Jennifer Hanin . com

Many of us lead shel­tered lives. We go to work, spend time with fam­ily, visit friends, enjoy hob­bies and spend a fair amount of time online. But how many of us know that the inter­net is also a hotbed for anti­semites? Sadly, the num­ber is small unless some­one hits us over the head with it. Let’s face it. State­ments like “kill the Jews” are easy to spot while Microsoft’s dic­tio­nary that changes the word “anti­semitism” incor­rectly to “anti-semitism” is seem­ingly innocu­ous enough to go unde­tected. The same goes for Israel. A per­son who dis­agrees with a pol­icy of Israel is way dif­fer­ent from an anti-Zionist who calls for the destruc­tion of the Jew­ish state. It’s the gray area in between that expert advice is war­ranted so the world’s old­est hate doesn’t become the world’s coolest trend.

Part Two: Andre Oboler, Ph.D., Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Australia

For Dr. Andre Oboler, he detected anti­semitism in much the same way most do. After a col­lege debate took an anti­se­mitic turn in 2004, he was com­pelled to con­duct his own online research. Oboler noticed some­thing shock­ing. Anti­semites dom­i­nated Google search results for words like “Zion­ism.” He shared his alarm­ing find­ings with the Jew­ish com­mu­nity only to learn that no one han­dled online antisemitism.

That was enough to spur Oboler into action. He quickly launched Zion­ism On The Web, a web­site that he cre­ated specif­i­cally to counter racist argu­ments that were show­ing up in Google.

Now a social media expert, researcher and com­men­ta­tor, Oboler is a pio­neer in detect­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and com­bat­ing online anti­semitism. His research has exam­ined anti­semitism in Face­book, YouTube, Google-Earth, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Yahoo Groups, as well as issues related to the spread of hate through search engines. One of his recent papers cov­ers pol­icy changes in Face­book that removed spe­cific pro­tec­tions against racial and reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion and mis­clas­si­fied Holo­caust denial as ‘not hate’ as a mat­ter of policy.

Oboler has paved the way for gen­er­a­tions of Jews to come by coin­ing the term “anti­semitism 2.0″ and going pub­lic. He describes anti­semitism 2.0 as hate­ful con­tent that users spread on social media sites like Face­book, You Tube, Twit­ter, My Space, etc. He warns that anti­se­mitic com­ments found in online com­mu­ni­ties where peo­ple share and spread ideas affect people’s hearts, minds and val­ues and can go viral and reach mil­lions in a short amount of time.

His research proves that it’s not just orga­nized neo-Nazi groups spread­ing hate these days. Today’s anti­semites come from Islamic web­sites, polit­i­cal activists and a younger gen­er­a­tion that posts hate­ful online con­tent as a way of bul­ly­ing to “get atten­tion” or act “cool.” This is unfor­tu­nate but true. All you have to do is search for the word “Jews” on Twitter.com and you will see loads of com­ments that fit this descrip­tion. Or search for “Holo­caust” or “Israel.” While Face­book has removed most of the Holo­caust denial groups, those attack­ing Israel or mak­ing com­par­isons between Gaza and the Holo­caust are still there.

Oboler is specif­i­cally con­cerned about the con­tent on these sites that spread hate and pro­mote ter­ror­ism and geno­cide. He is quick to point out that anti­semitism casts Jews in a sub­hu­man light and that social media sites must remove it. As the direc­tor of the Com­mu­nity Inter­net Engage­ment (CIE) Project for the Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia, he advises orga­ni­za­tions within Aus­tralia and abroad how to com­bat online anti­semitism. His work has far-reaching value as Oboler com­pares online anti­semitism to a dis­ease and talks openly about how it is infect­ing mil­lions and reshap­ing their thoughts and beliefs about Jews. He even goes as far as to ask:

Imag­ine if Hitler had Facebook?

Think about it. Or what if Hitler tweeted? As of today, Pres­i­dent Barak Obama has 3,111, 059 fol­low­ers, and is lag­ging slightly behind three celebri­ties. This alone shows just how pow­er­ful social media has become in our soci­ety. Obama can instantly reach over 3 mil­lion peo­ple in a mat­ter of seconds.

Oboler brings another issue to light that is sig­nif­i­cant: tech­nol­ogy. With a Ph.D. in com­puter sci­ence, Oboler is famil­iar with not only exam­in­ing online con­tent but also the con­fig­u­ra­tions of sites and what that means for users. Many social media sites have flaws that allow users to mis­use their tech­nol­ogy. One exam­ple he brings up is Face­book. In the past, Facebook’s terms of ser­vice included a state­ment that the com­pany would remove con­tent that was “harm­ful, defam­a­tory, abu­sive, inflam­ma­tory, vul­gar, obscene, and racially, eth­ni­cally or oth­er­wise objec­tion­able.” But Face­book recently changed their terms of ser­vice to only include “con­tent that is hate­ful.” By doing that, Face­book is widen­ing the gap of racism on its site and is telling the world that Holo­caust denial, geno­cide of Jews and the extinc­tion of Israel is socially accept­able. This is note­wor­thy as Face­book is largely a Jewish-owned and oper­ated com­pany. The com­pany seems to have gone to extreme lengths to tol­er­ate con­tent that is harm­ful to Jews and per­haps over­com­pen­sate for its Jew­ish nature.

