I got on MySpace in 2004 to engage with friends and share music. Later, I moved with the masses to a stripped down, uber popular, social media site, Facebook, with hopes of local events and groups, relevant to my interests. Even later, I joined Instagram, offering a less toxic environment than the clearly toxic Facebook environment.

Social media moved away from providing what I wanted. It shifted to things I didn’t want. Facebook emphasized a marketplace, akin to Craigslist. Instagram emphasized a feed of content they decided you want, burying your friends’ posts. I personally wanted the ability to promote and share music, easily, like on MySpace. Instead I got infinite requests for time-sucking games and fake accounts, advertising porn, malware and scams.

I noticed that I was spending more and more time on social media, but my reasons for joining in the first place had escaped me. Finding an event for the weekend, turned to trying to educate bigots, which turned into pointless arguments and name calling. Which leads to this post. Which I will preface by talking about Jews, a topic important to me, as I am one.

Let’s face it, Jews, or Israelites as we should be called, are really bad at controlling narrative. In spite of being regularly told we control the media and politicians, we can’t even control our own labels or schedules. The Torah calls us “Israelites” and ‘The Tribe of Israel.’ There is no mention of Jews, Semites or Zionists in any bible. We seceded the label Israelite long ago, and accepted we are Jews, because they say so. While our beliefs pointed to a week that starts on Sunday and “rests” on Saturday (Friday night til Saturday night), Israel-aside, we start our weeks on Monday, and partake in legal battles to relax during holy times, to still face conspiracies of control.

Jews face social systems that align against us, only to be told we create and control these systems.

Today there are 15 Million Jews left on Earth. Jews make up less than 0.2% of the total population. In the next 10 years there will be more Service and Industrial Robots than Jews. While a small population, Jews continue to be the most attacked religion in US, mischaracterized by television, unfairly treated by media, and repeatedly told that we are not victims, because of timeless conspiracies, some punching up, others treating us as non-human.

Jews believe in questioning and studies. Some of us hope to educate the bigotry out of the worlds’ most ignorant. Other Jews want to look past the bigots, towards the average person, who is surely caring and moderate. Historically, neither approach has worked well. And in a society where popularizing rhetoric is more important than reality, trying these same tactics, rather than trying to get some control over how language is used against us, is the definition of insanity.

Jews are losing a war on language, again, because we are, again, abstaining from fighting. We try to handle evil, but not the banality of evil that causes graver issues. We wrestle angels, but not the bystanders watching.

It is increasingly evident that social media holds a lot of blame for antisemitic language, as well as inciting violence rather than quelling it. Social media pushes popular sentiments, not truth or peace. If genocide is trendy, social media will advocate it. Any frequent internet user has seen Jewish genocide is popular. So much so, the idea of Godwin's law — the phenomena that comparisons to Nazis, Hitler and the Holocaust, are increasingly probable with time — rules discourse. Everything, and I mean everything, has been compared to the systematic murder of Jews. And yet, Jews are still told they control social media, and advocating for Jews or a Jewish state must be paid by dark forces. “Hasbara” if you support Jews. Hero if you’re violent towards them.

In 2016, Meta learned I am a Jew. And not just a Jew, an Israeli Jew. Things got uncomfortable for me.

And before I even get into my anecdotal evidence that social media, esp Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram, largely inflate antisemitism, I’ll address denial.

“Meta is owned by Mark Zuckerberg!” One person doesn’t control a company. Yet Jews are disproportionately seen as deciders within companies, compared to non-Jews, because of age-old conspiracy. Zuckerberg is associated with Facebook decisions, more so than Dorsey is associated with Twitter decisions. Jews are easier to blame. And we all know one person rarely decides the actions of a company. But it is easier to yell at Zuck or an imagined shadowy board of Jews, than it is to yell at the actual board, almost always containing 0 Jews, but actually deciding Facebook policy. It is easier to look at three Jewish scientists who worked on an RNA vaccine, than the 100s of others equally cited, non-Jewish scientists, or the two Turkish-German scientists actually credited with RNA vaccine discovery. Jews are blamed, even when public info points to others at fault.

“Facebook is fact checking content.” Sometimes. After a while. But even with this biased, inaccurate fact checking, it is literally impossible for a fair conversation. We are talking about 0.2% of the population vs an unknown portion of 99.8% of the population. Luckily, most seem to know that fact checking is nonsense, after many ideas once conspiracy, turned out to be reality. If Facebook was around in 1939, it would insist the Nazis did not want to exterminate Jews, and ban anyone who said so as “bullying.”

