Fighting Anti-Jew Propaganda in the Spanish-Speaking World with Fuente Latina CEO Leah Soibel

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Let zero in on the work of Fuente Latina Latinos Harbor, less antisemitic sentiments more than any other ethnic or racial group.

They're also the number one targets of disinformation.

They became the number one immigrant group that was attacked by Hamas on October 7th.

I have not heard that anywhere else but this interview.

Welcome back to our Summer edition of Being Jewish with Jonah Platt, 30 minute Menes.

Same vibe.

Same tribe.

Shorter episodes.

My guest today has a lot to say and she can say it in several different languages, including Spanish, Arabic, and even a little Portuguese.

She is the founder and CEO of Fuente Latina, the only organization focused on empowering Spanish speaking journalists with timely and accurate pro Israel content.

Please welcome Leah Sobel.

Thank you, Jon.

It's a pleasure to have you here at Leah.

I've been a fan of yours since I was introduced to the work of Fuente Latina, and I'm really glad to have the opportunity to share your work with my audience today.

I want to go back in time a little bit during your long and impressive academic career you studied throughout the world, and really all throughout the Middle East to places where many people never get to travel, let alone study.

You got to study in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza.

I mean, that's there, there can't be a very long list of people who've gotten to do all of that.

And, and from a, you know, Jewish and American perspective, you were studying for your masters in Cairo during the second ada, and this is an experience that I've read really shifted your path and purpose.

Can you tell us about what happened to you in 2001 in Egypt at that time?

It was an incredible experience and I wish I could relive it again.

Um, but the, the Middle East has changed like the rest of the world, right?

And I went to really have my eyes opened in.

To encounter and, and have experiences on the ground, which I think is critical and is, is led to what we do with media is to let people see the facts for themselves, let people experience these countries and the realities on the ground for themselves.

I was there at the beginning of the second Intifada, and it was the first time I'd ever seen.

Unfortunately, college students today are very accustomed to this, but seeing Israeli American flags burned on a college campus, being a Jew, being an Argentinian, being an American in Cairo, and it was, uh, a heated time.

I understood why they were.

Angry.

I didn't understand why these students were angry at the United States and at Israel, per se.

When we were talking about a conflict that Yes was a country away, but didn't really have any impact on the campus where we were.

I participated something called Mock Arab League, which is very similar like Model un.

And there I had the chance to participate with other students to debate the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And interestingly enough, they brought in students from Gaza, from Oman, from Yemen, from Iran, from Saudi Arabia.

And I found myself being the only American Jew in this three day summit, debating things like Jerusalem, of which I was the only one who had ever visited Jerusalem at the end of the three days, which were extended a little bit longer.

It was an incredible experience and I had students come up to me and say, you know, if there are more Jews like you, we wanna meet them.

And that to me.

Just hit me and it continues to hit me in everything that I do as a professional every single day.

Because what I came to find in those three very heated days was that it's not that they necessarily hate us, it's really that they don't know us, and that requires a communication strategy and an engagement strategy to bring our communities together, and it's not just isolated to the our world.

I find that every single day in my work in the Hispanic world.

We're gonna get into that work in the Hispanic world for sure.

But I wanna stay with the Middle East a little bit until we get there.

First of all, you said just a few moments ago, you said, I get what?

They were angry.

I just don't get why they were angry necessarily at Israel or America.

So what anger did you understand?

I understood that they were, they felt provoked a lot of these students because an Israeli going on the Temple Mount.

Right.

And without the right context or information that would've probably seemed.

A revoke of the, the status quo, so to speak.

In the Arab world, there is lots of disinformation as there is in every single language, and the assumption that the Jewish people don't have a right to the temple Mount.

And so in that time that Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, which is some claim sparked the second Intifada.

That was what?

Not only triggered as analysts say the Infa itself, but also the protests and the burning of flags that I saw on campus.

Okay.

So you get all this knowledge, you speak all these languages, you spend all that time in the Middle East and now you're focused on the Spanish speaking world.

How, how did that happen?

I'm Argentinian American, Israeli, uh, my family fled Argentina, uh, during, uh, political turmoil.

And, uh, went to St.

