Israel’s war on Gaza is fuelling online hate

Israel’s year-long war on Gaza has inflicted such existential destruction that it sometimes feels trivial to focus on the collateral damage. The Strip’s schools, hospitals, mosques, vital utilities, libraries, monuments and civil spaces have been so degraded that it is hard to imagine its society ever recovering. 

But our own societies have also been degraded by an acceptance of this “new normal” and one of the clearest symptoms is the hate we see reflected, when we turn on our computer screens. 

Alarming results have emerged from a new report of online hate speech against Jews during the war, commissioned by the Media Diversity Institute (MDI).

The research team used an AI advanced monitoring and sentiment analysis tool created by Meltwater to track global and large volumes of posts about Israel/Palestine – 449 million in the war’s first three months from 1st October till 31 December 2023 – across online platforms including X, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and Reddit.

It found a 359 percent increase in online antisemitic keywords over this period, amounting to just under five million. Around 60 percent of these keywords were pejorative, abusive or downright hateful terms and phrases. 

Some caveats are needed. The negative speech still represents less than one percent of all online discourse on Israel and Palestine, the uptick was in line with an overall rise in digital debate about Israel of 3,972 percent as the assault on Gaza began. 

Notably though, the volume of online hate speech grew with the tempo of the war, swelling after atrocities such as the Flour massacre, the Al Ahli hospital bombing, the murder of Hind Rajab and the invasion of Rafah. It subsided in periods of “calm” – although these spells still saw over 200 UN workers and at least 127 journalists killed. 

Put simply, Israel’s rampage through Gaza has been cataclysmic for Palestinians; but it has not brought all the hostages back, and it has endangered Jews in the diaspora too. It has made us all feel more vulnerable, not least because Israel’s government insists that it is acting on our behalf.   

In March, Israel Katz, Israel’s far-right foreign minister called for a global advocacy front uniting diaspora Jews and Israel to defend national causes such as “the eradication of Hamas,” because “all of Israel are responsible for one another.” 

Tweeting threats

Katz did this two months after one of his tweets was cited by judges in the Hague to support their assessment that Palestinians faced a plausible threat of genocide. His tweet had warned that Gaza’s civilians “will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

The minister alone should bear responsibility for his words – not the diaspora. Katz’s repeated attempts to hide behind false accusations of Jew hatred when Israel’s behaviour is questioned are a cynical ruse that imperils Jews further. We are not human shields for Israel.  

When Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant was cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judges for describing Gazans as “human animals,” he also played the antisemitism card, and it coincided with a 41 percent spike in antisemitic speech online, compared to the previous day.

The MDI survey found that the spike was “directly related” to Gallant’s description of South Africa’s case at The Hague as “antisemitic”. 

But antisemitism is not a state-to-state issue, regardless of what proponents of the so-called New Antisemitism say. It is discrimination, hatred, violence and abuse directed against Jews for being Jews.   

The ICJ held Israel to the exact same standard of care expected of every nation in the world

No harm was done to Jews by the judges’ ruling that Israel was obliged under the Genocide Convention to take all due measures not to kill Palestinians, cause them serious harm, prevent their birth, or inflict conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction. In fact, it held Israel to the exact same standard of care expected of every nation in the world, especially as it is an occupying power.     

In the occupied territory of Gaza, 90 percent of people are displaced, 68 percent of roads and crop land have been severely degraded, most buildings have been destroyed and half a million people are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, according to the UN.

More than 41,000 are known to have died – one quarter of them children – and if that count were extended to include those buried under rubble, missing presumed dead, and dead from hunger or disease, it could rise to 335,000 by the end of the year.

This is why when partisan figures that hold leadership positions in the diaspora – like the British chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld or even Bernard Henri Lévy - use their political capital to defend the Gaza war, often in defiance of their communities’ wishes, they do us Jews a grave disservice.   

As the MDI report shows, we urgently need to disentangle ourselves from Israel’s actions – not warp our identities even more. 

The European Commission and its member states can help, by showing more vigilance towards social media platforms, using robust legislation to impel industry accountability and support educational initiatives that challenge online hate speech.

Equally though, we — and the commission — need to try to turn down the flames of this latest outbreak of antisemitism, by forcing Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire that ends the war in exchange for a return of all hostages. 

Diaspora Jews have far more in common with supporters of this position than with those who would wash Gaza in blood, or inanely cheer on war crimes committed in their names.