Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, the executive director of Israel365 Action, said he felt compelled to arrange a high-profile visit to Israel this month for a group of young MAGA influencers because of what he perceives to be Israel’s failure to appeal to the Make America Great Again movement amid slippage in support for the Jewish state from younger conservatives. 

“Let’s put it frankly, the way it came about was that the MAGA movement did not have any authentic voices out of Israel communicating to it in this war,” Wolicki told Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday about the trip. “Once you understand the language [that MAGA supporters speak], you realize how much 90% of the Jewish world does not understand it.” 

Israel365 Action, a subset of Israel365, the advocacy group that describes itself as an “Orthodox Jewish institution that believes that Jews and Christians must respect one another,” began organizing the visit late last year, after Wolicki was introduced to a group of pro-Israel individuals involved in managing and promoting conservative influencers. Wolicki declined to reveal the names of the individuals, whom he met in December at America Fest, an annual event put on by the MAGA-aligned campus advocacy group Turning Point USA.

“We met a couple guys there who are involved in the social media business and in the MAGA world, involved with a lot of creators and accounts on the business end of things, who are pro-Israel and concerned. We decided to work together and create a trip for social media influencers from this space to show them Israel, and they would do the recruiting, because they’re in that space,” Wolicki told JI. 

“I’d be there as the persona that I occupy in the movement, as this Orthodox rabbi in MAGA, and we’re going to do this VIP trip to Israel for social media influencers. Israel365 would put the trip on, we’d find the funding for it, and they would recruit the participants. That’s how this came to be,” he continued. 

Some of that funding came through the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which was revealed in July to have approved an $86,000 contract with Israel365 Action to bankroll the trip. 

Among the influencers who took part in the delegation were Jayne Zirkle, Xavier DeRousseau, Cam Higby, Fabian Garcia, Lance Johnston and Avery Daye.

Johnston, who goes by LanceVideos on social media, told JI that he was introduced to the idea of traveling to the Jewish state through Higby, a close personal friend and fellow influencer attending the trip. Johnston said Higby had put him in touch with the trip organizers, whom he told last December that he had never been to Israel but would “love to go at some point.”

“They said, ‘You know what? Maybe we could figure out a trip.’ Things just kind of happened from there. We just got into a bunch of group chats and organized everything. We invited more influencers on the trip and it got really big. It was really, really cool to see. It didn’t take very long for everything to get into place. It all kind of spawned at a dinner where I literally said, ‘Hey, are the girls hot in Israel?’ They said yes, so I said I was down to go,” Johnston said. 

Once there, the group drove from Jerusalem to northern Israel to visit the Golan Heights and the border with Syria, and later in the week toured the sites of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel later. Israel365 sponsored a barbecue at the IDF’s Yahalom base at the conclusion of the trip where they were joined by soldiers who had served in Gaza, including an elite combat engineer who gave them a tour of the grounds. 

The influencers also met with an array of politicians, journalists and everyday Israelis, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli; and Khaled Abu Toameh, a journalist who was previously the Palestinian affairs correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. 

Wolicki noted that trip organizers encouraged all those invited to meet with the influencers to spend the day with their group and engage socially, allowing participants to form meaningful connections with individual Israelis.

“One of the big things that we did on this trip was that everywhere we went, we tried as hard as we could to just simply add in people to the trip, not guides, but first person stories from real people,” Wolicki told JI. “These are people who are communicators of stories. These are social media influencers. So when I’m thinking about the itinerary, [I’m asking myself] what people can I add that tell Israel’s story?”

Johnston said his experience with Israeli soldiers at the barbecue disabused him of prejudices he previously held about the IDF, believing them to be anti-Christian. 

“We actually had lunch with these guys and just hung out. They were really, really nice to us and it was a really, really, a stark contrast of what I’d been told online. People were literally saying to me in America: ‘I do not trust the IDF, and I believe if I met them in person, they might beat me up or hurt me just because I’m an American or even Christian.’ I was openly wearing my Christian crosses, and I have a Christian tattoo right on my arm, and I was wearing a short sleeve shirt. They didn’t mention it at all,” the Gen Z influencer said. 

“They don’t care that we’re Christian or Americans. They were just like guys our age fighting in a war. And I would like to go out and grab a beer with them. They were just kind of like homies. It was really, really cool. And it’s like, completely different than what the lefties and even the far right are saying about these people. They’re not that,” he added. 

Zirkle told JI that getting to meet “many locals from different walks of life … really showed what a culturally rich country it is. It’s very much a melting pot, which I think is a side that isn’t often shown in Western media.”

News of the trip began circulating earlier this summer, after the Foreign Ministry contract was confirmed by Israeli media, prompting swift backlash against some of the influencers from within the MAGA movement. “They got backlash from the followers for coming on this trip. They’ve been subjected to attacks for coming on this trip, and that was a subject of conversation among them throughout the trip, was the heat that they were getting from their audiences,” Wolicki explained. 