Louis, Missouri in the seventies.

So I, I grew up in a place where I really had to justify a lot of identities all the time.

And I was working on the ground in Israel with foreign correspondence from all over the world.

And every time there were Spanish speaking journalists.

Brought to Israel, usually about a hundred a year.

I would get a phone call and say, Hey, Leah, can you do a helicopter tour for for this VIP?

Or, Hey Leah, can you do a briefing on the Gaza border?

And I saw all these journalists coming to Israel, going home and really never covering Israel again, which I thought was a a, a really bad.

Return on investment.

And at the same time, all of this was going on and I was getting the hale calls.

All of a sudden there was like this epiphany of the Latino vote of these numbers.

Look, now today they're, they're 63, uh, million Latinos in the United States.

There's half a billion Spanish speakers worldwide.

We have to focus on them.

They're really important.

And this was all going on in, in the background.

I was seeing Iran communicate in Spanish.

Hezbollah had long been communicating in Spanish, other countries, particularly Russia and others.

So in looking at the landscape and seeing where I could build my, my niche, which for me as a soccer player is very important to find my lane and to stick into it.

It was looking at, you know, there was a lot of interest because of the Arab Spring and the Arab world, and obviously.

The English language was very common 'cause everybody speaks English, but nobody was focusing on the Latinos.

And I was working at a place that I was lucky enough to have been able to spend two years building a Spanish language program to see if there was interest.

And what we discovered in two years was an insatiable appetite on behalf of the Spanish speaking media to have better access and information related, not only to Israel, but the broader Middle East.

Because one thing that most people really don't know is that there is a very large Arab.

Particularly Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian diaspora in Latin America.

And so, although they're, they're Christian, they're not Muslim, the majority of them, there is this interest in the culture and what's happening geopolitically vis-a-vis these other countries in the Middle East.

In relation to Latin America.

There wasn't a bridge.

There was, there were correspondence on the ground, but there, there wasn't a bridge bringing these two worlds together.

And that's precisely why I decided to.

Found Latina and the same month I found if Fuente Latina Iran launched its 24 7 television news network.

You spun tv.

Wow.

Good thing you came along.

Um, just outta curiosity, the Middle Eastern diaspora populations you mentioned, are they localized in any specific countries or they're sort of spread out all across Latin America?

They're spread out across Latin America.

Interestingly enough, when Jews left during the Ottoman Empire, so did the different.

Arab, other minority groups.

Yeah, minority groups.

So you, you have, uh, you have Lebanese in countries, particularly like Colombia.

You have the largest Palestinian diaspora community in Chile.

Estimate to be about half a million.

You have a mix of Syrian and Lebanese in Argentina.

You also have a large Palestinian diaspora community in Honduras, the second largest in South America, Latin America.

So you have, you have a mix here and there and and in between.

Peppered all over are Jewish communities.

Wow.

So how, how big of a problem is anti-Jewish bigotry in the Spanish speaking world?

If you look at the United States, for example, if you look at the Jewish, you know, pro-Israel activity, whatever you wanna call it, um, in the English speaking world, you see a lot of organizations in the Spanish speaking world, we don't have that many at all.

So that requires the few of us working in these spaces to be incredibly strategic in how we approach certain issues.

So, you know, what an issue that might be a, a problem or a challenge for Argentina is definitely not what it is for Chile.

Um, what we see in Spain, right?

Doesn't necessarily impact Latin America, the United States, right?

But there are narratives that bleed over as we see.

And now, particularly if you think of it and look at it as the Spanish speaking world, with the exception of Spain, you haven't really seen protests anti-Israel protests since October 7th in Latin America.

Now that's starting to change with the.

Increasingly well organized leftists, uh, political groups that are now.

Getting together with these organizations that we've seen, particularly in the United States, and we are seeing this now, kind of become the underbelly of the protests and particularly the deportation protests that we're seeing in the United States today.

Let's zero in on Spain for a second.

A lot of people watching this we'll have seen recently, you know, the big rally in Spain.

There's a strong anti-Israel sense in in Spain these days, which I know personally, I, I feel.

