Jennifer's Blog

Some­times one per­son in the scheme of things doesn’t seem influ­en­tial enough to make a dif­fer­ence. Yet, what if that one per­son is pas­sion­ate, coura­geous and ready to take a stand? Con­sider being one of thou­sands of Hous­ton com­muters on U.S. 59 N. when dozens can­vas the Man­dell Bridge with signs that say, “Israel Out of the Mid­dle East” or “Judaism Isn’t a Real Reli­gion” or “Stop Fund­ing Israel Apartheid.” While some rolled their eyes and sighed as they as they inched past this weekly nui­sance, oth­ers stared in dis­be­lief hop­ing some­one would chase them away. Some­one did. Meet a Jew­ish Hous­ton­ian and son of Holo­caust sur­vivors who felt his home­town of over 2.25 mil­lion had no place for haters.

Part 3: Ira Blei­weiss, Bridge Houston

Ini­tially, Ira Blei­weiss was like many other evening com­muters. He drove by fum­ing silently watch­ing Pro­gres­sive Action Alliance (PAA) demon­stra­tors hold signs that demo­nized Israel. But one day in March 2007 all that changed. Fed up with the grow­ing anti­se­mitic tone of the group’s sig­nage, Blei­weiss asked the pro­tes­tors the 64 thou­sand dol­lar ques­tion: Why? They replied that they were just try­ing to stop injus­tice in the world, but Blei­weiss didn’t buy it. So he talked to them about other areas of the world fac­ing unrest and got lit­tle response.

“There are about 70 major con­flicts in the world and none fazed them. Their sole focus was on Israel and Jews. They had no inter­est Dar­fur or the Congo.”

They also didn’t care about the geno­cide in Rwanda where nearly 1 mil­lion peo­ple were hacked to death. And they didn’t care about the pile of bod­ies stack­ing up in law­less Soma­lia.  Sri Lanka wasn’t even on their radar. Nor were the Tamil Tigers. Their sole focus? Israel and Jews. And this tar­geted agenda told Blei­weiss all he needed to know.

The PAA did unspeak­able acts like tried to mis­rep­re­sent Judaism as a satanic cult and used a Tal­mud (Rab­bini­cal writ­ings con­sti­tut­ing Jew­ish laws) like it was black magic. But the group made an already fed up Blei­weiss even angrier when they held a poster of Anne Frank in a kaf­fiyah (tra­di­tional Arab head­dress). Talk about evil. Draw­ing a kaf­fiyah on a young Jew­ish girl that hid from Nazis before meet­ing an early death in a con­cen­tra­tion camp was not a just a lie it was sick. And sug­gest­ing that she’s a Pales­tin­ian sym­pa­thizer or that Israel is a Nazi is even sicker.

Both are unfath­omable and unthink­able. The length of moral inver­sion that this group stoops to is unbe­liev­able. Israel is a coun­try founded in the exact loca­tion of its fore­bears — the Israelites — after the Nazis mur­dered over six mil­lion Jews and two mil­lion oth­ers. So mis­lead­ing peo­ple with doc­tored images, smear cam­paigns and false accu­sa­tions were not only base­less but hate­ful. Blei­weiss knows the hor­rors of the Holo­caust all too well from his par­ents’ per­sonal accounts and from his ser­vice as a docent at Holo­caust Museum Houston.

But Blei­weiss had a plan. He real­ized while orga­niz­ing vol­un­teers that he needed to fill the gap that was occur­ing between false alle­ga­tions on the bridge and the thou­sands of com­muters that might begin to believe it. Blei­weiss knew there was a need to bridge peace across all groups regard­less of race, eth­nic­ity or reli­gion. So he started Bridge Hous­ton, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to com­bat­ing haters and coun­ter­ing their anti-Israel pro­pa­ganda and lies about Zion­ism and Judaism.

First, Bridge Hous­ton dis­rupted the PAA bridge protests numer­ous times by orga­niz­ing groups of pro-Israel activists to arrive ear­lier. Bridge Houston’s vol­un­teers held signs that read, “Co-Exist”, “Teach Peace, Not Hate.” The response was encour­ag­ing. It didn’t take long for com­muters to show signs of sup­port by honk­ing, giv­ing thumbs up and shout­ing exu­ber­antly. Hous­ton com­muters wel­comed a peace­ful alter­na­tive to the hate they had wit­nessed on the Man­dell Bridge.

