Internet videos attempt to showcase new global ambassadors

All four subjects: Savannah Zvi- Navon, Yair Tayor, Shay Doron, and Ayman Dan, star in 5 clips each, ranging from 1.5 minutes to 3 minutes.

By ANNA ETRA
Shay Doron 311 (photo credit: FIBA Europe)
Shay Doron 311
(photo credit: FIBA Europe)
YouTube will soon be inundated with images of beautiful Israelis.
A final project of a fellowship to teach Israeli post-secondary students to become global ambassadors for the country has resulted in Is.Real, a series of YouTube clips that follows the lives of four young Israelis from different social and ethnic backgrounds.
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All four subjects – Savannah Zvi- Navon, Yair Tayor, Shay Doron, and Ayman Dan – star in five clips each, ranging from a minute and half to three minutes.
The 23 students who produced the films were part of 150 participants from six different universities who took part in the fifth year-long StandWithUs Fellowship at Tel Aviv University this year. The project will debut at an event Wednesday night in Tel Aviv in the presence of the fellows, Stand-With-Us officials, members of organizations that assisted in the project and local celebrities.
The fellowship is designed to train the students to be effective global ambassadors for Israel, and to assume leadership roles in Israeli society. As part of their studies, they must produce a final project that highlights a positive aspect of Israel to share with the global community.
Savannah Zvi-Navon is a 27-year-old singer-songwriter originally from Sydney, Australia. She started her journey in Israel at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, and has since migrated to Tel Aviv.
“This country took me by surprise. Bit by bit, I fell head over heels in love with this place, but it was always impossible to explain why to my friends and family abroad,” said Zvi- Navon who is scheduled to sing at the launch event on Wednesday.
Yair Tayor is a 26-year-old raised in Beit Horon near Modi’in. He grew up in a religious family, speaks Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and guides tourists from Brazil around Israel.
“It is important to reveal that what many people call a ‘settlement,’ is really simply just my parents’ home – the place where I grew up... and most of all I feel the importance of passing on my faith that all of this doesn’t contradict a relationship of mutual recognition and respect with our neighbors,” said Tayor.
A Herzliya native, 26-year-old Shay Doron is a player on the Israeli women’s national basketball team.
Doron has played for teams all over the world, including in the WNBA in the US. This year, Doron successfully led her Israeli team Elitzur Ramle to win the FIBA EuroCup Women, the second-division European basketball championship.
Through playing basketball abroad, Doron tries to spread the truth about Israel.
“People just don’t understand what goes on here, especially in the places that I go to, such as Romania, Turkey and America. I try to show them that it’s not how they think things are. If I can be their friend, then every Israeli can be their friend,” explained Doron.
Ayman Dan is a 20-year-old Christian Arab-Israeli from Kafr Yasif, an Arab village in northern Israel. After studying design in Haifa, Dan moved to Tel Aviv. He hopes to eventually pursue a career in styling and fashion design.
On why he participated in the series, Dan said he “felt compelled to expose myself for the series in order to show the world that at the end of the day, we’re all similar. As a young Arab living in Israel, it was important for me to shatter the many myths surrounding our situation.
“We wanted to incorporate art, new media and our desire to show other people our age, in all corners of the world, the reality of daily life for us young people in Israel,” said Shahar.
“The goal is to get as many people worldwide to see this film. We want to show authentic Israel and authentic Israelis,” said Yoav Susz, regional executive for the StandWithUs fellowship.
The clips can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/IsReal2011TLV