Tuesday, March 19th | 9 Adar II 5784

Subscribe
February 25, 2021 1:12 pm
0

Now the Israel Haters Turn on Facebook

× [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]

avatar by Ariel Behar

Opinion

Linda Sarsour. Photo: Festival of Faiths via Wikimedia Commons.

You can say you don’t like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Facebook — or any other social media platform — won’t look twice. You can also freely criticize Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

But according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the US State Department, and others, if you say Zionism is inherently racist — especially if you have no quarrel with far more ethnically or religiously homogeneous countries — you’ve crossed the line into antisemitism.

On Wednesday, Israel bashers went to Facebook offices in the United States, Europe, and even in Israel, to present petitions insisting they be allowed to continue spewing their bigotry and hatred.

Facebook is reportedly considering updating its hate speech policy to include negative references to Zionists and Zionism, and that development has groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, the BDS movement, and MPower Change worried. The petitions are part of a campaign called “Facebook, We Need to Talk.”

During an online program promoting the petition effort, University of California, Berkeley, professor Judith Butler engaged in the very stereotyping behavior that is fueling the debate. Jews who are Zionists inherently cannot be good, she said.

“It’s not because they’re Jewish that they’re wrong. It’s because they’re Zionists. And as Jews, they have a chance not to be Zionists. So we should be encouraging that position because that’s the only possible, just position.”

Remi Kanazi, a poet, wasn’t so polite: “Zionism is the real demographic threat infecting the minds of millions with racism,” he said during Wednesday’s program.

Zionism is the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland. It is a principle supported by roughly 90 percent of Jews worldwide.

But, like Butler, the petitioners want to maintain their ability to use social media to bash the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jews.

“Facebook is supposed to be a platform that provides, in particular, marginalized people who don’t usually get mainstream media attention or don’t get their stories told in the same way [with access],” antisemitic activist and MPower Change founder Linda Sarsour said during Wednesday’s program while standing outside Facebook’s New York offices. She articulated what she wanted: “To be able to share critiques, to be able to share political analysis, and to be able to use words like Zionist and Zionism and not have to be labeled as hate speech and get us kicked off of Facebook.”

Facebook seemed to indicate to the technology news website The Verge that it was reviewing its policy regarding Zionist references. A decision is rumored to be coming as soon as this week. But it’s unclear whether anything will change.

“Under our current policies, we allow the term ‘Zionist’ in political discourse, but remove it when it’s used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis in a dehumanizing or violent way,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge. “Just as we do with all of our policies regularly, we are independently engaging with experts and stakeholders to ensure that this policy is in the right place, but this does not mean we will change our policy.”

In other words, no one really knows what Facebook is considering, but the anti-Israel coalition is ginning up outrage by claiming that rumored changes amount to a gag order on any criticism of Israeli actions or policies.

Facebook has already adopted some of these elements in an August hate speech policy update that was made in response to calls from 130 Jewish and pro-Israel groups to better moderate online antisemitism. The August hate speech policy update embraced elements of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

But that definition specifies that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.” It’s a significant clause that went unmentioned in Wednesday’s webinar. Rutgers University assistant professor Noura Erakat claimed Facebook is facing “a tremendous lobbying effort” to stop criticism of Israel through the “distorting accusation of antisemitism.”

In the end, this is a debate about what constitutes antisemitism. On one side is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and 29 countries — including the United States, Canada, France, and Germany — which have embraced its definition. On the other is a coalition of groups that “unequivocally oppose Zionism” and dream of a world without a Jewish homeland.

A version of this article was originally published by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, where the author is a contributor.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.

Share this Story: Share On Facebook Share On Twitter

Let your voice be heard!

Join the Algemeiner

Algemeiner.com

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.