One of Bridge Houston’s slogan’s is “Peace = Pros­per­ity”. Blei­weiss is a firm believer that if Gazans wanted peace, they would stop launch­ing rock­ets at Israel and start focus­ing on pros­per­ity the way Jor­da­ni­ans did after they signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. He has seen how “Pales­tini­ans” have resorted to viral cam­paigns to smear Israel’s name and demo­nize the coun­try that no Arab armies have ever defeated. He, like Israel, is fight­ing back with the truth to pro­tect its bor­ders and cit­i­zens. He and Bridge Hous­ton encour­age those who love Israel to do the same.

Bridge Hous­ton then took their pro-Israel mes­sage every place anti-Israel protests occurred. Two weeks after fight­ing began between Israel and the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group, Hamas, hun­dreds of anti-Israel sup­port­ers held a rally near the Gal­le­ria on Jan­u­ary 10, 2009. At the time, Hamas had fired more 6,500 rock­ets and mor­tars at south­ern Israeli civil­ian tar­gets over the past three years, and refused to renew an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, prompt­ing an Israeli mil­i­tary response against Hamas.

Sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions, this one included com­par­isons of Jews and Israelis as Nazis, anti­se­mitic slurs and calls for the destruc­tion of Israel. Teenage pro­tes­tors car­ried a large Israeli flag with the words, “Israeli ter­ror­ism,” spray-painted across it in what looked like bloody let­ters. While the Bridge Hous­ton pro-Israel rally held signs that said “Co-Exist” and “Teach Peace not Hate,” the anti-Israel group had signs with bloody hand­prints on Israeli flags anti-Jewish pro­pa­ganda and Nazi swastikas.

Then came an onslaught of anti-Israel bill­boards across Greater Hous­ton. The Hous­ton Coali­tion for Jus­tice and Peace in Pales­tine (HCJPP) quickly blan­keted the city with 10 bill­boards that read, “Pray for Gaza.” The bill­boards fea­tured a cry­ing child, and pointed view­ers to a web­site con­tain­ing revi­sion­ist his­tory, mis­lead­ing sta­tis­tics and bogus alle­ga­tions. The pur­pose? To demo­nize Israel and dele­git­imize its right to exist. And how did the HCJPP afford to launch this lat­est pro­pa­ganda cam­paign with so many bill­boards? The Coun­cil of American-Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR) among oth­ers funds them. And who funds CAIR? The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Con­cerned? You’d have to be mis­in­formed, dead or a jihadist not to be.

So what did Bridge Hous­ton do? They part­nered with Stand­WithUs to tell the greater Hous­ton Israel’s side of the story and designed bill­boards that read SAVE GAZA FROM HAMAS, Teach PEACE, not HATE. The pro-Israel bill­boards fea­ture an Arab boy and an Israeli boy, arm-in-arm, show­ing that coex­is­tence is pos­si­ble to achieve with peace. The signs direct view­ers to Bridge Hous­ton and Stand­WithUs for more infor­ma­tion about Israel, Gaza and the Arab-Israeli con­flict. The only issue now is that there are ONLY two pro-Israel bill­boards against 10 anti-Israel billboards.

The pro­pa­ganda machine of the Pales­tini­ans has got­ten so out of hand that groups that are ultra lib­eral (i.e., we sup­port ter­ror­ists) are crop­ping up solely to demo­nize Israel. The HCJPP announced in Jan­u­ary 2009 that they were stag­ing a “silent protest” in an attempt to equate the Israeli oper­a­tion against Hamas ter­ror­ists in the Gaza Strip with the Nazi geno­cide of Euro­pean Jewry. The loca­tion of the protest was none other than Holo­caust Museum Hous­ton.

To sup­port Israel and those that endured the Holo­caust (both alive and deceased), Blei­weiss orga­nized over 300 Hous­to­ni­ans both Jews and non-Jews along with six rab­bis, Chris­t­ian Zion­ists, sev­eral Holo­caust sur­vivors and U.S. Con­gress­man John Cul­ber­son, R-TX to counter the anti-Israel group. The haters showed up with 200 pro­test­ers, some wear­ing mock-Auschwitz uni­forms hold­ing signs equat­ing Israel to Nazi Ger­many. Unbe­liev­able. The result? Only 200 anti-Israel pro­tes­tors showed and most who reported on the inci­dent saw the attempts to dis­credit Israel and the Holo­caust a failure.

