Nas Daily: When 'entrepreneurs' NAS-TILY become Israeli propaganda
12 Min Read
How to whitewash Israeli crimes? Simple, a camera, script, a team that makes everything sounds like 'fun', and the blessing of social media platforms to make it viral.
Imagine this: You are scrolling through your Facebook page and you find a 1-minute video that starts with the phrase: "Hey you! Do you want to come work with us? Seriously, we have a few chairs with your name on them!"
The employees are highly-spirited; they make the 'job' sound like 'fun'. The presenter continues to say: 'Come join a group of fun people who are stupid enough to think they can change the world,' adding that the company 'will pay you well', charming, isn't it?
What will hold you back now? It's a 'fun' workspace, with a 'well' salary, and you will get to change the world!
You click on the page or write 'Nas Daily' on Google's search bar to get a little background about the company, and what would you get? A troublesome feed of whitewashing Israeli crimes.
So who is Nas Daily?
As an actual background, Nas Daily is a popular page that publishes videos on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. Each platform has a number of followers. On his Twitter account, Nuseir Yassin, the CEO of Nas company, has over 80k followers. On their Facebook page, Nas Daily has over 20M followers, and on YouTube, their channel has over 9M subscribers.
On their Instagram, Nas Daily share the slogan 'We Bring People Together' at the top of their page.
Nas became well-known for completing a 1,000-day challenge, posting a one-minute video every day while traveling the world in 2019.
During this time, Nuseir Yassin told 'human stories' from different corners of the globe.
Who is Nuseir Yassin?
In some of his videos, Yassin likes to introduce himself as a "Palestinian-Israeli".
Yassin studied at Harvard and landed a job as a software engineer in New York. He worked for Venmo, a mobile payment service now owned by PayPal.
He was 'unsatisfied' with his job where his salary was reportedly at $100,000 per year.
“My job was overpaid. It wasn’t satisfying enough,” he told Business Insider.
In an interview for the Global News website, he said he knew that "in one year, in New York City, you are going to spend $60,000 because it’s so expensive. So, I saved $60,000 and, instead of spending it in New York, I spent it all around the world — and that could last you for 10 years because the world is actually cheaper than New York.”
Yassin, who grew up in occupied Palestine but moved to Singapore in around 2019, established NAS Academy, an academy for video creators, and NAS Studios, a video creation studio. According to NYT, Yassin moved to Dubai back in 2020.
Here is where the fun stops
In an article by the NYT, the newspaper said Yassin's move to Dubai has "dented his popularity among the people he knows best: his fellow Palestinians."
Yassin chose to move to Dubai right after the normalization agreement took place between "Israel" and the UAE in 2020.
He moved to Dubai along with his life partner, Alyne Tamir who is a social media 'influencer' and 'Israeli/Jewish', according to one of her Instagram stories back in December.
The UAE-Israeli normalization agreement allows whoever holds an Israeli passport to live and work in Dubai, and Yassin was among the first and most prominent of those who took advantage of this.
Adding fire to fire?
Yassin, through his videos, especially the ones concerning Palestine, tries to equate the Israeli occupation of Palestine with the Palestinians' struggle for freedom.
Whenever Yassin posts such videos, he almost always acts surprised by the enormous backlash that he receives, as if it is not expected.
After moving to Dubai, activists started to question Yassin's funding for his own company in light of his repeated attempts and continuous efforts to soften "Israel's" image.
In September 2020, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement urged activists to boycott Nas Daily's training program which was offered by the Nas Academy.
BDS said the program, which embraces Israelis in its training staff, is funded by the UAE New Media Academy, the company founded by Dubai ruler Mohammad Bin Rashid.
"Nas Daily, through its content, tries to portray the conflict with the Israeli enemy as if it is a struggle between two parties of equal force, deliberately ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people, chiefly the right of return," BDS wrote in its statement.