“Social media censors antizionist voices.” This is simply an unfounded, popular lie, that exposes the reality that the oppressors of Jews outnumber Jews. Bigots feel a need to victimize themselves. Neo-Nazis and antizionists alike have decided that “goy” (non Jew) is an offensive word, that Jews believe we are the ‘chosen people’ (a Catholic belief, not Jewish), and that they are just in exposing Jews and Israel. So why not believe that 1 in 100 calls to “Kill the mf-ing zionists” was removed because of ‘Jewish supremacy’ and not actual standards? So for every post I show where a Jew is unnecessarily censored, I can show 10 where an antisemite is not, in spite of violent threat, harassment, and more, nonsensically treated as politically motivated.

Bottom line is that Meta is a company. Their investors understand that antisemitism is profitable. Likewise, antisemites have a clear understanding that they can no longer say, “Jews will not replace us” with open praise from moderates (both left and right extreme ends of the shoe horse do still praise this rhetoric). Like Wilhelm Marr, bigots adopted and pushed language to enable bigotry. For Marr, Jews were Semites. Today, Jews are Zionists. And if you tell an antisemite they’re bigoted, they will spit their rehearsed, tired line, “Antizionism is not antisemitism!” like a bodily reflex. Nevermind that they’re arguing about the only Jewish state in the world, and ranting about where Jews should and should not live. Nevermind they have never defended Jews, or give solvency for social issues beyond “blame the Jews.” It is not antisemitic, because they said so.

To really argue that “antizionism is not antisemitism,” critics should give a single reason for hyper fixation on Israel, a small country. They wont, or at best, say Israel is stealing their tax money (obvious nonsense). To argue “antizionism is not antisemitism,” critics should not rant about how “all [Israelis, Israhell, Zionists, Zi*nazis, or whatever new derogatory term for Jew they came up with that decade] [kill innocent people, want to steal land, are stealing their tax money etc.]”. Doing so is clearly a huge generalization, usually from blood libel, that I would not wish upon any people. To really argue “antizionism is not antisemitism,” critics should have a defined answer of what they want — 1 state, 2 state, dead Jews, or a religious premonition — and how they want to get there. Instead, they just criticize with no solvency, and no understanding of the conflict or Jews.

The worst of the worst “woke antisemites” — an oxymoron I’m using to describe these bigots, who have learned the recent language that passes their bigotry as progressivism — employ new tactics on top of the old. The “blood libel” has not gone away. It’s move to Blood Libel 2.0. These new tactics focus on:
1. Claiming their anti Jew beliefs support Arabs, without any explanation
2. Claiming Jews, one of the many victims of Nazis, are ‘the real Nazis’
3. Additional victim blaming, like we are only suffering terrorism because we funded Arab Universities
4. Obscuring language to vilify Israel in the IL-PA conflict, to a point where meaning is completely gone.

In 2020, I began responding to antisemites. Passionately. I quickly learned, Meta defends antisemites in numerous ways. They allow blatantly violent content, so long as it vaguely resembles a “Pro-Palestinian cause”. Of course, this is the “faux-pro-Palestinian Cause” of ~10%, like Hamas, Fatah and people far removed from Palestine. It is not what I’d call the “real pro-Palestinian” beliefs of 90%, including humanitiarians, Arab Israeli policy makers and the average Arab Israeli (who often do not want to identify as Palestinian). Studies repeatedly show the Palestinians the internet speak of blame Arab leaders for the conflict. Yet the faux-pro cause ignores these polls completely, insisting demonizing Jews and Israel is the only chance of Freeing Palestine. So Meta allows debunked information to spread to Millions of real people without fact checking. Finally, Meta defends antisemetism by banning Jews who defend Jews.
* I write “banning Jews who defend Jews” with the knowledge that it is not common for non-Jews to speak in solidarity with Jews. There are of course exceptions, like most Palestinian charity leaders, a small group of politicians wanting Jewish vote, and increasingly vocal Muslims against extremist views about 72 virgins.