But Blei­weiss has cause for con­cern as there is resur­gence in anti­se­mitic attacks occur­ring against Jews, syn­a­gogues and stu­dents world­wide. He recounts 2009 defac­ing of meno­rahs and syn­a­gogues in Europe not to men­tion the Auschwitz sign that neo-Nazis stole last year. He is see­ing more anti-Israel groups and speak­ers descend on uni­ver­si­ties glob­ally, and recalls a recent inci­dent in Ft. Laud­erdale where pro­tes­tors screamed “The Ovens Weren’t Big Enough” and another in Los Ange­les where pro­tes­tors held signs that read, “Hitler was Right.” For Blei­weiss, this tide of reli­gious intol­er­ance, anti­semitism and vio­lence world­wide is not a ques­tion of will it ever hap­pen again but will it ever hap­pen here.

Recently, Bridge Hous­ton marched in the 32^nd annual “Orig­i­nal” Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Parade held Jan­u­ary 18 to com­mem­o­rate MLK’s staunch sup­port of the State of Israel and to honor the legacy of black-Jewish part­ner­ships. Sup­port­ers for Bridge Hous­ton wore blue and white and car­ried a large ban­ner that read MLK LOVED ISRAEL. The group’s involve­ment was crit­i­cal as the pre­vi­ous year the HCJPP injected an anti-Israel mes­sage into the Black Her­itage Society’s MLK Day parade. By chant­ing, “Pales­tine will be free – from the [Jor­dan] River to the [Mediter­ranean] Sea,” the anti-Israel group paid a great insult to Dr. King’s mem­ory and life’s work. Bridge Hous­ton was deter­mined not to let that happen.

Blei­weiss most recently debunked the notion that kids are starv­ing in Gaza on the Jan­u­ary 25^th edi­tion of the What’s Up Radio Pro­gram with con­ser­v­a­tive host, Terry Lowry. How so? He got stats from UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) that proved Gazan chil­dren fare much bet­ter when it comes to nutri­tion than most of the Arab oil-producing nations around it. He described the stats as eye-opening:

Mal­nu­tri­tion in the Mid­dle East

Source: UNICEF, 2009

Any­one fol­low­ing Israel closely knows the UN has not been much of a friend to Israel since the incep­tion of the Jew­ish state in 1948. The fact Blei­weiss pulled the UN’s stats shows he’s going out of his way to dis­prove false allegations.

Blei­weiss is also con­cerned about col­leges becom­ing more lib­eral and find­ing it fash­ion­able to den­i­grate Israel. He called atten­tion to the fact that Rice Uni­ver­sity Baker Insti­tute invited the con­tro­ver­sial speaker and for­mer Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion and Research for the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity, Hanan Ashrawi, to speak with­out invit­ing an equiv­a­lent Israeli speaker. Ashawari played a promi­nent role in the 1^st Intifada and worked hand-in-hand with for­mer PLO Leader Yasser Arafat. Not quite the role model most law-abiding par­ents want their col­lege stu­dent to hear.

Ashrawi is quoted as say­ing, “I see it (the intifada with its sui­cide bomb­ing that began Sep­tem­ber 20) as an expres­sion of the will of the spirit of the peo­ple that will not suc­cumb to coer­cion or sub­ju­ga­tion. Pop­u­lar protests and acts of resis­tance, polit­i­cal human resis­tance, are nec­es­sary to demon­strate the people’s will.”

Blei­weiss takes issue with the fact that most par­ents would be out­raged if they knew they were bankrolling speak­ers that sym­pa­thized with ter­ror­ists and sui­cide bombers at their kid’s uni­ver­sity. He also shines the light on the fact that Ashrawi is a Chris­t­ian Lebanese woman and she is defend­ing a reli­gion — Islam — that den­i­grates women and is either killing or forc­ing a mass exo­dus on Chris­tians. For instance, Beth­le­hem used to be over 80 per­cent Chris­t­ian 40 – 50 years ago. Today, Beth­le­hem is less than 20 per­cent Chris­t­ian. Assault is on the rise among Chris­tians in Beth­le­hem, and so are reports of Pales­tin­ian mafia extort­ing Chris­t­ian busi­ness own­ers for pro­tec­tion money.