Yassin, upon moving to Dubai, abandoned the whole concept of Palestine as a sovereign state, the millions of Palestinian refugees around the globe, the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the whole concept of "Israel" being an occupation to start with.
A glimpse into the videos
'HOW SAFE IS ISRAEL', ' AM I IN ISRAEL OR PALESTINE', 'The Truth About Jews and Arabs', 'JEWS VS. ARABS', and 'HOW PALESTINE IS ISRAEL', are some of the videos that you will find once you scroll into Nas Daily's feed.
To dig deeper, let's break down one of these videos.
In the video titled, "AM I IN ISRAEL OR PALESTINE", Yassin starts it off by saying that he has "finally arrived at my home in Israel" and that whenever he mentions the word Palestine or "Israel", he "gets in trouble in the comments section."
Throughout this video, Yassin sought to 'settle the issue' by explaining where he 'stands', and this is where the chaos begins.
He starts off by explaining that a number of years ago, "when Israel came into existence, some Palestinians left, some got killed, and some stayed in their land."
Purposefully and completely turning a blind eye to the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, Yassin used words such as 'left' instead of 'forced out of their homes and lands', and the word 'killed' instead of 'murdered, kidnapped, and tortured' without even mentioning who the perpetrator is.
Palestinians did not just "leave" Palestine. It is reported that some Palestinians, out of panic from the horrific crimes that were committed back then, and still are, by the Zionist gangs, took their pillows instead of their babies, and many Palestinians risked their lives to return to get their children back, having forgotten them behind.
And this is just one aspect of the tragedy.
In this same video, Yassin says he chose to "move on" and "accept the borders of Israel," because "in life, there are better and bigger things to focus on than the name of a piece of land…"
Well, if Yassin thinks that the Palestinian struggle is over "the name of a piece of land," then he got it all wrong.
Try to tell a Nakba survivor to "move on" after seeing their loved ones butchered; try to tell a father to "move on" after he lost all his family members in an Israeli raid; just give it a try and tell a Palestinian who had to see his own being demolished to simply "move on" because "there are better and bigger things to focus on than the name of a piece of land."
And this is just in one video that is only 1 minute and 6 seconds long. Imagine the extent of the Israeli whitewashing in the rest of the videos.
"Israel" is celebrating the day when it murdered thousands of #Palestinians and forcefully displaced dozens of thousands of families.
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 14, 2022
The number of massacres that the Israeli occupation has committed and is still committing reveals one truth: The #Nakba never ended.#Palestine pic.twitter.com/GDlYk2k0Ju
'Most controversial video' took him 6 years
Just recently, Yassin received backlash for his recent video that took him 'six years to make.'
Yassin wrote "It's the story of 'My Israel and Palestine' and it's a complicated one...." as a caption for the video, which he started off by saying, "This is the most controversial video I will make."
Yassin tries to tell his story as a "Palestinian-Israeli" and how in 1992 God gave him "the greatest gift in the world to be born in the most controversial place on Earth."
Yassin, through the video, did not seem to find a more controversial word to describe the whole issue other than "controversial", repeating it several times.
He says he was born "inside of Israel to a Palestinian family" and that "20% of Israel is not Jewish, it is made of people like me…," deliberately mixing between the fact of a person being an Israeli (an illegal settler of an occupation) and someone being Jewish (a believer in a heavenly religion).
Comparing days to a lifetime under an occupation
Yassin said he got to "see what Palestinians see" and "what Israelis see," which is an attempt to downgrade the more than 70 years of a Palestinian struggle for freedom.
He recalled the one time he was called a terrorist by "a 15-year-old Jewish girl" and that one time when he was "almost" attacked by an Israeli soldier.
Yassin says that on both sides, there is "suffering, pain, anger" and that all of these "exist on both sides."
What may have gotten off Yassin's script and camera lens is that while "Israel" still receives millions and millions of US dollars of funding for its military systems to attack Palestinians, Palestinians have only their rocks, their bare hands, and their armed resistance to fight back.