I truly dont like to flag content. Jews make museums about their haters. But I noted that I was getting week, two week, and now month long bans by defending Jews. Meta guidelines insist that the violent vitriol used to attack “zionism” does not merit response from Jews, even nonviolent response. If you are an antizionist, go ahead and preach violence, and attack a minority (0.2%) with baseless claims. Just say Israel instead of Jew! If you are a Jew, you are not allowed to respond to these baseless claims and outright bigotted insanity with emotion. That’s harassment. Jews will always be the instigator to Facebook, and content moderators will care more about calling someone a “racist” than the content that prompted that (correct) assessment.

I’m not of the opinion that Jews should stand silently in the face of our bigotry. I also know I have never been violent, or condoned violence, even if Facebook moderators disagree. So I will start with a few examples of my “violent” posts that were flagged, within minutes, providing me various bans. Unfortunately, you can not see the comments I’m responding to, as these were actually removed for being violent (eventually). You can choose to believe my anger was insighted by inflammatory posts from bigots, calling to kill Jews, or you can believe I’m a “fake victim.”

Sure, mY cOmMeNt Is ViOlEnT. It is far less violent than the nonsense rant insisting Jews worked with the Nazis. But, again, Meta condoned one way violence, against Jews, but not against “Jew haters.” You are not allowed to call out a bigotted lie on social media, so me calling someone a “Jew hater” and “dumber than rocks” is inapppropriate violence, and calling actual Holocaust victims “Nazis” is perfectly fine. So was insisting Jews kill babies. The post I responded to was removed not because of the content, but because the poster accidentally said the word “Jew” instead of “Zionist.” As you’ll see in the next section, the word “zionist” would have given them a pass. Or even just misspelling or spacing out the word Jew, so it can appear to be about something else when the moderator barely glosses over and decidses “It’s against Zionism, not Jews! They just used the wrong word.”

And here I am, again being violent. I contested it, but Facebook unanimously agreed, it is violent for Jews to respond when people tell us what we can eat. No wonder I’m banned! You simply are not allowed to respond when someone says Jews shuld not eat hummus, because Jews “stole” the idea of hummus. You certainly can not call someone a sociopath for declaring what Jews can and can’t eat. They’re allowed to do that! Remember, stay calm when bigots demand Jews dont eat and dance, because that’s their nonoffensive, politically motivated view. You should also ignore any mention of Holy War, because recognizing it is Islamaphobic. And def do not mention that Fish and Chips are a Jewish invention, and we do not give a crap if anyone else eats it, because it is food, and you would have to be a disgusting bigot to be so invested in what you believe certain races can not eat.

Dont believe me? I encourage you to experiment for yourself. Post something wildly antisemetic on social media (esp Reddit or Facebook), then post something in defense of Jews and/or Israel. See the response. See if either post gets deleted. Spoiler: Defending Jews will more likely get you banned than calling to “kill Zionazis.”

I could go on incriminating myself with my own posts that are deemed “violent” by Facebook, not me. I can not find a single post that I wrote that actually called to hurt or kill someone. That’s not me. So below I will include just 1 day of screenshots from posts from two popular Facebook groups, that aren’t going away anytime soon.

The screenshot above is from a violent page simply named Palestine. They regularly post caricatures of Jews akin to the Elders of Zion, and such false “facts” that the page looks farce. I mean, if you were a Jew wanting to show just how insane the “antizionists” are, you’d make a page like this. Sadly, people buy the lies. Like, they claim random people are celebrities based on minor resemblance, and their followers curse at you if you correct them. They post Jewish artifacts, claiming they’re Palestinian, disregarding Hebrew writing on those artificats. They say there was peace between Jews and Arabs in British-occupied Palestine, in spite of the easily referenced, barbaric attacks on Jews, nonstop, before the state of Israel was created.

They also learned that one simple trick to not getting banned us Jews hate. Wrap a Star of David with 2 blue lines, and suddenly a post is no longer antisemetic or violent. It is now a political statement against Zionism. Ta da! It “just so happens” that the evil, apartheid, colonial ZIONISTS are all Jews, with prominent noses, often in religious Jewish garb, depicted killing and stealing. But it is not antisemetic, because they say so.

‘What Star of David? That’s a Zionist Star! Dont you know the Zionists wear symbols to pretend to be Jews. Besides, we cant be talking about Jews, because then this would be problematic, not progressive. So we have to change the word Jew to Zionist. Then we can be as violent as we want.’

As you can see, that post was NOT violent. Santa Clause throwing a rock at an IDF soldier is not violent. It’s actually the true story of Santa, who violently resisted his Jewish enemies, as brave soldiers burned tires and waved their flag defiantly. Remove the 2 blue lines around the Jewish star and it might be considered violent.

