Emily Schrader
Tablet, June 20, 2021
Last month, while 4,500 rockets from Gaza were flying at Israeli schools, homes, and businesses, another war against the Jews was brewing abroad. The ADL reported that, in only eight days after the conflict kicked off, antisemitic incidents rose by 75%. In London, anti-Israel activists drove around Jewish neighborhoods screaming from their cars to “rape their daughters”; in Florida, Jews were targeted by pro-Palestinian activists who threw garbage at them while screaming “Free Palestine! … We’re going to rape your wife”; and in New York, pro-Palestinian protestors threw fireworks at Jews in the Diamond District. The scenes are jarring, but given the rhetoric accompanying them online, they are hardly surprising.
As someone with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing side of Israel advocacy, I can honestly say I’ve never seen an outpouring of explicit antisemitic, not “anti-Zionist”, content across social media platforms as strong as what we witnessed last month. For years, Jews and pro-Israel activists warned that ignoring antisemitism couched as anti-Zionism would lead to violence against Jews. The past few weeks have proven that argument to be sadly true. There is a direct correlation between real-world violence and the level of hate we see online—making it all the more alarming that the rhetoric against Jewish women is even more radically perverse and aggressive.
The immediate response to Israel’s operation in Gaza was a barrage of online antisemitism. Jews were attacked with thousands of “free Palestine” comments, even when not talking about Israel or the conflict. Teens on TikTok were spammed and harassed by anti-Israel activists accusing them of supporting “genocide” and “apartheid.” Instagram became a hostile environment for Jews thanks to influencers such as Bella and Gigi Hadid, who used their collective 100 million followers to spread extremist rhetoric about Israeli affairs, demonizing the other side. Subsequently, the ADL reported that the same week that “Hitler was right” was trending on social media—with over 17,000 mentions, including from a BBC journalist—and as mentioned above, there was also a 400% increase in antisemitic activity around the world. What an interesting coincidence. …SOURCE