When Aija Mayrock began dating a Muslim man two weeks before October 7, she expected tension. Instead, she found something that reshaped her approach to social media advocacy: love and shared values can outlast the boundaries that divide people.
Now, with 760,000 Instagram followers, the New York-based Jewish influencer has become an unlikely ambassador for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, armed with a phone camera and a steady belief in common ground.
Aija Mayrock | interview
"We met two weeks before October 7th and really fell in love after the war started," Mayrock told ynet Global in an exclusive interview. "I was so worried we would have issues about politics, about religion. We've never had one issue on politics or religion. Any issues that arise are just normal human relationship problems."
Her boyfriend, Nuseir Yassin, she reveals with evident pride, has become one of Israel's most passionate advocates. "He is obviously such an advocate for Israel and is such a leader in this cause," she said. "I think we all as human beings are a lot more similar than we think."
That philosophy drives Mayrock's content strategy. She travels to unexpected corners of the globe, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Japan, documenting Jewish communities where followers never imagined they existed. But it was a trip to Haifa, inspired by her boyfriend's roots in the region, that crystallized her mission.
"When I saw that right in front of my eyes in Haifa, I was like, I need to show this to the world because people have no idea that Jews and Muslims actually work together and live together and get along in Israel," she explained. "I'm an optimistic person. It's what I want to see in Israel and the world."
The response to her Haifa content was swift and polarizing. Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments flooded her posts—as they do on virtually every video she publishes. But Mayrock has learned to weaponize hatred itself.
"That hate is actually allowing that video to reach more people, right? Because that's how social media works with engagement," she said matter-of-factly. "So I'm fine with the hate as long as it reaches people that hopefully it can change their mind."
As an American Jew documenting Middle Eastern realities, Mayrock acknowledges she walks a delicate line. "I'm approaching it from a little bit of an outsider perspective, even though I am Jewish," she said. "I try to just show what I see and what I hear, what I experience without speaking on Israeli politics itself, because I'm not Israeli. But I think everything in that region is inherently political."
Her outsider status, however, gives her unique insight into Israel's greatest communications failure. "Israel is really bad at media and content," she said bluntly. "That's like a known thing."
The problem, according to Mayrock, is that Israel tells the wrong stories. "The stories need to be the stories that we're not seeing on the news," she emphasized. "Stories about how diverse Israel is. People have no idea—all the anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel hate I get, people think that all of Israel are white Europeans that got there like 40 years ago."
She continued: "The world is so not educated on the reality of Israel. Obviously when anyone steps foot in Israel, you see how unbelievably diverse this country is. So I think we need to tell stories that show that diversity and we need to actually create systems and programs that really fully integrate all people within Israel."
For Mayrock, the content that cuts through hatred isn't bombastic or defensive—it's simply human. Her Haifa reel and similar stories of coexistence resonate precisely because they challenge preconceptions without preaching. They show rather than tell.
"I like to make content about interesting stories, people, places in the world and in the Jewish world," she said. "I think people find that interesting because I go to places to document Jewish history and Jewish communities."
Her relationship itself embodies the message she's trying to send. In an era when interfaith partnerships can become political flashpoints, Mayrock and Nas have discovered that shared humanity matters more than inherited conflicts. "If we can find that common ground, you can find so many shared values," she said.
As antisemitism surges globally and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes discourse, Mayrock's 760,000 followers represent something increasingly rare: an audience willing to encounter complexity, to see Jews and Muslims not as abstractions but as neighbors, colleagues, and lovers. Her advice to Israel is simple: stop trying to win arguments and start telling human stories. "Those stories will reach people that have the opportunity to change their mind," she said.
In the end, Mayrock's greatest weapon against hatred isn't sophisticated hasbara or political rhetoric. It's a love story that began two weeks before a war—and survived everything that followed.