Yesterday our delegation stepped out of the physical borderlands and into a very different front line – the digital one.

We met Kamal Penhasi in Haifa, the IDF’s Farsi-language spokesperson, a man whose life story is itself a bridge between Iran and Israel. Born and raised in Tehran, he spent his childhood in a mixed neighbourhood – two Jewish families, one Christian, and the rest Muslim – where life was, as he put it, “normal, peaceful, without hatred or antisemitism,” until 1979 changed everything. After the revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic, his family eventually made it to Israel, trading fear and uncertainty for a new, complicated freedom. 

Sitting with him today, you sense both worlds living in him at once – the Israeli officer and the Persian son. He speaks of Iran with affection and clarity, never confusing the people with the regime. That distinction is the foundation of his work.

Kamal now leads the IDF’s Farsi outreach, a team of young Israelis who spend their days crafting messages, videos and graphics aimed not at Western audiences but at ordinary Iranians scrolling their phones late at night, behind VPNs and firewalls. Their task is deceptively simple: tell the truth about Israel, the war, and the region – in a language and tone that cuts through decades of regime propaganda.

The scale of what they are doing is staggering. Before the current war, the IDF’s Farsi Instagram account had just over 300,000 followers. In a matter of months, it has exploded to around 900,000, the overwhelming majority inside Iran despite censorship and surveillance. 

He described how his team works: monitoring Iranian state media, tracking disinformation, responding quickly with verified information, short explainers, and sometimes humour – all in colloquial, idiomatic Farsi that signals respect rather than condescension. They are acutely aware that every post may be a risk for the person reading it inside Iran.

We were struck by the deeply human side of this work. Kamal and his team are not just pushing messages out; they are receiving them. Hundreds of Iranians write in – some in anger, many in curiosity, others in whispered solidarity. Some claim to be serving in the IRGC and other security organs, disillusioned and looking for a way out. 

“You feel the weight of those messages,” he said. “They remind you that behind the slogans, there are real people trying to breathe.”

For our delegation – many of us Iranian by birth or heritage – meeting Kamal in uniform, speaking flawless Farsi in the heart of Israel, was emotionally charged. He embodies a possibility that both the regime in Tehran and many Western commentators prefer to deny: that Israel and the Iranian people are not natural enemies, and that there is a quiet but growing conversation across the digital divide that could shape the future.

What stayed with us most was the moral clarity of what Kamal and his team are doing. In an age of information war, their work is an act of resistance against dehumanisation – of Israelis and of Iranians. They insist on speaking to Iranians as adults capable of understanding complexity, not as a hostile mass. They refuse the lazy binary that says one must choose between caring about Iran’s freedom and recognising Israel’s right to defend itself.

As our day ended, one member of the delegation summed it up quietly:

“On one side of the border, rockets. On the other, words. Today we met the people using words as a shield for both Israelis and Iranians.”

The trauma of this war is real and raw, but so is the determination to lay foundations for a different future. Kamal and his Farsi team are, in their own way, already speaking to that future – one post, one reply, one courageous follower at a time.