Frustrated by, just due to the, the history of Jews in that country, which I know having spoken to Stuart Weitzman on my show, who is building a, a Jewish Spanish museum there, a lot of Spaniards are, are not educated about what can be done in, in Spain in terms of communication and what are you seeing in, in terms of what you are providing to Spain.

So when we started Fu the Latina 13 years ago, I can tell you that, uh, the.

Perception of Israel and Jews vis-a-vis the elite Spanish, non-Jewish media was not good.

Um, and all the research continued to show that Spain was one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Western Europe.

When we look at the communications field at the, at the public relations, at the media field, you know, what we always tend to focus on are those that are the loudest I can say.

Anecdotally, behind the scenes.

Now we, we have two staffers in Spain.

And yes, they've gone through, uh, I would say different challenges because of the organization for whom they work, which is Fuente Latina.

But we have so many allies in the non-Jewish, Spanish language media after having visited Israel with us after continuing to engage with us.

But if we.

Forget about the noise for a second, and all the really horrible, distressing images that we're seeing in particularly anti-Semitic acts against Isra, Israelis and Jews in Spain overall, when that subsides, the reality is is that we still do have in politics.

In the in, in communities across Spain, and particularly in where we focus on it in the media, quite a few allies, but these are relationships that were built long ago and that continue to be maintained till today, which I think is a very important tool and element to take into consideration when we're looking at how bad everything is.

If we see the erosion of allyship.

In these key strata of which if we're looking at influence, then I would start to worry.

I'm worried by what I see overall, but I'm not worried and I'm actually a, you know, feeling quite confident about Spain in the long term because we have not lost.

The relationships in, in very important media positions across the board.

What can you shed some light on for us in regards to the work you're doing with the Spanish speaking population in America?

There's so much opportunity, so much opportunity for allyship, for the, for the Jewish people and for Israel and it, and it really boils down to a few key issues.

So the one is their numbers.

They currently make up 63, uh, million.

Of the total US population, they're slated to be more than 30% of the total US population by 2050.

They're young.

There's 1 million Latinos turning 18 every year, and they're becoming more politically active.

And as we saw in the last presidential election, it was Latinos who really.

Overturned a lot of these states that were thought to be blue and turned them red and moving forward, they will be more of an influential voting block, I believe.

And if we're looking at the future of the Usis Israel relationship, and we're thinking of 30% of the total US populations, Spanish being the second most spoken language in the United.

States, Latinos are very important and they should be very important, not only to the US Jewish community, but also to Israel.

And the reality is, is that we are not speaking to them neither as a US Jewish community or from Israel side.

There are a lot of bad actors who are speaking to them, and part of our daily work at Fuente Latina is maneuvering around them and making sure that the disinformation that they're spreading about the United States, about Israel fueling antisemitism.

Aren't reaching these audiences, which all of the public opinion research that has been done by several groups, including Fuente Latina, all shows one very, very important thing.

And that is Latinos Harbor, less antisemitic sentiments more than any other ethnic or racial group, but they're also the number one targets of disinformation that's fueling antisemitism.

Hmm.

And if we're looking for allies in the fight against antisemitism moving forward.

All signs are pointing to the US Latino population.

Are there other organizations who are not doing what you do, which is singular, but others who are working in their lanes to build bridges to this population and, and support this, this allyship that are, that you see as being, you know, allies in the work that you're doing?

Or do you feel like you're on an island trying to, you know, sound the alarm to people saying, Hey, we've got an amazing opportunity here.

Where, where is everybody?

So half of my day, I am kind of like, Hey, yeah, sounding the alarm right.

There are a few, uh, there are are far less than there should be in my opinion.

Um, and there isn't a concerted strategy as a group that's focusing on this really important population.

It's a piecemeal here and there.

When it comes to Latino population, again, they're not a monolith.

Uh, if you're speaking to Mexican audience, it's not the same as speaking to a Puerto Rican audience and East coast.

Does not mean West Coast.

Right?

And so first generation is not second generation Spanish speakers are not spangler speakers.

So there, there's a lot of different variables in connecting concertedly and properly with.

A particular Latino target audience.

But what really does matter is the local level, and that's where we're not seeing enough efforts, neither really at the national, to be honest, but more importantly, particularly in large cities like La l LA is home, LA County is home to more Latinos than any other county in the nation.