Another alarm­ing fact is what is about to occur next month. The Mus­lim Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion is spon­sor­ing its sixth annual Israel Apartheid month in cities and col­leges world­wide in March. Blei­weiss is get­ting the word out that much of what they are doing is a moral inver­sion by com­par­ing Gaza to South African apartheid, call­ing Israel a Nazi, com­par­ing Gaza to the Holo­caust and ask­ing the world to divest, sanc­tion or boy­cott Israel. He is ask­ing for those who care about jus­tice to come together as a group and not allow this kind of atroc­ity to occur at uni­ver­si­ties and cities around the world.

In his effort to bridge the com­mu­nity, Blei­weiss has found an ally in for­mer Black Pan­ther Quanell X. The activists recently joined forces Octo­ber of 2009 to chal­lenge a speech in Hous­ton by Holo­caust denier, David Irving.

Other recent devel­op­ments along this line include protests at the Israeli Con­sulate that involved stu­dents from the Al-Hadi School of Accel­er­a­tive Learn­ing, an Islamic school in Hous­ton, Texas. While Hous­ton is not expe­ri­enc­ing the same degree of anti-Semitism as reported in some cities like Dear­born, Michi­gan, the FBI claims it has a strong Hamas base. Proof: The U.S. fed­eral gov­ern­ment seized the school along with a Man­hat­tan sky­scraper and four U.S. mosques cit­ing alleged links to the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. All are owned by Iran­ian backed Alavi Foun­da­tion and the Assa Cor­po­ra­tion.

Orga­ni­za­tions like Act! for Amer­ica urge cit­i­zens to step up and find out who owns busi­nesses like the ones seized by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment if you feel they might be mis­us­ing tax­payer fund­ing. In fact, Act! for Amer­ica was one of the first to claim the Ft. Hood shooter would have links to a local mosque, and author­i­ties iden­ti­fied it shortly after the mas­sacre to one just out­side of D.C.

Bridge Hous­ton is proof that one person’s involve­ment mat­ters. But with all the anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and left­ists who cod­dle ter­ror­ists, crim­i­nals and those who fund them, we need everyone’s help. Ready to counter the pro­pa­ganda, stem hatred and stop revi­sion­ism? Visit the Bridge Hous­ton site to learn more, sign up for email alerts and dis­cover other ways you get involved. Stay abreast of the lat­est devel­op­ments by fol­low­ing Bridge Hous­ton on Face­book.

All pho­tos: Jew­ish Her­ald Voice

The Jerusalem Post just char­ac­ter­ized Israel’s prompt response to Haiti’s earth­quake vic­tims as the Israel’s “pub­lic rela­tions knight in shin­ing armor.” That couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth. Israelis and non-Israeli Jews have a long his­tory of help­ing those in need. One of the beliefs rab­bis teach young Jews and new Jews alike is tikkun olam, which means repair­ing the world. Another belief is tzedakah, which means char­ity. And a third and equally impor­tant belief is social jus­tice. Unlike edu­ca­tion in most Arab coun­tries that focuses on hatred towards Jews and the West (Amer­i­cans), the val­ues Jews embrace are about giv­ing, mak­ing life bet­ter and equal­ity to all. To com­part­men­tal­ize Israel’s response as a PR move is ter­ri­bly mis­guided and dis­counts what the Jew­ish state stands for.

Let’s look at the facts. Israel sent more than 250 Israeli doc­tors, med­ical offi­cers, nurses, para­medics, medics, lab and x-ray tech­ni­cians and admin­is­tra­tors soon after news out­lets reported the exten­sive dam­age. The team arrived via an El Al Boe­ing 777 com­plete with a 90-bed field hos­pi­tal that included a full sur­gi­cal unit and the capa­bil­ity of treat­ing 100 patients at a time. Within two days of arriv­ing, the country’s del­e­ga­tion installed a field hos­pi­tal, admin­is­tered emer­gency care from the Port-au-Prince sta­dium and res­cued more than a dozen liv­ing sur­vivors beneath col­lapsed build­ings. But there’s more. Israeli doc­tors with IsraAID-F.I.R.S.T (the Israel Forum for Inter­na­tional Aid) deliv­ered a healthy baby boy in an IDF field hos­pi­tal. The baby’s mother, Gubi­lande Jean Michel, was so thrilled she named her son Israel in honor of the nation who helped her achieve this blessing.

