Antisemitism Monitor | Week of October 16, 2023

Shortly after the declaration of war by Israel against the terrorist organization Hamas, Elon Musk promoted two users on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that these users’ platforms would be “good” sources of information concerning the war. The accounts that Musk promoted have the handles @WarMonitors and @sentdefender. The latter, says Emerson T. Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab, is “a poisonous account, regularly posting wrong and unverifiable things.” The accounts were key figures in a May 2023 incident where they lied about an explosion near the White House and both @WarMonitors and @sentdefender “explicitly traffic in antisemitism,” writes Ben Samuels of Haaretz. According to The Washington Post, Musk’s original directive to his nearly 160 million followers (his is the most-followed account on the platform) to use these accounts as wartime sources had been seen over 11 million times before he removed it. Business Insider reports that Musk “took issue with a post by the War Monitor” that labeled fighters in Gaza as martyrs. Musk chastised the account for not using “maximally accurate words” in its analysis and deleted his original post soon after. [Read Moment Social Media Manager Andrew Michaels’ article about misinformation here.]

Nearly 100 incidents took place in the few days following the attack by Hamas on southern Israel—nearly triple the number of incidents compared to this same period last year, reports Reuters. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations around London have resulted in at least three arrests for disturbing the peace, as well as significant tension between the groups. London’s police have been asked to increase their vigilance around the city to prevent violence. Despite the increased police presence, numerous incidents have taken place on the streets of London and Manchester that have made the cities’ Jewish communities fear for their safety. Many Jews are choosing to stay home, to keep their children out of school and to forgo wearing kippahs. On October 10, Reuters reported that antisemitic incidents had tripled since the October 7 invasion, and just a few days later, the BBC reported that the incidents had quadrupled. These incidents include physical assaults, verbal abuse and online antagonism and threats. 

At least four Jewish residences in Berlin have been graffitied with Stars of David since the Hamas attack on Israel. The graffiti, writes Jorg Luyken of The Telegraph, is “a chilling reminder of the persecution Jews suffered under the Nazis.” German Jews who normally feel comfortable wearing Stars of David or kippahs in public, or who keep mezuzahs on their front doors, are now changing their behavior in order to ensure their safety, according to Sam Sokol of Haaretz. Top intelligence officials in Germany warn that Hamas’s supporters in the country may move from graffiti, vandalism and threats to violent action against Germany’s Jewish community. Stephan Kramer, the head of the central German state of Thuringia’s domestic intelligence agency, fears that “a kind of Kristallnacht 2.0” is on the horizon. In an act of solidarity and unity in the face of rising antisemitism, 350 people gathered at Berlin’s Frankelufer synagogue on October 13, a day that Hamas deemed “a global day of jihad,” and formed a human shield around it, protecting the building from antisemitic graffiti or violence.