Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) became a significant topic of discussion on social media this week after a report by The Washington Post raised questions about some statements she made about her upbringing during her campaign. Luna claimed she has Ashkenazi Jewish roots and was raised as a messianic Jew, a sect of Jews that believe Jesus was the Messiah. Her extended family refuted these claims, saying that her father was Catholic and her grandfather fought in World War II on behalf of the Nazis. However, later reports suggested that Luna’s father converted to Judaism and that she had other relatives that served in the American army during the Second World War. 

 

Despite the uncertainty of Luna's heritage, the story gained notoriety due to the similarities with the case of Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), although Santos’ falsehoods are far more concrete. Many online users have criticized Luna for pretending to be Jewish and the Republican Party for not denouncing members who allegedly lied about their Jewish heritage.

 

The U.K. Equality and Human Right Commission (EHRC) announced this week that it has ended its monitoring of the British Labour Party after they said the party has made significant progress in tackling antisemitism.

 

The EHRC published a report last October which found that the Labour Party had breached the Equality Act 2010 in its treatment of Jewish party members. The report was highly critical of the party's leadership at the time, including former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, for failing to take effective measures to address antisemitism. 

 

As a result of the report, the Labour Party produced a legally enforceable plan to prevent similar discrimination. The party has since suspended Corbyn and removed hundreds of people and organizations from the party that opposed the EHRC's report. However, opponents of the report have made their voices heard on social media with the hashtag #itwasascam, claiming that accusations of antisemitism were weaponized to damage Corbyn's reputation.

According to data from The Command Center, since the EHRC report was published, #itwasascam has been the 10th most used hashtag related to antisemitism and the only hashtag in the top 10 that isn’t related to Israel.

 

Writing in The Times, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer stated his party is, “heading in the right direction” but that, “there is still much to do.”

A new study in The Journal of Holocaust Research demonstrates how a dedicated group of Wikipedia editors has been systematically and intentionally distorting information about the Holocaust on the company’s English website. Co-authors Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski claim that in the past decade, this group of editors has been promoting a skewed version of Poland’s history of the Holocaust that whitewashes the role of Polish society. In one example, the researchers found that the Wikipedia article “The Holocaust in Poland” downplays Polish antisemitism, exaggerates the Poles’ role in saving Jews, spreads antisemitic stereotypes about the Jews, and even blames the Jews for their own persecution by inflating Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. The authors note that evidence does not support the claims made in the Wikipedia articles. 

 

The study also tries to uncover the individuals behind the operation, how they work, and how they manage to dodge Wikipedia’s reviews. The authors note that Wikipedia is the world’s largest free digital encyclopedia, with about 5.6 billion unique users in 2021. They hope the research will lead to more selective and diligent oversight over which edits are allowed by Wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

 

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