Below is example 2, from the most illegiitimate Facebook page I know, inappropriately titled “Jewish Voices for Peace.” The implication is obvious: It is a group that thinks Jews are primarily not for peace. It follows in the footsteps of pages like “Voices for Gaza.” And, of course, the only way to truly be peaceful is by publically calling to kill Israelis and praising literal terrorists.

I wish I could stop each “JVP” follower from posting to first ask, “Do you truly believe this person on a civilian killing spree was asking victims if they are Jews or Zionists?” Because of course they dont. The killers dont hide that they are targetting Jews. It’s their Western supporters who use rhetoric to replace Jews with Zionists. It’s not people involved with the conflict who believe “volunteering” includes rewriting Wiki pages so that the zionist Jews are seen less favorably. That revisionism is happening far away from the conflict.

Clearly virtually none of the JVP followers are Jewish, or even pretending to be. So I wish I could ask each “JVP” follower if they’d join another group named after a race or religion they don’t belong to. JVP’s Facebook page was founded in Lebanon, where there used to be Jews. Maybe one of these Lebanese Jews time traveled to make the page? Amongst all the local chapters, where admins are visible, not a single Jew can be found. Maybe their Jews are in hiding, and using non Jews as a decoy, because Jews are so violent? These “for peace” pages regularly has it’s devout followers chanting about the evil Jews, some not bothering to obscure their meaning with words like “zionism.” The pages do not care. They do not delete said content, and regularly encourage it.

Others are finding this reality like me. Will they delete their Meta accounts? Not anytime soon. We rely on social media too much. They make backup accounts. And more backup accounts.

Arab Israeli, Yoseph Haddad, wrote “Palestinian media of Hamas, Gaza Now, which publishes fake news about Israel to millions around the world, breaks its own record when it publishes a random picture of soldiers in a store in Hebron and claims that they attacked it and stole candy. What a ridiculous lie. Here is a recent picture of the soldiers feeding a Palestinian boy who got lost, but probably soon you’ll claim IDF soldiers kidnapped him and gave him food to poison…a bunch of liars!”

Yoseph Haddad’s posts were deleted. Gaza Now remains.

This isnt new. Above you can see a screenshot of “mediamaccabees” being flagged by Instagram, for defending Jews. A Conservative Jew with a handle “Rym Group” on Instagram has had her page deleted. I certainly dont agree with either page on everything. But I can safely say I have never seen content from either that amounts to violence. It does not need a comparison to the highly violent content posted by “antizionists.” BlackandJewishUnity was banned, no one’s even sure why. The list goes on. And on.

Recently, some Jews pointed out that CAIR publically called for the relase of terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, literally involved with 9/11. A too-late wave of Jewish outrage came after Jews were taken hostage inside of a temple by a man demanding the same terrorist, Aafia, be freed. FBI and media outlets (such as BBC) insisted that it was not antisemetic for Jews to be taken hostage inside a synogugue. Because they say so. No explanation necessary. They wrote this lie, knowing that like CAIR leaders, the hostage taker insisted Jews and Israel were controlling US, and that ‘dark money’ had decided the fate of someone who shot at US soliders. CAIR’s posts, webinars and funding remain untouched, including brave talks that called “Zionist synogugues” their enemy and the condescending “apology” after violence they caused.

Finally, Hillel Neuer is having his page deleted for the crime of calling out disproprotionate actions by the UN on Israel, compared to other countries. If you took any of my words literally about my posts being violent, let me be clear here — There is absolutely no semblance of a false or violent statement in any content Hillel has produced. There is no case to be made that Hillel has broken Facebook guidelines. He’s a very kind, professional adult, who is clearly fighting for a better world. But he’s also Jewish, and that is a crime to Facebook.

Sign a petition to help Hillel, here: https://www.change.org/p/mark-zuckerberg-tell-facebook-don-t-delete-hillel-neuer-s-account

Update 1: Hillel’s accounts were restored. And it just took tons of negative press against Meta, and not a single care from them prior. But they apologized. Progress or reluctant agreement to not censor Jews?
Update 2: After having my account for less than a month, I was banned again. This time for calling a bot a bot. Facebook does not care that they have a rampant issue with bots, but does if you mention it. Find the violent threat I made against a bot that was programmed to share random anti-Israel content on JPost.