Speak, let's say LA and let's say I'm giving you a hundred million dollars, you can spend however you want.

Like what needs to be the first step in the city of la?

Like who, who needs to be talking and who needs to be coming together and in what way?

Beyond just, you know, journalism and media messaging that Fuente Latinos already working on.

Media's just one element of it.

With Latinos relationships are key.

Relationship building is absolutely fundamental, and it's not enough just to bring them to Israel.

If there's no follow up, then there's no relationship long term.

And we know that Latinos are becoming more politically active.

They're becoming more, more a, they're activists per se.

They identify as activists, particularly if we're looking at like Santa Ana and, uh, the debates around, uh, ethnic studies, right?

If we're looking at like a little bit broader California, we're finding that a lot of Latinos are on school boards.

They're, they're trying to become more politically influential and a school board is a great place to start and there needs to be greater engagement in unions, which are very popular with Latino populations, particularly because it relates to pockets of influence.

In Latin America, unions sometimes wield more power than politicians.

And so if we're, if we're looking at those type of models and how they are then brought, and I would say tailored particularly to an American.

Society and audience.

School boards and unions play a very important role, particularly for those that are looking to become more influential.

Mm-hmm.

And more involved with politics longer term.

That starts at the campuses, that starts at the schools, and in the same way we're talking about K through 12 studies, we're talking about Holocaust education.

All of that still needs to be applied to the Latino populations as well.

Okay.

So now let's zero in on the work of Fuente Latinos.

So we've touched on the fact that you bring.

Journalists to Israel and provide them with, you know, accurate access and, and on the ground stuff in Israel.

What are your other sort of key pillars of what you guys are trying to accomplish?

So we're trying to do a couple things.

So one is educate by bringing a journalist to Israel, a Latino journalist to Israel.

You're opening their eyes, you're giving them.

Experience and an opportunity to get a byline.

People of color, particularly Latinos, are underrepresented in newsrooms, particularly women.

And so by giving Latina female journalists and Hispanic journalists in general, an opportunity to get a byline, which is a career maker for some journalists, right?

So you take them to what is now, unfortunately, the biggest hotspot for news coverage right now in the world, and you allow them to get a byline from this hotspot.

That's something that goes on their resume.

One thing that's also very, very important to understand with the Latino community is, uh, typically of their top three bucket list items overall for any individual that you'll meet is a visit to Tier Santa the Holy Land.

And so by getting to have that experience to be able to check that off, whether it's their desire or their.

They A or the whatever it is, they're checking off something that's important to them, and then we can start to check off something that's important for Israel and the Jewish people, and that's accurate news.

Coverage in Spanish is the biggest thing that you're providing.

Just the, the.

The means by which they can take these trips because their, you know, local station or whatever isn't able to send them abroad to cover international news.

No, no, no, no.

That's just the beginning of the, of the model and of the process.

So in analyzing the space, uh, we saw that there are a couple.

Spanish speaking correspondence in Israel who've been there for decades.

Some of them write for some, some pretty and objective outlets, right?

And, and this is what comes over to the United States, to Spain, to Latin America, kind of dominates the narrative in Spanish.

So the model of health, when the Latino works is to drive a wedge between those bias.

Outlets that are on the ground in Israel covering and trying to air Israel's dirty laundry all day long is we focus on correspondence outside of Israel in Spain, across the United States and in key countries, strategic countries in Latin America, that we bring them.

We develop a relationship with them.

We identify who are the up and comers, who are the most influential, whether it's digital, whether it's influencers, whether it's journalists, tv, print, or radio or audio.

And getting them to Israel and developing the relationship with them and having them cover stories of which they are required to, to participate in Fuente, Latinas trip is just the first step.

The second step is as media professionals, they're required to continue covering stories and so the, the purpose of the trip is also for them to be able to connect with Fuente Latina and my staff, and knowing that we are.

A reliable source of information for them moving forward.

And so when they wanna cover something related to Mexican Israeli hostages, taken hostage on October 7th, or Argentinian Media that wanna cover the five Argentinians that are still in captivity right now, rather than trying to find something off a news wire or calling from Buenos Aires and trying to figure out how the heck do I cover this from so far away?

