Israel War Room is known for pushing out breaking news about Israel and the Jewish community, providing facts about the conflict and keeping followers up to date on their popular social media accounts.
Now, IWR has launched a new initiative: a Spanish account on X called “Centro Mando Israel.” It only tweets and retweets in Spanish and is geared towards Latinos in the U.S., which is the fastest growing segment of the population.
Rep. Alma Hernandez, the outspoken Jewish-Mexican Arizona State House Representative, stands behind the new IWR channel because she believes it’s an important source of information for the community.
“Having Jewish and Mexican roots, I’ve often wished this unique resource was available to native Spanish speakers among my friends and family,” she told the Journal. “Research shows that Israel and the Middle East are topics of profound interest to Hispanic Americans. With its new Spanish-language channel, Centro Mando Israel is poised to meet this need and ensure that my Spanish-speaking constituents, friends and family have a reliable source of information in real-time.”
According to Pew Research Center, Hispanics are the youngest major ethnic or racial group in the U.S.; nearly 6 in 10 Hispanics are Millennials (ages 28-43) or younger.
A recent Axios poll of 1,012 Latino adults revealed that 40% of Latino adults in the U.S. say that the U.S. needs to push for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza War. Additionally, 39% said that the U.S. shouldn’t have any involvement in the conflict.
An article in Israel Hayom from this past February asked, “Is Israel overlooking the most important minority group in the U.S.?” and featured the Jewish-Latina CEO of Fuenta Latina Leah Soibel.
She said that young Latinos are “the future of the United States and of the relationship between Israel and America” and that they “Consume information and form opinions almost exclusively through social media, mainly content in Spanish, but also content in English, presented from a cultural perspective.” In an op-ed for Sapir Journal, Soibel discussed how AJ+, Al Jazeera’s social media arm, is capitalizing on the trend of viewing the world through the lens of race and identity and targeting young Latinos. HispanTV, which is Iranian government TV, sends out the mullahs’ destructive messages to the Spanish-speaking community as well.
“With Hispanic Americans more likely to get news from social media, partly because our community skews young, we have been particularly targeted for disinformation,” said Hernandez.
Centro Mando Israel will aim to counteract that disinformation, providing 24/7 information to a population that has shown they don’t yet have firm views on Israel. After all, their tagline, “Israel’s enemies don’t sleep. Neither do we” is not only relevant in the English-speaking world.
“In a globalized world, public interest in a site as profoundly resonant as the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, which is also home to the third-holiest site in Islam, is to be expected in all major world languages,” wrote Hernandez, in an op-ed for the Times of Israel. “Spanish is not only the second-most spoken language in the world but also, crucially, the second language of the United States, natively used by a highly sophisticated consumer base with a deep interest in global issues. Thankfully, there is finally a trusted social media resource to help Spanish speakers engage with this complex and impactful issue.”
