Israeli police at the scene of a terror attack in Tel Aviv. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen

With more than 750,000 readers and almost the same number of Twitter followers, TheJournal.ie is one of Ireland’s leading news organizations.

The online publication has taken a notably hostile editorial stance toward Israel over the years — so much so that it has caught the attention of HonestReporting on a handful of occasions.

In 2019, for example, we questioned why the outlet had published the first-person account of a Breaking the Silence activist, who was accused of fabricating testimony that he had beaten a Palestinian man while serving as a soldier in the Israeli army. A number of IDF soldiers and commanders had publicly disputed his account.

And now it appears that TheJournal.ie’s readers leave hundreds of comments on Israel-related stories, including many that cross the line into outright antisemitism.

Going back several years, there are numerous comments from readers that conspiratorially suggest it was Jews who perpetrated terror attacks carried out by Palestinians; make light of the Holocaust; and compare the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.

Several replies were posted to stories that suggest the Israeli government is treating Palestinians in a “similar way” as Jews during Nazi Germany, a clear breach of the internationally recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

Another comment on a piece about a terror attack on innocent Israeli civilians disputed the labeling of Palestinian terrorists as “militants,” justifying the atrocity on the grounds that Palestinian assailants are “resistance fighters” because Israel has “no right to be in the West Bank.”

While most news websites have content moderators that remove comments that are obscene, grossly offensive, or illegal, it is unclear if TheJournal.ie filters reader comments on any of its stories.

Therefore, HonestReporting reached out to its editor Sinead O’Carroll to ask what the publication’s content moderation policy is and ask if they would remove the dozens of antisemitic comments on its website.

“A disturbingly large number of the user comments include racist language, including people blaming “the Jews” for incidents arising in Israel, comments that liken Israel to Nazi Germany and individuals making jokes about the Holocaust,” we wrote to Ms. O’Carroll.

Furthermore, we asked what TheJournal.ie’s “policy is toward vetting user comments and removing hateful content.”

After numerous e-mails and attempts to contact the website, we have still not received a response.