Another research effort of Oboler’s that received inter­na­tional acclaim is his study of the orange dots on Google Earth that served as replace­ment geog­ra­phy. Each dot linked to the “Pales­tin­ian Remem­bered site,” where users could find fur­ther infor­ma­tion advanc­ing the nar­ra­tive. Oboler’s efforts helped get the replace­ment geog­ra­phy removed. The Google Earth case serves as an exam­ple of how a group can use a com­pany to deliver its ide­olo­gies and indoc­tri­nate their users. Just how ter­ri­ble is that? Well you decide. Esti­mates of Google Earth users range between 200 and 400 mil­lion depend­ing on the source quoted.

While Oboler’s work cur­rently focuses on Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties, his research and con­sul­tancy is of ben­e­fit inter­na­tion­ally. Oboler’s lead­ing role in the Global Forum to Com­bat Anti­semitism is prov­ing that all it would take is a grant to spread his efforts to other coun­tries. Oboler knows that racism and anti­semitism will never go away entirely but also knows that we can­not let it thrive in our com­mu­ni­ties. He has writ­ten about a Face­book hate group called “Israel is not a coun­try”, selec­tive dele­tions in Wikipedia, Holo­caust denial, rec­og­niz­ing hate and the right to free­dom from per­se­cu­tion and may other equally impor­tant topics.

YouTube is another social media site that Oboler iden­ti­fied as hav­ing a tech­nol­ogy flaw. While any­one can report a video that is anti­se­mitic, racist or offen­sive, those mak­ing hate­ful com­ments fall in a loop­hole. For exam­ple, when he tried to report a user’s pro­file that con­tained state­ments like “kill the Jews,” the site asked for the num­ber of the video he was report­ing. Then, it left him at a stand­still since the site would not accept the infor­ma­tion (form) with­out a video num­ber. Response to inap­pro­pri­ate con­tent is also an issue. Even though he reg­is­tered a com­plaint on You Tube’s forum, no one responded.

So what can peo­ple do to report offen­sive con­tent? Mon­i­tor­ing is the sim­plest answer but user per­cep­tions of con­tent that is anti­se­mitic or anti-Zionist also needs to be mea­sured and assessed from a risk-management per­spec­tive in order to mit­i­gate the worse of it. Because anti­semitism is either sub­tle or bla­tant, Oboler’s research shows that users tend to deal with the more obvi­ous hate while ignor­ing sub­tle anti­semitism that appears on sites like Wikipedia.

After only launch­ing the project Decem­ber 1, 2009, CIE has received a num­ber of online anti­semitism inci­dents from com­mu­nity groups in Aus­tralia. Cur­rently, Oboler’s role focuses on inves­ti­gat­ing inci­dents and then pro­vid­ing addi­tional back­ground infor­ma­tion and rec­om­men­da­tions to the con­cerned par­ties. To date, inci­dents have occurred on YouTube, Wikipedia, Face­book and blogs.

Work­ing with the Anti-Defamation Com­mis­sion in Aus­tralia, CIE is teach­ing peo­ple how to iden­tify and respond to online hate. At this stage, the pro­gram focuses on the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, but other schools and com­mu­nity groups have also expressed an inter­est. CIE’s research also pro­vides a basis for iden­ti­fy­ing and respond­ing to tech­nol­ogy flaws. The project is advis­ing orga­ni­za­tions both within Aus­tralia and inter­na­tion­ally through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Global Forum to Com­bat Anti­semitism on changes that are needed and on areas where lob­by­ing would be appropriate.

Now that the influ­ence of the web is huge, web­sites that account for heavy traf­fic like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Wikipedia have a respon­si­bil­ity to keep their sites free of anti­semitism and anti-Zionism. The dan­ger stem­ming from both?  Oboler believes if we fail to deal with this grow­ing social trend that it may be irre­versible in the next five years. He ranks it as the most seri­ous threat Jews face after nuclear Iran.

Need to com­bat online anti­semitism and fos­ter a strong com­mu­nity? Then visit Oboler’s site to learn more, down­load arti­cles or gain advice. Stay abreast of the lat­est research and devel­op­ments by fol­low­ing Oboler via Twit­ter or Face­book.

Related posts:

1. A Salute to Stand­outs Com­bat­ing Anti­semitism and Anti-Zionism
2. A Salute to Stand­outs Com­bat­ing Anti­semitism and Anti-Zionism
3. A Salute to Stand­outs Com­bat­ing Anti­semitism and Anti-Zionism
4. A Salute to Stand­outs Com­bat­ing Anti­semitism and Anti-Zionism
5. Glocks, Crocks & Shades of Gray