Twitter is a growing source for antisemitic rants leveled against Jewish journalists. This according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League stated that it formed a special task force in June 2016 in response to a “disturbing upswing in online, anti-Semitic abuse of reporters.”
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It should be remembered, however, that social media such as Facebook and Twitter are not responsible for the people who use them to post hate speech and they work to delete such comments as soon as possible.
But this is nothing new. In fact, just look at all of the varied hostile and hate filled comments posted in the comments sections on just about every Jewish blog and website on the Internet. It does not matter what the subject of a story may be, nor the content or political bias of the blog, Jew hating “trolls” are everywhere.
Most posts are too disgusting to repeat. This writer has personally seen innumerable said comments over the years including on his own posts. And then there are all of the missionaries who troll Jewish websites just to post quotes from the New Testament and links to their websites in an effort to convert Jews to Christianity.
.@TeamTrump should avoid rhetoric&tropes that historically have been used ag. Jews & still spur #antisemitism. Lets keep hate out of cmpgn https://t.co/9LMnurQ3Xg
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 13, 2016
Running the risk of straying too far away from the rules of being a journalist, news-writer or blogger (that last one really does not have any rules) we must say here that while all of us at Jewish Business News are fed up with this abuse and attempt at bullying Jews, none of us will ever be cowed by the harassers. So post away your hate filled comments under this report as you are merely wasting your time.
And such Anti-Semitism has also been seen among a slew of Donald Trump Supporters. Jewish Journalists who cover Trump have been the object of vicious attacks from Trump voters.
The ADL’s task force found what the organization describes as 19, 253 overtly anti-Semitic tweets which were sent to at least 800 journalists in the U.S. during the 12 month study. It further asserted that 83 percent of those 19, 253 tweets went to just the 10 most targeted journalists, all of whom are Jewish. The top 10 list includes conservative columnist Ben Shapiro, Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman, and CNN’s Sally Kohn and Jake Tapper.
#DYK the inaugural #ADLNeverIsNow summit will focus on eliminating modern anti-Semitism? Learn more & register today https://t.co/pvZIvM1rSJ
— ADL (@ADL) October 11, 2016
“The spike in hate we’ve seen online this election cycle is extremely troubling and unlike anything we have seen in modern politics. A half century ago, the KKK burned crosses. Today, extremists are burning up Twitter” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “We are concerned about the impact of this hate on the ability of journalists to do their job and on free speech, which is why we established this Task Force. We hope this report hastens efforts to combat the surge of hate on social media. We look forward to working with Twitter, media companies, and other online platforms to limit hate and harassment and preserve freedom of speech.”
Responding to this report, The Daily Beast’s Jay Michaelson wrote about how he himself has suffered verbal abuse on Twitter and that his colleague Sally Kohn has as well.
Michaelson writes:
“I was an advisor to the ADL’s task force on harassment, although the hate-tweets I was tagged in—pictures of me in death camp gas chambers (with Donald Trump pressing the “gas” button and the caption “You’re Fired”); an endless torrent of kike, faggot, and other slurs; lots of gleeful boasts that Trump would finish the work Hitler started—pale in comparison to those aimed at the primary targets in the ADL report. Indeed, one of the report’s most shocking revelations is that 83 percent of the anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists targeted only ten people.”