Zirkle, for instance, was fired from Steve Bannon’s “WarRoom” podcast for her participation in the trip. 

“Jane Zirkle was on Steve’s staff for three-and-a-half years, and she had previously worked for Rudy Giuliani. She’s a well-known figure in MAGA. She was also a field reporter for Bannon, besides running his social media, and was one of the guest hosts who rotated hosting the show while Steve was in prison last year for four months. Because she came on the trip, Steve fired her,” Wolicki said. 

Wolicki said that Bannon’s ire stemmed from the trip being funded by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and noted that Bannon had stopped having him as a guest to discuss Middle East developments in recent months, as the one-time Trump advisor soured on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.. Prior to this summer, Bannon frequently had Wolicki on “WarRoom,” including to criticize prominent right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson for their anti-Israel leanings. 

Asked about her firing, Zirkle told JI in a statement, “Regarding ‘WarRoom’: I chose to go to Israel and I’m proud to have gone to Israel.” She declined to discuss the matter further. 

“Everywhere we went, we witnessed the resilience of the Israeli spirit. From its founding, Israel has been surrounded by those who wish to destroy it. Yet, instead of being defined by trauma, Israel chooses to be defined by life,” she said when asked for her reflections on the visit. 

A spokesperson for Bannon and “WarRoom” did not respond to JI’s request for comment on Zirkle’s firing or his objections to the Israel365 trip. 

Despite the blowback for some attendees, Wolicki said he witnessed several of the influencers change their attitudes toward the Jewish state in real time. 

“As the trip went on, I kept hearing over and over again, in different ways, from different participants, that, ‘Oh my gosh, everything I’ve been told about Israel and the media is a lie.’ Along with that, which sounds like a positive, there’s also the realization about how bad Israel is at getting its message out,” Wolicki said. “There was a sense throughout the trip that they were witnessing things that other people are not necessarily seeing, and that was meaningful to them.”

Johnston was one of those participants. The Gen Z influencer told JI that he “used to be pretty anti-Israel before the trip” but said he had evolved his views during the visit. 

“I wasn’t antisemitic or anything, I just didn’t want to send a lot of money to Israel to fight wars that apparently we’re not supposed to be involved in,” Johnston explained of his prior opinion. “Now I see that sending them military equipment, not necessarily sending troops on the ground because the IDF is actually doing pretty good of a job, I’d like to say not a perfect job because nobody’s perfect, but they’re doing a pretty good job using our equipment. I’m now more like, I’m fine with sending them weapons.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) will travel to Israel on Sunday for his second visit to the Jewish state, the Pennsylvania Democrat told Jewish Insider on Friday.

Fetterman told JI of his plans in the Capitol early Friday evening while waiting to finish votes on funding legislation to prevent a government shutdown. The trip will mark Fetterman’s third international trip since being elected to the Senate in 2022. He did not elaborate on his schedule while in Israel. 

The Senate will be out of session all of next week.

Fetterman visited the Jewish state for the first time last June, during which he had meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Labor Party leader Yair Golan and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who was then serving as the country’s foreign minister. He also met with then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew and families of hostages.

Fetterman opted against visiting the sites of Hamas’ on Oct. 7, 2023, massacres during his first trip, saying at the time that he did not want to make anyone relive their trauma. He instead visited with students and faculty at Hebrew University and took a tour of Yad Vashem, the nation’s Holocaust memorial and museum.

Fetterman has also only been on one other congressional delegation out of the United States. His first trip after being elected was a brief visit to Turks and Caicos last May as part of a bipartisan delegation that facilitated the release of five detained Americans.

Fetterman, who suffered a stroke during his Senate campaign, has spent most of his first term thus far between Washington and Pennsylvania. 

As the buzz around pop singer Demi Lovato’s recent trip to Israel continues to reverberate, the funders and organizers of her visit are remaining tight-lipped about everything — including their identities. Meanwhile rumors, inaccuracies and sensationalizing have kept the story in the headlines both in Israel and around the world. 

Who initiated and funded Lovato’s trip? Was she paid to come to Israel? Why did she visit, apologize and then delete the apology? 

While the majority of the trip organizers refused to speak publicly, Jewish Insider interviewed several figures associated with Lovato’s visit to make sense of the situation.   

Lovato — a 27-year-old Grammy-nominated singer with six studio albums, several top 10 singles and more than 74 million Instagram followers — paid a quiet visit to Israel last month, touring the country from top to bottom. Upon her return to the United States, she uploaded three Instagram posts about her trip, calling Israel “absolutely magical” and writing that she is “grateful for the memories” made during her visit. 