This doesn’t sound like a PR cam­paign to me. And I should know. I have an MA in Pub­lic Rela­tions. What it sounds like is a coun­try that always gets the raw end of the deal no mat­ter what noble acts it serves. While it’s great to see so many coun­tries come together to aid Haiti, the ones who are notice­ably absent are the 22 Arab League nations.

Bash­ing Israel for sav­ing Haitians is a low blow. The world should be hail­ing the efforts by a tiny non-oil pro­duc­ing coun­try that is 640 times smaller than its 22 Arab oil-producing neigh­bors. Yes, the world has spent the last year con­demn­ing Israel on human rights abuses over the Gaza war and the Gold­stone Report. But it has con­ve­niently turned a blind eye on the seven Arab nations that invaded Israel in 1948 and caused the refugee prob­lem, which now is esti­mated at over 4 mil­lion. The world also looked the other way when it came to human rights abuses made by Israel’s Arab neigh­bors such as Saudi Ara­bia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.

I have a mes­sage for any­one talk­ing smack about Israel. Review the his­tory before you launch ver­bal grenades. “Pales­tini­ans” are Arabs that only began using the term when the Pales­tin­ian Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO) came into power in 1964. The PLO has had numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to build a future for the fast grow­ing refugee pop­u­la­tion but repeat­edly chose to leave them in poverty with­out edu­ca­tion, elec­tric­ity and oppor­tu­ni­ties with only one goal in mind: the destruc­tion of Israel. So it started it’s pro­pa­ganda cam­paign, even gain­ing money from gullible West­ern­ers. Neigh­bor­ing Arab coun­tries have used the refugees as polit­i­cal pawns, refus­ing to help the same fam­i­lies they rejected so many years ago. Those that con­demn Israel’s right to pro­tect itself and its cit­i­zens need to reserve judg­ment and exert energy towards coun­tries that have his­tor­i­cally shown dis­re­gard toward human life. And guess what? They are the same coun­tries that are notice­ably absent in aid­ing Haiti.

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 “anti­semitism” 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 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.

The world is full of lov­ing, car­ing indi­vid­u­als that make it a bet­ter place. But it’s also full of hate-mongers, mis­in­formed twerps, anti­semites, anti-Zionists, Holo­caust deniers, ter­ror­ists and other unsa­vory char­ac­ters bent on rewrit­ing his­tory or try­ing to blow it up. Instead of focus­ing on the haters for a change, let’s review the first of a five part series that salutes stand­outs on my radar that have gone beyond the call of duty to com­bat anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and those who recy­cle hate.

Part One: David Apple­tree, JIDF

When Face­book groups started appear­ing hon­or­ing the Mer­caz HaRav mas­sacre, David Apple­tree did some­thing about it. Fed up with eight years of anti­semitism and ter­ror­ism in the wake of the 2^nd Intifada, 9/11, the dis­en­gage­ment from Gush Katif (Gaza), the war with Hezbol­lah, watch­ing groups applaud the Pales­tin­ian gun­man via Face­book was more than he could stand. Each attack made him more deter­mined to do what most large bureau­cra­cies can’t – develop a grass­roots activist orga­ni­za­tion that can instantly expose anti­semites, ter­ror­ists, haters and the like to erad­i­cate hatred and vio­lence online.

First, he turned to large orga­ni­za­tions to get them to address the gap he saw between false report­ing and cor­rec­tion, but vir­tu­ally noth­ing occurred. His expe­ri­ence taught him that large orga­ni­za­tions steeped in bureau­cracy and red tape were less equipped to fight today’s online hate. After all, how can huge orga­ni­za­tions launch effec­tive cam­paigns instantly when sad­dled with cor­po­rate pol­i­tics, multi-level approvals and most impor­tantly, polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness? In an online envi­ron­ment, response time means the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and failure.

