Study reveals Israel was most attacked country on social media
The Jewish state sees more online critique than Iran, North Korea or Russia
Israel was the most attacked country in the world on social networks, revealed a study conducted by the Ruderman Family Foundation and the Network Contagion Research Institute.
The Israeli parliament unveiled the new findings on Wednesday at a meeting on relations between Israel and American Jews. The study highlighted a double standard found particularly on Twitter.
The Jewish state stood out as receiving even more criticism than authoritarian regimes such as Iran, North Korea and Russia, and attracted ten times more mentions on Twitter about human rights violations than any other country. The study concluded that a "double standard" applied to Israel, with the country being disproportionately targeted.
When it came to human rights violations, Israel was mentioned on Twitter 12 times more than China, 38 times more than Russia, 55 times more than Iran and 111 times more than North Korea.
In addition, the researchers found that the use of anti-Israel tropes increased significantly during a conflict between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza, in May 2021, including the publication of a February 2022 Amnesty International report calling Israel an apartheid state.
The rise of Anti-Semitic comments on Twitter also correlated with Jewish targeted hate crime incidents in the real world, the study stated. The peak coincided with conspiracies around Covid-19 as well as the assault on the Capitol in Washington by Donald Trump supporters in 2021.
The study concluded by pointing out that anti-Zionism is being used to justify a broader attack on Jews worldwide. Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli spoke with i24NEWS, saying the most significant appearance of anti-Semitism was attempts “to deny the right of the Jewish people to have their own sovereign state.”
The European Union in June stated that it will impose fines on social networks and websites that fail to remove anti-Semitic and defamatory content from their platforms, according to a new law on digital services that comes into force on August 25. The bill also stipulated greater transparency from companies operating in Europe.