They know that they can pick up the phone.

With my staff 24 7, and we are able to tailor the speaker, the content, the story specifically for their particular target audience once they come on the trips with us.

What we do different from other organizations is that our, our trips are only in Spanish and we only meet with Latinos that are in Israel.

And, uh.

We, we just, uh, finished producing, uh, four episode docuseries about the Latino survivors and hostages of October 7th.

It's a story that's really not known in the English speaking space.

And what we found through our work, which we knew beforehand because Latinos and Israel is Israel have always been our storytellers.

On October 7th, they became, many of them became victims.

Wow.

What we found is they became the number one immigrant group that was attacked by Hamas on October 7th, the Latin American immigrants to Israel.

They were many of the founders of the kib that were decimated by Hamas.

I have not heard that anywhere else but this interview, so I'm glad to hear that information.

You said you just finished it, does that mean it's been released or you just finished shooting it?

No, no, no.

We're, we are just wrapped up post-production and now we're, we've been hosting private screenings.

Uh, we got, we've.

Been accepted to two non-Jewish Latino film festivals, but our greatest hope and number one objective is to get the story out to the world, the non-Jewish world.

Of course, many of the Jews that have seen it, I've all learned something that they had no idea about particularly.

Latino, Latin American Immigration to Israel.

Why did they get there?

Where did they go?

Why did they happen to build their homes around the a border, the Gaza border?

Um, many were unaware that they were the founders of an re near Oz, where the Bibas family and the Kune family and the Horn family were taken hostage from, all of which are Argentinian.

Wow.

Didn't know any of that, uh, what's it called so we can keep an eye out for it when it gets, you know, bought and licensed and shown all over the world.

From M mouth to God's ears.

It's in Spanish with English subtitles, but the titles in Spanish and it's RO for October 7th.

Tero.

Witnesses of Terror.

I'm surprised it's only four 30 minute segments.

I thought you were about to tell me this was like a 12 hour opus.

It was a, a lot of work to cut it down and, and a lot of hard decisions were made.

But if we're talking and we're trying to, to communicate with a non-Jewish audience versus, you have to give them the context.

You have to give them the history that they don't know about.

So.

How did Latinos get to Israel?

Why did they go to Israel and, and why did they build these Kibbutz, sea and, and why did they become part of the story on October 7th?

What we found in our work is actually a lot of audiences think October 7th only happened at Nova, and so it's really important to give the context of what happened in the kibbutz seam as well.

Second is Nova, the Latino survivors of Nova, including, uh, Alejandra Lopez, who's.

Partner, she called.

He drove down in the middle of the attack and managed to find her and save her.

He spoke to us for the first time on camera.

The, the third episode is about the Latino hostages that came back during the November 20, 23 ceasefire, and those that were almost taken hostage in including the grandmother Sylvia Kno, whose two, uh, grandsons are still in captivity today.

Sylvia coo saved herself the morning of October 7th and Neil Oz when the Terrace came in.

By saying that she's from where mess is from.

And then he said, oh, messy.

I like messy.

And at that moment he put the OV over her chest and took a selfie with her.

It was a, a picture that went viral when we released that soundbite of the interview with her, the exclusive interview that Punta Latina has.

It went.

Worldwide viral.

Wow.

It was, was really, really, really incredible.

And uh, the fourth episode is talking about those that are still in captivity, which we've had to update now because one of the Horn Brothers and the BBU family came back.

Leah, how does this work without you?

What you're doing is so niche and so nuanced and requires so much understanding of different things and peoples and cultures and news and political events and all of this stuff.

How do you scale?

What you're doing, can you scale it or is this just like a, I gotta do what I can do and someone else has gotta figure out the rest?

I think this is something that the, the Jewish world has to figure out, and I don't think that it's niche.

I think that half a billion Spanish speakers and, and 20% of the total US population is not niche.

I think the trick is, is really finding, finding the right talent, and I am.

So very fortunate and Fuente Latina, so very fortunate.

We, we are a staff, a full-time staff of 42 media professionals, 98% of which are not Jewish.

