A former combat medic, her response to punk duo Bob Vylan's 'death to the IDF' chant went viral (Image: Instagram/@noacochva)[Missing Credit]
Cochva, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, was crowned Miss Israel in 2021 and went on to represent the country at the Miss Universe pageant.
Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 people and the outbreak of war, she served for six months as a combat medic in the IDF reserves along the Gaza border. During that time, she also began advocacy efforts directly from the battlefield.
"One of my friends asked me, ‘Isn’t Miss Israel supposed to bring world peace, like any pageant queen?’ And then it all started," Cochva said. "We made one video, it went viral, and that’s what brought me to do what I’m doing today."
Cochva comes from a deeply Zionist family – her father served in the IDF for 40 years, her mother for 16. Her grandfather was a partisan who fought the Nazis during the Holocaust, a legacy that strongly shapes her worldview.
She sees today's antisemitism, including chants like "Death to America, death to the Jewish people" heard at some protests, as a modern parallel to past threats – and believes it’s her duty to confront it so history doesn't repeat itself.
Cochva has relocated to New York for two years to continue her advocacy work and engage with Jewish communities, aiming to offer support and assistance wherever possible.
“There is so much antisemitism and so many things we can change and help Israel with from here,” she said.
Through her advocacy, she has seen people change their minds about the Jewish state in real time (Image: Instagram/@noacochva)[Missing Credit]
“Doing advocacy and talking about Israel, you know that you are going to get death threats. It’s been life-changing because I have been recognised a lot of times in the streets because of my advocacy videos – not by the Jews or Israelis but by the pro-Palestinian crowd – and it’s really scary.”
“You have to always be on guard, always look to your right and to your left and check if there is somebody,” she added.
In addition to creating pro-Israel videos, Cochva takes her message directly to the streets of New York, engaging with passersby to share her perspective in person. She told the JC about two instances where her street-level activism appeared to shift people’s views in real time.
“I was speaking with two young people who were about 20 years old,” she recalled. “I remember, they started the conversation saying ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘genocide’ – all these crazy words they don’t really understand. At the end of the conversation, they said, ‘Okay, I think I’m going to go back home and read about Israel because I don’t know these facts’.”
Cochva then recounted another encounter with an 18-year-old student from NYU, who was wearing a keffiyeh. During their discussion, she shared the story of the hostages taken by Hamas, which the young man had no knowledge of. He was visibly shocked to learn that innocent people had been abducted from their homes.
“I gave him my BringThemHome necklace and put it around his neck,” Cochva said. “I hope he still wears it.”
She also emphasised the need for Israel to do more in shifting the narrative in the ongoing communication battle. She believes the focus should be on investing in storytelling that humanises IDF soldiers and Israelis, showcasing them as ordinary people, and certainly not as war criminals.
“Advocacy is in the little details of your life. If you're nice to the person who is bringing you coffee and he sees your Star of David and smiles at you, that person connects this to the fact that you are Jewish,” Cochva explained.
Above all, she stressed the importance of being proud of Zionism and the Jewish state.
“Stay loud, and don’t be afraid. We are not the Jews of Nazi Germany; we are the Jews of today,” she said. “We have the power to speak up, and we must use our voice.”
