Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip ignited a worldwide wave of hatred against Jews and Israelis. It is now becoming apparent that the phenomenon has spread across Twitter, Facebook, and VK, and even reached relatively moderate social networks like LinkedIn.
Following “Guardian of the Walls,” fake news and antisemitism swept social media – and now the scale of the phenomenon is being revealed.
LinkedIn seems to have joined the dubious list with Twitter, Facebook, and the Russian VK social media platforms. FOA found more than 7,000 antisemitic posts during the operation, and that trend has continued since.
A majority of the posts referred to Israel as a terrorist state and a “cancer in the Middle East.” However, the campaign against Israel didn’t end there. Many online users who supported Palestinians attacked the website “Stand with Israel,” which had 30,000 followers, forcing its removal. After two weeks, the website was restored.
“We have made an official appeal to LinkedIn’s management requesting it remove the inciting and hateful content,” said Tomer Aldubi, FOA’s founder and CEO. “It seems that even on LinkedIn, content enforcement policies are unclear, enabling antisemites to spread their hatred without restraint – this time behind a computer screen in a high-tech company’s office.”
Avi Tzedaka, a social media expert and activist who has been online for many years, said he never thought he would see this kind of content on LinkedIn. “I was wrong,” he said. “I’m still shocked by the amount of hate speech. Who would have thought that professionals, executives, and professional people worldwide would express themselves this way and find support on LinkedIn. It’s shocking”.
A gloomy picture also appeared on Twitter, with an average of about 50,000 anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tweets every hour. Correspondingly, the number of tweets that presented a more complex picture reached 2,000. The gap becomes more evident when examining the overall picture: Tweets and tags with pro-Palestinian content received about 70 million views every hour, compared to 2.5 million views from pro-Israel tweets.
Towards the end of the operation, there was a drop in the frequency of hate content. However, FOA representatives emphasize that this is still double the number for regular days. Meanwhile, the disaster on Mount Meron, in which 45 people were killed, increased the antisemitism sentiments, such as expressions of joy demonstrated in Arab countries. At the beginning of July, the wave appears to have calmed down until the next dispute.