By Carl Zebrowski
Editor
Miss Israel is how most people knew Noa Cochva. The Miss Universe Pageant crowned her with that title in 2021. She spent the next couple of years traveling the world, seeing exotic places, making friends, and building a promising modeling career.
Then Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. We found out that there’s more to Miss Israel than meets the eye. She was a veteran medic commander with the Israel Defense Forces before the pageant. She also battled a serious blood disease in childhood. That’s just two of many challenges she faced.
Some of the toughness evidenced there was inherited—she’s the granddaughter of concentration camp survivors and daughter of an Israeli Air Force squadron commander. Much of it is her own doing.
In late 2023, with her country suddenly at war, Cochva got called up from the reserve to head to the Gaza border as a combat medic.
Cochva is bringing her personal story of “Beauty and Bravery” to the Lehigh Valley as the special guest of the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley Women’s Philanthropy on Thursday, April 30. Having turned her unique background (did we mention trained pastry chef too?) into a global platform advocating for Israel, she’ll talk to the Dollar-a-Day Spring Event audience about standing up for the homeland, highlighting the humanitarian values she’s witnessed in the IDF ranks and empowering women of all backgrounds.
For five months since October 7, Cochva served on the Gaza border. One day a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near her ambulance, and her team narrowly escaped death. That moment changed her relationship with Judaism for good, deepening her spiritual connection.
Since completing her wartime service in 2024, she’s been focused on developing her global platform for advocacy. During her first visit to the United States toward that end, protestors in San Francisco greeted her as “Miss Genocide.” In New York City, an anti-Zionist attacked her at knifepoint.
Not all was negative for her in America. She’s had a video go viral of her sitting, Miss Israel crown atop her head and pageant sash over her shoulder, at a pop-up table in Manhattan. A sign hangs in front of her read, “Free date with a Miss Universe model.”
The brilliant marketing effort grabs attention from men and women, breaking the ice for Cochva to ask the curious what they know about Israel and the Gaza war—and to correct misunderstandings and offer additional background information as needed.
One young woman politely tells her, “See, I’m uneducated. The main thing that I get from news is about women and children in Palestine. It makes Israelis seem to be bad people.”
Answers like that give Cochva the chance to elaborate on her subject matter. She gets to engage in a polite conversation that educates and changes minds. Only one person responds negatively on finding out Cochva’s Israeli: “I’m going to stop this video now.”
Cochva tells one young man, “Hamas has been the ruling authority in Gaza. They haven’t been taking care of their own civilians. I was a combat medic. I spent five months near Gaza, and I saved Palestinians’ lives. I treated everyone.”
Despite the dangers that accompany her decision to publicly engage, Cochva continues her mission to expose the truth about Hamas’s brutality, highlight the IDF’s commitment to protecting and preserving human life, and empower women.
The “Beauty and Bravery” event, co-chaired by Marilyn Claire, Gia Jones, Amy Sams, and Ellen Sosis, begins on April 30 with a light dinner at 6:30 p.m. Couvert is $36. Register at jewishlehighvalley.regfox.com/dollar-a-day-spring-event-2026 by April 16. A minimum pledge of $365 to the Jewish Federation 2026 Annual Campaign for Jewish Needs is required to attend.