As the Israeli Defence Forces’ ground operation commenced last week, the conversation on social media began to shift away from overall support for Israel to calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Various voices, including United Nation officials and celebrities like Angelina Jolie, called for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Other voices completely rejected a ceasefire, arguing it will allow Hamas to regroup and build back their arsenal of weapons. A video of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed back on protestors demanding a ceasefire went viral on social media, with many people celebrating Clinton’s support for Israel. 

Pro-Palestinian supporters have attempted this week to flip the script and compare Israel to the terrorist group ISIS. Phrases such as “Israel is ISIS” or “Jewish ISIS” began to trend as users criticized Israel’s operation in Gaza and accused Israel of targeting Palestinian civilians. Similar conversations have compared Israel, Zionists, and Jews to Nazis. These comparisons are particularly harmful for many Jewish people as they are being compared to the groups that have called for the extermination of the Jewish people, especially as some Holocaust survivors were killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.

The FCAS Command Center has tracked over 20,000 mentions of #HitlerWasRight during a recent 24-hour period. The hashtag was used in posts by pro-Palestinian users who attacked Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip. The phrase “Hitler was right” expresses support for the Nazi’s “Final Solution” to exterminate the Jews during the Holocaust. The hashtag was also commonly used during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May 2021. The phrase was also posted more than 70,000 times last year, as featured in a Stand Up to Jewish Hate ad released in March. 

The hashtag quickly became more popular Wednesday in a coordinated effort. According to the data at the FCAS Command Center, there were over 8,000 mentions in only one hour before declining rapidly throughout the day. Below is a graph taken from the FCAS Command Center. Stand Up To Jewish Hate posted this data on its Instagram account, garnering significant engagement.

Cornell University junior Patrick Dai, 21, was arrested on Tuesday after sending violent threats online targeting the Jewish community on campus. Dai posted multiple violent messages Sunday on a school discussion board, threatening to commit a mass shooting at the school’s kosher dining hall and encouraging the murder and rape of Jewish students.

 

Online users condemned Dai and shared the various messages he posted under fake names like “hamas soldier” and “jew evil.” Jewish students at Cornell shared their stories, and the university canceled classes Friday due to “extraordinary stress” felt by the student body.

This incident at Cornell is the latest in a trend of increasing antisemitism on college campuses in the United States. Countless anti-Israel demonstrations, walkouts, vandalism and harassment incidents have occurred in the last month since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.

The World Jewish Congress released a report detailing Hamas’ coordinated efforts to influence social media trends and conversation, as well as public opinion, related to the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. Within the first few hours of the attack, graphic footage circulated on numerous social media platforms. Hamas was able to coordinate reposts of their Telegram content to X, formerly known as Twitter, within 60 seconds of the original Telegram post. 

 

Conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis are using Hamas’ propaganda to further their own efforts. One conspiracy theory asserts that the Hamas attack was a “false flag” operation that was planned by the Israeli government. Such conspiracy theories are rooted in antisemitism and are currently being spread by far-right accounts and Hamas supporters, both on mainstream and fringe social media platforms like 4chan.

One report by Axios released this week shows that on TikTok videos of pro-Palestine protests have almost four times the views compared to videos of pro-Israel protests, with data provided by the platform. This is driven by a drastic difference in the number of posts for each hashtag, with #StandwithPalestine having 210,000 posts and #StandwithIsrael having 17,000 posts. TikTok has allegedly banned Hamas from the platform.

FCAS released its latest commercial for TV and social media this past weekend titled “Hate Rises.” The ad highlights the rise in Jewish hate in America since the start of the war in Israel. It shares the message that when one hate rises, they all do, and calls on people to stand up to Jewish hate and all hate.

 

 

 

 

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