Amazing.

And they, they have the same level of passion as I do, and in telling.

These stories with accuracy and with objectivity, and they've, they've survived and they've stayed with us since October 7th.

We continue to hire new staff that are passionate about this.

And they're not necessarily driven by faith.

They're, they're driven by storytelling.

They're driven by curiosity.

Have you had any internal ideological conflict?

No.

None, never.

Do you, do you attribute that to just the fact that your team is, is seeing the truth on the ground and it sort of takes care of itself from there?

What I know to be true and, and my staff know to be true is that there's this curiosity.

It's, it's not that Jews necessarily are hated, and we know amongst Latinos there isn't, you know, the, the majority of Latinos aren't conspiratorial.

It's not what we're seeing maybe in the extreme right and extreme left camps.

These are individuals or communities or leaders that.

There's always been this curiosity and even admiration.

And while they may be using trope language, sometimes may, may turn off as, as the Jewish professionals, when you start to scratch a little bit more beyond the, the, the trope language, it's really admiration.

It's how do we do what the Jews have done?

How do we become like you?

How do we become successful?

Like you, anecdotally, when, when, uh, the whole Chappelle thing happened and we did an event for our Latin Jewish media entertainment, which Chappelle thing.

The, the first Chappelle thing on Saturday Night Live.

Okay.

Yeah.

And, uh, talking about the Jews were in Hollywood.

Right.

And, uh, I, I had 80 non-Jewish celebs and top influencers in Miami, uh, speaking with a, a Spanish speaking, a Cuban raised Holocaust survivor.

They never met a Holocaust survivor before.

And I was explaining like, what is antisemitism?

Because we use, we throw that language, that, that word around a lot, but what we find with Latinos that they don't know.

Really what it means or how to identify it.

And so in trying to break it down for them so that they would understand, I had journalists that, that we've worked with for a long time that came up to me and they said, wait, you don't run Hollywood.

I thought you did.

And I thought that was a good thing.

Mm.

So, so while it feels a little weird.

At the end of the day, it really comes from a place, a good place, a place of admiration, a place of friendship.

And, and what we find by and large with Latinos is that they, they think that we are closed community.

Um, they don't realize that a lot of the time that that becomes because of security.

Right precautions.

And also because of, in particularly in Latin America, fears of, of intermarriage, we're trying to just maintain, you know, in these small communities, our customs, our traditions, our kashrut, and when they get to have a peak, right, the door cracks open a little bit and they, they get, they get to actually experience it for themselves.

That's when you see that the, their, their passion for learning more.

Over, like overtakes them so much so that I have staff in countries that they, that have broken relationships with Israel are actually, have gone to the local synagogue to learn Hebrew right on their own.

On their own.

And they've never been to Israel.

They're fascinated about what they've learned through their research for the production purposes of the content that we're distributing.

And yet they, they continue to want to learn and, and to even study the language.

That's, that's all we can hope for.

I, you know, if, if everybody out there was a neutral curious party, we'd be in great shape.

Lay out if, if people wanna support the work that you were doing, where do I send them?

What can they do?

What do you need?

First of all, visit our website, fuente latina.org.

And there you'll have, you'll find a link to the docuseries that we've produced, the steel.

You can watch it now.

You can watch the, uh, trailer.

The trailer, and uh, you can reach out to us and we can send you a link so that you can, okay.

Get a little, uh, more of a, a, a sense of a taste of, of the content itself.

But while we're holding out for a deal that we're, we're trying to, uh, only do private screenings and sending private links, I'm gonna email you about that.

You should definitely email me about that.

Yeah.

But when the latina.org.

And we're on TikTok.

We're on Instagram.

We're on YouTube, and uh, there is even my information.

I encourage anybody that wants to reach out, to get involved, to contact me directly, and let's see how we can get you involved in creating better Latino Jewish allyship.

Leah, thank you for everything you're doing to bring truth and clarity and Jewish pride to the global conversation.

And thank you for being here with us today and sharing in your fantastic and important work.

Thank you, Jonah's a pleasure.

Alright.

She's a mensch.

It's been 30 minutes.

I'm Jonah Platt.

Avio, AMI.