Operation ‘Guardian of the Walls’: Israel is losing big time on the social front.
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About 50 thousand anti-Israeli tweets are being published by the hour on Twitter, as opposed to 2,000 pro-Israeli tweets. These figures shed a disturbing light which is the outcome of Israel’s weak social front against Hamas and the Palestinian supporters.
The Palestinians are winning it big on social networks. The data show that about 50 thousand anti-Israeli tweets are published every hour on Twitter, as opposed to 2,000 pro-Israeli tweets. In addition, the # FreePalestine# and #GazaUnderAttack hashtags are considerably more popular than pro-Israeli hashtags. The reasons behind this, besides pure hatred towards Israel, include pictures coming out of Gaza depicting the destruction and civilian casualties that are published on traditional and social media. It certainly appears like the same images of destruction coming out of Israeli cities are causing a considerably lesser impact on the social crowd.
The data, updated as of last week, was collected by the Fight Online Antisemitism (FOA) movement that fights Jews and Israel hatred on the social networks throughout the year. Despite efforts made by pro-Israeli private entities and individuals, members of FOA depict a very disturbing picture of the anti-Israeli trend on the social networks, as well as a weak response from Israel’s responsible authorities.
The gap is even more evident when looking at the general exposure: Pro-Palestinian tweets and tags gain an average of 70 Million views per hour, as opposed to 2.5 Million views per hour gained by pro-Israeli tweets and tags.
17:04, 12 of May, 2021
Twitter monitoring reveals that the most popular hashtags in what is defined as “The Israeli zone” are the GazaUnderAttack# and -Sheikh Jarrah#. Sheikh Jarrah is the Jerusalem neighborhood, where the current conflict escalation started. On the other hand, hashtags of the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, which suffered heavy rockets barrages, are way behind on the popularity scale. Probably some mentions of these hashtags are made by the pro-Palestinian side, used to rejoice the barrages to the Israelis cities.
What are the actions taken to support the pro-Israeli agenda?
FOA claims that Israel is losing the social battle not only in the number of tweets, but also because most of the tweets contain fake and fraudulent news, untrue data that turns Israel and the Israeli Army into war criminals. FOA claims that pro-Palestinians users are spreading fraudulent content about the state of Israel and the Jewish people. This content includes fake images, the content presented out of context deliberately, and manipulated videos. The target of those fraudulent publications is the depiction of a one-sided picture and encouraging incitement. For example, we have monitored images depicting Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children. Upon inspection, we saw that the uniform of the depicted soldiers is not the IDF uniform, so it certainly was not taken in the current described military operation.
Furthermore, Israeli users and others that dare express support of Israel, are being targeted with hate speech. FOA says that this trend is evident from monitored networks but also from the personal experience of volunteers operating abroad, including on supposedly unbiased and business-oriented platforms such as LinkedIn.
Man Sailorman, 15.5.2021,9:50
In general, it should be noted that there is some progress in the Israeli arena. In the last days, there are talks between Israeli government officials and high-level social network officials to urge them to monitor and remove as many as possible anti-Israeli content. Moreover, there are organizations that act against the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli content throughout the year. These organizations, like the Fight Online Antisemitism (FOA) and Stand With Us, have doubled their efforts and activities at the start of the Military Operation in Gaza. A similar effort was made by internationally acclaimed celebs such as Gal Gadot and Noa Tishbi, who joined the Israeli publicity efforts. But then again, all of the above efforts do not compare to the efforts made by Palestinians and specifically by Hamas, and the enlistment of International celebs like Bela Hadid and Duae Lypha in favor of Gaza. Those celebs express identification and empathy with the Palestinian fight and the killing of civilians, including children. Explaining that those people died as a result of the Palestinian actions does not really help when facing the massive propaganda of the Palestinians.