So Apple­tree did what any inno­va­tor should – he addressed the lack of enforce­ment on the web in an uncon­ven­tional way. He founded the Jew­ish Inter­net Defense Force (JIDF) in May of 2008 on the premise that he would oper­ate it with the help of a col­lec­tive group of indi­vid­u­als just as con­cerned with erad­i­cat­ing online anti­semitism, vio­lence and hate. And he’s has done just that.  The JIDF is lead­ing the fight against anti­semitism and ter­ror­ism on the web.

Under his guid­ance, the JIDF pro­vides advo­cacy, news and infor­ma­tion to sites like Twit­ter, Face­book, You Tube, Net­worked­Blogs, My Space, Digg, Wikipedia and Google Earth. But that’s not all. It mon­i­tors, exposes and reports online con­tent that is against inter­net com­pa­nies’ terms of ser­vice. And the work doesn’t stop there. The JIDF uncov­ers groups, orga­ni­za­tions and social media sites that either directly or indi­rectly aid and abet haters and ter­ror­ists. In fact, it man­ages to do this with lim­ited resources while still tak­ing a holis­tic approach to advo­cacy by pro­mot­ing Jew­ish pride, knowl­edge and unity. Need more? The JIDF also is a staunch advo­cate for Israel.

Apple­tree recently gave a keynote address at the World Union of Stu­dents Con­gress held recently in Jerusalem. More often than not, the JIDF is quickly gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for expos­ing com­pa­nies that allow haters to mis­use their tech­nol­ogy. And to its credit, the JIDF has quite a few suc­cess sto­ries under its belt. For instance, the JIDF alerted hun­dreds of thou­sands of his online fol­low­ers that Mus­lims were attack­ing pro-Israel Face­book groups by prais­ing Hitler, Hamas and Hezbol­lah and com­par­ing Jews to pigs. It also put Google on the hot seat for fail­ing to block neg­a­tive search rec­om­men­da­tions when users type in the words: Judaism is…

Another notable cam­paign included get­ting Face­book to remove Sheikh Has­san Nazrallah’s fan page. This weekend-long inter­net cam­paign led by the JIDF with the help of Israeli Knes­set Mem­ber, Avi Dichter, proved that online activism makes a difference.

JIDF sent action alerts to approx­i­mately 100,000 peo­ple via social net­work­ing sites and email, urg­ing them to press Face­book to enforce its pol­icy of remov­ing con­tent that is “fake, hate­ful or threat­en­ing to oth­ers, or that rep­re­sents or pro­motes rec­og­nized ter­ror­ist organizations.”

Another tri­umph occurred when JIDF uncov­ered dozens of Face­book groups and hun­dreds of pages of Holo­caust denial and was able to get Face­book to revise their poli­cies and not make the con­tent avail­able to 13 coun­tries where Holo­caust denial is ille­gal. The JIDF admits that more peo­ple need to press com­pa­nies — Face­book and Google included — that pro­vide a fer­tile breed­ing ground for ter­ror­ists, anti­semites and haters.

Because the JIDF is lean and not lay­ered, it has the flex­i­bil­ity to launch an effec­tive cam­paign at a moment’s notice. It had no qualms about pub­li­ciz­ing Ynet News for spread­ing anti-Israeli hate, The Huff­in­g­ton Post for giv­ing a voice to a Pro-Hamas, anti-Israel activists that pro­fess hate to Israel and Israelis and even Pres­i­dent Barak Obama for blam­ing Jews for dam­ag­ing the peace process. Let’s be hon­est. It’s high time to hold the real per­pe­tra­tors account­able and the JIDF is doing just this while remain­ing per­son­able, authen­tic and consistent.

In a way, the JIDF is about the clos­est thing that Israel has to a Jew­ish Caped Cru­sader. Heck, it’s doing such a great job that both Hamas and Hezbol­lah know of the JIDF. Only days ago the JIDF uncov­ered a Nazi Forum in Ger­many as one of its vis­i­tors came from the same site. The JIDF posted the users IP address for all to see. Gotcha!

Are you tired of ter­ror­ism, anti­semitism, holo­caust deniers and the like? Want to get involved with a front­line orga­ni­za­tion that com­bats anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and has no tol­er­ance for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness? Then visit the JIDF site to learn more, sign up for email alerts and dis­cover other ways you can get involved. Let JIDF here from you via Twit­ter, Face­book or any of the other sites men­tioned sites earlier.