Online Antisemitism Detection Study
Describes various forms of antisemitism and how they present on social media platforms. This is another great source for the background...
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The effects of Social Media activism on the Jewish community.
The rise of antisemitism
alongside
intersectional activism.
Why Did I Build This Website?
I’ve been interested in this topic steadily since middle school, although it wasn’t until this past year in fact that I went through a catalyst experience that gifted me with a new kind of burning motivation as well as new tools to help me through my journey in addressing this issue within my own life.
Last year, particularly in the month of May, violent conflict was reignited in Israel/Palestine for a little over a week. This bout of fighting sparked an unprecedented amount of social media following in the West. All around me across a plethora of social media platforms, I was seeing coverage of a conflict from people who I had gone to school with, knew once upon a time, or still know today. A majority of the information I was seeing was wildly false and inflammatory at best, and simply antisemitic propaganda at worst. These posts, in the form of simple info-graphics, coming from huge accounts with a following of millions of followers, were being shared by individuals I considered friends, who re-posted this content seemingly without a second thought. The content spread historical inaccuracies and inflammatory lies about Israel that was simply not conducive to any sort of conversation, and on top of that, the content was being shared by people who had no connections to the conflict, who could only view what was occurring from an outside lens, and most perhaps crucially, a specifically Western lens that did not allow for any of the context needed to understand such a complex issue.
I realized quickly that something was lacking. Something so profusely that allowed individuals that I hadn’t talked to in years to publicly villainize me to their followers simply for supporting Israel, to nitpick the information that I posted as a Jewish Israeli woman (who might know a thing or two about her own country and her own people) and claim that I was a liar, or even worst, somehow upholding of white supremacy because of the information I shared.
Somehow, to share the history of the Jewish people, MY people, to give credible historical facts as a Jewish person and telling them to someone without any Middle Eastern background in the slightest, let alone Israeli/Palestinian, will somehow have ME labelled the offensive one. What happened to own voices, to listening to the actual voices a conflict affects? And while all this happens in the public eye of people I once called friends, no one reached out, no one said a word. I was fighting for my people, for our history, alone.
This experience set off a fuse within me. In modern times, antisemitism has evolved on the political left to exclude Jewish people from progressive spaces through the rewriting of our history by those who are not Jewish. Gone is our 4000-year-old history in the region now known as Israel, once the British Mandate of Palestine, before that Palestína so named by the Romans who conquered, before that Judea after the tribe of Judah, and even before that, Canaan, as commonly known in the old testament. Suddenly history is something not easily accessed, forgotten, and now written over. This re-writing is being done alongside a number of decades old antisemitic tropes, but we must emphasize the tropes of Jews as a Scape Goat as well as Blood Libel, as these two tropes are we are being the most employed to paint Israel as a country that causes nothing but harm and is the cause of America’s problems. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and a simple perusal of historical fact and current fact could easily light the truth. But the truth is hidden, or ignored, and why?
This is not to at all dismiss the antisemitism that certainly exists on the right as well, but we should focus more on antisemitism to these progressive spaces because attention is not rightfully paid to the steadily rising levels of vicious antisemitism within these communities, the same communities that are supposed to be accepting. That is, this phenomenon is so much more dangerous because it is danger in plain sight, viewed by all, ignored by most. The biggest slap in the face to someone who is trying to speak for their own people’s history is to silence them, and that is exactly what this person did.
This would not be so easily allowed had a Black person tried to speak for themselves, or an Asian-American person, or any other minority. In fact, it was being applauded by some. I felt helpless, I was hurt beyond imagining.
I felt humiliated as people I once called friends seems to support this attack on me in silence, and some less so silently, reposting this person’s antisemitic tirade against me, pasted with laughing emoji. How could someone’s hate toward me and toward Jews be something that we can let slide, or even encourage? It’s because somehow, antisemitism is now flourishing on the left under the guise of activism. Israel has lost its history and connection to the Jewish people in the mainstream, because the connection has been erased and written over by non-Jews. More so, antisemitism online is being allowed to flourish online because the newer forms of antisemitism, especially as it pertains to Israel, are not easily recognized.
This is what my website seeks to address. As you move through my website, I want you to consider the following themes and ideas, that hopefully will be sufficiently brought to the attention of those who frequent social media: In what ways do Social Media posts in their structure and language (see: infographics) normalize antisemitism as well as enable antisemitic historical erasure? How can we better recognize and address the antisemitism that is overlooked? What steps can we take to ensure this issue is properly addressed, and discussed in the mainstream, like other forms of hate?
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