Yet, when Palestinians try to use such ways to defend themselves against the highly equipped Israeli forces, they are called "terrorists".
How can the "suffering" exist on "both sides" when one side is a people deprived of their most basic needs and the other is an occupation? How can the oppressor and the attacker be equal to the occupied and the oppressed?
Censoring pro-Palestinians?
Looking into the comments and quote retweets on Yassin's latest video, many were criticizing and condemning Nas Daily for their unfounded facts.
Just gonna leave this here: https://t.co/V8tIxDpaCx
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) October 5, 2022
So, are you saying that any invaded country should accept the invasion and live peacefully with their invader?
— Mohamed Al Qahtani (@Abu_3abdalla) October 4, 2022
It took 6 years to say nothing, congrats.
— ✡︎ Adva la Leyva 🪬 | אַדְוָה (@ermoza_judia) October 4, 2022
What an OBSCENE obfuscation this glossy piece of propaganda is. How about just tell the simple truth? To “stop the suffering”, end the occupation, and racist apartheid policies. It took you 6 years to come up with this manipulation of fact? Wow.
— Ahmed Eldin | أحمد شهاب الدين (@ASE) October 5, 2022
Yet, Yassin chose to ignore and cover up his mess by screenshotting and posting the "supporting" comments, as he tries to force "the truth" that he believes in into his followers and censoring the rest.
Take a guess, who is also known for censoring pro-Palestinian content?
Meta, previously known as Facebook, seems to be a close partner of Yassin.
Back on October 15, Yassin republished a tweet by the President of Meta, Nick Clegg, which he was mentioned in, thanking him for a video Yassin made. The video shows Clegg standing next to Yassin explaining how someone can "steal the Internet."
Nas Daily collaborated with the President of Meta, Nick Clegg on a very important video. https://t.co/aWdTOoxKTP
— Nuseir Yassin (@nasdaily) October 15, 2022
A caption on another video posted by Nas Daily back in May 2022 on Twitter about the TikTok star Khaby Lame shows that Nas Daily actually partnered with Meta to produce the final content.
The only thing limiting your potential is your imagination.
— Nuseir Yassin (@nasdaily) October 7, 2022
Look at @KhabyLame, who found success in just two years as a content creator.
Possibility is in your hands, what will you do with it? pic.twitter.com/UtmAO9atoz
Moreover, during an interview uploaded on 'Startup Taxi' YouTube channel, Yassin said that Facebook 'took a chance on us… and even invited us to meet Mark Zuckerberg and present the whole company."
It is reported that after the meeting with Facebook founder Zuckerberg back in 2018, the page NAS Daily was promoted to a "show" status and had over 8 million followers.
"Positive propaganda" is still propaganda
During an interview for the YouTube channel, Yassin admitted that Nas Daily does "positive propaganda", where they "suck the good of every country."
Also during the interview, which was published back in 2020, Yassin said that he spent "20 years living as a Palestinian in Israel" and that it is something he "would not recommend to anyone," even though he "loves Israel" and "loves Palestine".
Yassin continues to say that his journey's goal was to see the "opposite of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," turning a blind eye to the brutality the Palestinian struggle for freedom has to endure.
When the mics are all on for "Israel"
As Yassin tries to glorify his journey and struggle to be a content creator, his entrepreneurship, the business world, and owning a company, Western media, such as The New York Times, rushed to talk and write about him in an article titled "An Arab From Israel in Dubai."
Through the endless shots, scripts, and content that are screaming for success by whitewashing Israeli crimes, there will always be pro-Palestine initiatives and content creators who will always fight through to show the truth, the real truth, and nothing but the truth.
Pro-Palestine activists will always be leading well-planned campaigns to keep the Palestinian cause alive and to make sure that no one forgets about it. Living proof of pro-Palestine campaigns is when in May 2021, it was reported that Nas Daily's followers dropped to 20 million from 38 million after Yassin dubbed the oppression against Palestinians a "conflict".
