While Arab media networks continue flooding their airwaves with anti-Israel incitement, one clear, fearless voice has been cutting through the noise, speaking their language, literally.
Nail Zoabi, a former school principal from northern Israel who led his school for over two decades, has become one of the most prominent and unlikely figures in Israel's public diplomacy effort since the war began. Since October 7, he has given more than 800 interviews to Arab media outlets across the region, appearing repeatedly before hostile interviewers without flinching, delivering a direct and unfiltered message about Israel's right and obligation to defend itself.
In a new clip now spreading across Arab social networks, Zoabi dispenses with diplomatic niceties entirely. "It's time for the Arab world to know who the real enemy is," he says flatly. "Israel doesn't want to be in Lebanon, not in Syria, not in Yemen. Israel wants to be within its borders and protect its citizens, and that is exactly what it is obligated to do."
He then pivots to what he describes as the true source of the Middle East's destruction: Iran. "The real enemy of the Arab states is Iran," he says in fluent Arabic. "Iran is present in Arab capitals and conquering them. It is in Beirut. It is in Damascus, where it destroyed Syria and divided it into twenty pieces. It is in Yemen and in Iraq. Iran is the one that does not want the sovereignty of Arab states."
He closes with a statement of Israeli intent: "Israel wants peace, and I say this with complete confidence. We want to live in the Middle East in full security and peace for all citizens of the region, Jews and Arabs alike."
Zoabi's significance is not only in what he says but in who he is. An Arab Israeli speaking in Arabic to Arab audiences, from inside Israeli society, his voice carries a credibility that no government spokesperson or IDF spokesman can replicate. He is not arguing as a Zionist ideologue. He is arguing as someone his audience recognizes as one of their own, which is precisely why his 800 interviews have resonated where conventional Israeli hasbara has struggled to penetrate.
In a war that is being fought on diplomatic, media, and narrative fronts as much as military ones, voices like Zoabi's have become, as Kikar HaShabbat put it, a national public diplomacy asset of the first order.
