bad about leaving because Israel has always been my home, and I couldn’t have imagined myself raising my kids anywhere else.
Today, it’s even harder to make the world see this reality that we have been living in—things that would never be accepted in any other country. It pains me to hear the chants of so many young Americans, “From the river to the sea.” Do they realize what that means? Do they understand it means slaughtering all of the people living in Israel? Do they know what an Intifada is? But despite all of this, I’m going to work hard so that my kids, my grandkids, or my great-grandkids can be proud to call Israel home again one day.
The Social Media Trap
This deeply personal context made my social media feed, which I once used for professional growth—to learn about new papers and hear from colleagues I respect—feel even more toxic and polarized. It was no longer a place for learning; it was filled with propaganda.
The problem, as I see it, is that people try to simplify complex situations so that only basic messages get through: there is right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, black and white. But the reality is so many shades of grey. The story is always more complicated, with history and agendas trying to steer the truth. To make it worse, social media algorithms often echo your own opinions instead of letting you see a balanced, bigger picture. To me, the only truth that should matter is that death and suffering are bad. Terrorists should be gone, and everything should be solved peacefully. It’s that simple.
Reacting to this, I at first tried to fight back. I wanted to share the truth, our side of the story. I felt like I was “fighting the good fight,” trying to make sure the world knew the truth about the terrorist organization we were up against. But I soon realized that the more I engaged, the deeper I was sucked into a wormhole of toxicity. For my own sanity, I had to stop. Not because I stopped believing in the cause, but because I knew that wasn’t the right way for me to fight for it.
The Turning Point
So, I stepped away from social media as much as I could, limiting my interactions to purely professional matters. I promised myself I would fully return only when the Israeli hostages were brought home and the war was over.
Yesterday, that happened. All of the living hostages came back home.
I spent most of the day doom-scrolling, just like I did on October 7th, but this time it was for the exact opposite reason. I couldn’t get enough of seeing the reunions, watching from every possible angle as families were made whole again.
Some of you might have noticed the broken heart emoji in my Twitter name. Today, I removed it. With the hostages home, my heart isn’t broken anymore, but it carries a big scar. That scar will fade with time, but it’s up to all of us to help it heal by making the world a better place through optimism and civility.
A New Mission
Now that they are back, I’m ready to continue my mission, but in a different way. My goal has always been to motivate and support PhD students in their quest to change the world, and that’s what I’m going to focus on. I will do my best to keep politics out of it and concentrate on what I can do to make the world and Israel a better place for all of us by broadcasting positivity.
To be honest, fighting the negativity on these platforms is exhausting. So, I’m going to get a little help from AI. From now on, any post you see with the hashtag #ItzikThoughLoop will be AI-generated (but, of course, reviewed and approved by me and prompted to adhere to my values and persona).
So, What Can We Do?
If my story has resonated with you, I want to ask you to join me in making a conscious effort to change the conversation. Let’s challenge ourselves to seek understanding before judgment and to embrace the complexity of the world instead of retreating into simple, black-and-white narratives. Let’s be the ones who champion civility, push back against the toxicity, and amplify voices of reason and compassion. We have the power to change the algorithm, one positive and thoughtful interaction at a time.
I hope you’ll join me on this new journey. Follow along and retweet if you feel inspired. Let’s make the world a better place, together.