Unsurprisingly, Lovato was bombarded with negative feedback from BDS advocates and anti-Israel activists, which led her to post and quickly delete an apology on her Instagram story. “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt or offended anyone, that was not my intention,” she wrote. “This was meant to be a spiritual experience for me, NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT and now I realize it hurt people and for that I’m sorry.” 

Yediot Aharonot originally reported that Lovato was paid $150,000 to visit Israel — a third of which was funded by the Israeli government — a claim that reverberated among BDS activists. But the newspaper later quietly edited its article, saying instead that the trip — which was free for the singer — cost $150,000 overall. 

“As far as I know, [Lovato] didn’t receive a shekel to come here,” Moish Yaul, the spokesman for the Jerusalem Affairs Ministry, told JI. Rather, he said, the costs of the trip for her and her entourage were fully covered by several sources. Yaul said that the Jerusalem and Foreign Ministries together contributed around 200,000 shekel (approximately $57,000), and the rest was paid for by other private donors. During her visit, Lovato toured the City of David accompanied by Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin. 

A Los Angeles-based source familiar with the details of the trip said the original Yediot report was “totally bogus.” Lovato herself commented on an Instagram post that cited Yediot’s reporting and denied she was ever paid: “This is actually not true at all,” she wrote. “This is in fact a lie. I never got paid. Simple.” 

The popular singer was accompanied on the trip by her mother, Dianna De La Garza, who made it clear even after Lovato’s deleted apology that she had no regrets about the trip. 

“We celebrated life and Christianity as we learned about the Jewish faith while listening to the Muslim Call to Prayer,” De La Garza wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of her and Lovato at the Western Wall. “There was no fighting, no judgement, no cruel words…only love. And I will undoubtedly, unapologetically go again one day.”  

Industry insiders speculate that Lovato removed the apology post quickly because it violated a confidentiality agreement signed ahead of the trip. The singer was likely told not to reveal, as she did in the Instagram story, that she “accepted a free trip to Israel in exchange for a few posts.” One source familiar with the trip said that the funders themselves likely also signed a confidentiality agreement, explaining their reluctance to speak publicly about the trip. 

Ari Ingel, the director of the Creative Community for Peace nonprofit, said while his organization was not involved in planning Lovato’s trip, it was disheartening to see how things played out. 

“These weren’t her fans leaving messages, these were boycott activists, bots and trolls who were targeting her and her fans, in a successful attempt to turn her influential social media feed into their own bully pulpit,” said Ingel. “She took a spiritual trip to Israel, like millions of people every year, from all faiths and backgrounds, and boycott activists hijacked her social media page to turn it into something political.” 

Ingel said CCFP — who were part of the team that brought actress and singer Hailee Steinfeld to Israel this summer — would have better prepared Lovato for the response she might face: “We would have advised that she disabled comments on all three [Instagram] posts from the beginning.”

Ashley Perry, the president of Reconectar, which seeks to reconnect the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities, met with Lovato and her mother while they were in Israel. 

“Apparently she had done a DNA test in the past, and found out she had significant Jewish ancestry,” Perry said. Lovato met with Perry to explore that, and told him about her maternal family name and her family’s geographic roots. “It was clear to me that they definitely have Sephardic Jewish ancestry,” he said. “They were very, very excited and very, very interested and it seems like — from the meeting — they were interested to learn more.”

Perry, a veteran of the Foreign Ministry and longtime political advisor, said it was unfortunately no surprise that Lovato faced such a backlash.

“I know for a fact that they did prepare her, and she was aware that there are active forces who will try and get her to distance herself from the trip,” he said. “But no one can prepare you for the barrage of bloody pictures people post, claiming to be from Gaza but often from other Middle Eastern wars. Nothing can prepare you for that. The pictures are almost all a lie, but someone who’s not familiar with this sort of tactic will understandably will feel quite upset.” 

Perry said it was his understanding that the government contributed around $50,000 toward the costs of the trip, but that “neither Demi Lovato herself nor anyone around her was paid.” 

The organizers and backers of the trip, Perry said, “prefer not to be named.” 

Israel Schachter, the co-founder and CEO of CharityBids, which organizes travel adventures for charity auctions and nonprofits, shared a Facebook post about Lovato’s trip before the backlash, implying he played a role in her visit. “Thanks to Shalva National Center, Aish HaTorah, Eitiel Goldwicht, City of David, Ancient Jerusalem, Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem and the many, many, other people and organizations who were involved in making this happen,” he wrote. 

Contacted by JI, Schachter said he does “not wish to comment any further on the matter, nor am I at liberty to discuss any of the details.” 

And Lovato herself continued to be on the defense about the trip and its fallout, replying to posts from fans and others across Instagram. 

“I don’t have an opinion on Middle Eastern conflicts,” she commented on one Instagram post, “nor is it my place to have one being an American singer and you’re asking me to choose a side?”