"I lost income and campaigns because of my opinions"
Asaf Gothelf has turned the Kaplan protests, as well as Hadar Muchtar and Mordechai David, into raw material for videos that reach hundreds of thousands of views. Now he talks about the line between trolling and agenda, about the threats he receives from both sides, and about the price of exposure: "I am holding up a mirror to the right and the left."
"I saw you yesterday, I considered running you over," was written in one of the messages Asaf Gothelf received. In another, they threatened to kick him in the face, and another commenter wrote that if he had one bullet in the chamber and had to choose between Hitler, Eichmann, and Gothelf, he would shoot him. Gothelf, a content creator who in the last two years has turned almost every group in Israeli society into raw material, reads these messages in a row, alongside curses and comments about his appearance. Sometimes he is a leftist, sometimes he is sent to hell, and at times both sides are sure he is working in the service of the other camp.
"Of course I also receive terrible messages," he says in a conversation with mako. "They write to me 'Burn in hell', 'If I met you on the street I would kick you in the face without thinking twice', 'How do you live with yourself in peace?'." Alongside the threats, Gothelf claims he is also paying an economic price. "The fact that I state my opinion and that some of the trolling is within the political field hurts me at the moment," he says. "I lost income. I could have done many more campaigns, but it is a price I am currently willing to pay, because I feel a mission. I don't know how long I will continue with the political trolling, because in the end I also need to earn."
Gothelf (28) grew up in Ramat HaSharon in an academic home: both his parents are child psychiatrists, his grandfather is a neurologist, and his older brother is studying medicine. He was an outstanding student, served as a combat soldier in field intelligence in the Kerem Shalom area, and later studied economics at Tel Aviv University. Towards the end of his degree, he began working as an analyst at a high-tech company, but had difficulty finding interest in the work. "I was constantly looking to escape and make jokes with the employees," he says. "I said: 'What am I doing here? I can do many more things. I'm funny, I know how to do impressions.' It bored me a lot, I felt it was gray."
The change came after October 7, when Gothelf and his cousin volunteered with children who were evacuated from Kfar Aza to a hotel in Shefayim. He conducted soccer training for them, built a routine for them, and remains in contact with some of them to this day. At the same time, he began sending friends funny clips from that period, and his cousin encouraged him to start filming himself in an organized manner. The big breakthrough came at the protests on Kaplan. Gothelf would arrive at the scene, imitate the language the protesters used, and approach them with exaggerated concern. "Everyone thought I was a right-winger who came to troll them and show them how they look, but in reality it just made me laugh," he says.
He would approach protesters while imitating an elderly woman and ask: "And what will happen with the diplomatic situation in the United States? It keeps me awake at night," and they would answer him seriously. "Back then there wasn't the phenomenon of Mordechai David, Hadar Muchtar, and all that. They weren't afraid, they would answer me, and amazing videos would come out. I would get authentic reactions from the grandmothers. That's where I exploded. I would go every week and every video would explode."
