Video chat with 'Israel loves Iran' founder: Can Facebook meme end nuclear standoff?
| Boston
Last year, when talk about war with Iran was particularly loud, a graphic designer in Israel had a simple idea. Ronny Edry decided to make a poster of himself, holding his little girl, who was holding the Israeli flag. He put the words 鈥淚ranians we will never bomb your country. We [heart] you鈥� on it, and posted it on Facebook.
This one act blossomed into a social media sensation, with聽Iranians responding with their own 鈥淚ran loves Israel鈥� images. Edry's page, "," has more than 115,000 "likes" and more than 1.3 million people have viewed Mr. Edry's . His effort has spawned offshoot Facebook pages such as 鈥� and 鈥�.鈥� Recently, the Monitor's Pat Murphy spoke via Google+hangout with Edry, who was at his home in Tel Aviv. While the video's short introduction is a bit clouded by background noise, you can hear Edry very well in this 7-minute interview. Here are some typed excerpts from the video, which can be viewed below.
On whether something as simple as love can impact something as complex as nuclear talks with Iran:
"One of the basics鈥f going to war is trying to dehumanize the enemy鈥o it鈥檚 easy to destroy, it鈥檚 easy to kill. Sometimes you have to remember that even on the other side, we鈥檙e dealing with people, with human beings. You know, they were babies at one point in their life. And maybe sometimes love can defuse the situation.鈥澛�
On why communicating through images can be helpful:
We live "in an era of images....The idea as a graphic designer is to make new images and to try to convince you there are other [positive] images of the Middle East. Not just the ones you see every day on the news. It鈥檚 quite a simple idea."
On how a social media campaign can affect talks with Iran聽鈥� i.e., the real world:
"I don鈥檛 know if we are actually changing things, you know, here and now, but we are [changing] minds. The fact that it鈥檚 happening on the Internet is no different [than] if it was happening on the street.鈥澛�
On how average people can help further his effort:
"The best thing to do is just to , and to comment on the post. The whole idea of that page is to give a voice to the people....Find somebody on the page you like, somebody who is not from your country" and friend them and get to know them. Someone from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, "all those places that you just know from the news."
