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| Type of site | Online activism, Israel advocacy |
|---|---|
| URL | www.thejidf.org |
The Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) is an online pro-Israel advocacy organization that uses social media to mobilize support for campaigns against websites and Facebook groups that promote or praise what it regards as Islamic terrorism and antisemitism.
Organization and methods
According to the JIDF, the organization "formed as a grassroots effort in 2000, to mount mass e-mail campaigns, in response to the outbreak of the Second Intifada." The website is run by a person who identifies as "David Appletree." According a reporter from The Jewish Week in 2008 he "will not say if that is his true surname" in an article in which he said his Facebook account was terminated because the website did not believe he was using his real name. He also told The Jewish Week that he maintains approximately 40 Facebook groups focused on combating terrorism and antisemitism.
The group says they "specifically target hateful material or material which blatantly promotes hatred or violence, no matter where it can be found." The "About" page of the website says "We believe in direct action both to eradicate the problems we face online and to create the publicity that will cause those with companies like Facebook and Google to take the needed action themselves." The group focuses its attention on websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google Earth, and Misplaced Pages. The JIDF has redirected anti-Israel Facebook groups to other pages it prefers and changed the names of Muslim members of such groups to "Mossad collaborator," among other pranks. A website spokesman told Haaretz that they don't break any laws and that the JIDF "prefers the terms 'seize control,' 'take over' or 'infiltrate' to 'hack.'"
The organization's website also explains that it is "against ALL mosques, as they are tributes to the genocidal pedophile false prophet (idol) Mohammed," says the "ideology" of Islam is "clearly one of hatred and violence" and argues that the faith "is determined to dominate the world, just as Nazism was." In October 2008, the German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) called the JIDF "self-appointed warriors against online-hatred." The article said the JIDF site provided links to a website which "draws a picture of Islam as a religion of hatred". CNN wrote that the JIDF is "sometimes guilty of sweeping generalizations", and offered up as evidence an article published on Facebook critic Brian Cuban's site in 2008 in which a JIDF "representative" was quoted as saying "99.9 percent of Muslims hate us" and that Barack Obama's church at the time was "racist and antisemtic" and "has supported Hamas and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan." CNN quoted a JIDF "spokesperson named David, who requested his last name be withheld because his group has received death threats," as saying "he would rather people not focus on those specific quotes for several reasons, including the fact that it was an "informal interview" and Cuban 'would not let us correct any of our statements after we quickly answered him to help him meet his deadline.'"
During 2007, a controversy on Facebook was reported involving the removal of various options from "the drop-down list of places members can use to show where they live." A Facebook group, "Palestine Is not a country ... Delist it from Facebook as a country!", had been formed in 2007 which petitioned Facebook management to remove Palestine from Facebook's list of countries. Several Facebook groups formed to support or oppose this removal including "Israel is not a country! Delist it from Facebook as a country". Matt Hicks of Facebook responded by saying: "As long as the groups meet our terms of use, they can stay up. But we encourage users to report anything that is racist or objectionable. The JIDF claimed the "Israel is not a Country" group was antisemitic and mobilized supporters to complain to Facebook in an effort to have it deleted. After Facebook refused to shut the group down, the JIDF said it somehow took control of the group in July 2008. As of August 2010, two groups with the same names were active on Facebook.
According to a November 2008 article in Haaretz, the JIDF forwarded lists of Facebook groups that it deemed promoted hatred or violence to the website's administrators, hoping they would be removed. According to a man named "David" quoted in the Haaretz article, Facebook either did nothing or waited months before taking action. "David" told Haaretz that his group then decided to try to technically "intercept Facebook groups and make them impossible to access." The JIDF was particularly upset about Facebook groups praising the shooting of students at Jerusalem's Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in March 2008..
In July 2009, the JIDF and Avi Dichter took credit for successfully pressuring Facebook into removing a fan page for Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The JIDF said it mobilized supporters to complain about the page to Facebook's owners. The JIDF website claims that it deleted the vast majority of a pro-Hezbollah fan page's 118,000 members. The JIDF sites says it has removed more than 100 antisemitic groups from Facebook. The JIDF said in September 2009 that it took over the Facebook group "Eliminate Israel from Being" and deleted more than 5,000 members before Facebook management "returned control of the site to its administrators."
The JIDF has criticized Facebook for allegedly condoning and hosting Holocaust denial groups on its network. The group has charged that it's hypocritical of Facebook to remove groups that support the KKK, for instance, while not removing what it considers Holocaust denial sites and has vowed to keep putting pressure on Facebook over the matter.
Elsewhere on the Web
The group says it publishes guides to teach users how to identify hate sites and seeks to have content removed from other venues like Youtube. JIDF members also edit Misplaced Pages articles related to Israel. JIDF's measures "include reporting Misplaced Pages editors it claims are anti-Israel, and taking action against entries seen as including one-sided or false accounts of the history of Israel and the Mideast conflict," Haaretz wrote. The group has sought to have Palestinian villages listed as having been destroyed during the foundation of Israel removed form Google Earth and has campaigned against the description of "Palestine" as a country.
The JIDF organized a pro-Gilad Shalit campaign in 2009 on the social networking site Twitter. During the Tweet4Shalit campaign Twitter users drove the Gilad Shalit name to the second highest trend on the day of his 23rd birthday. Tweets for Shalit ranged from the demand to "Free Shalit" to requests for international supervision of the case.
The JIDF was recognized by the JTA as one of the "100 Most Influential Jewish Twitterers" and was ranked as the top-ranked Jewish Newswire.
See also
- Internet activism
- Internet Haganah
- HonestReporting
- Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
References
- ^ Stephanie Rubenstein (2008-07-30). "Jewish Internet Defense Force 'seizes control' of anti-Israel Facebook group". Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Post.
- Internet activist no friend of Facebook The Jewish Week
- "JIDF Response to Misplaced Pages". JIDF. 2008-08-05.
- "About the JIDF". JIDF. 2010-09-02.
- ^ Morrison, Sarah (2008-03-04). "Jewish Activist Battles For Israel on Facebook". Israel National News. Retrieved 2008-08-23. Cite error: The named reference "Jewish Activist Battl" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- Morrison, Sarah (2008-07-27). "Jewish Activists Hack Anti-Semitic Facebook Group". Israel National News. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
- ^ Moore, Matthew (2008-07-31). "Facebook: 'Anti-Semitic' group hijacked by Jewish force". London: The Telegraph.
- ^ Benjamin Hartman (2008-11-14). "An online battle for Israel's legitimacy". Haaretz.
- JIDF website on Islam
- Christoph Gunkel, Antisemitismus im Web 2, Frankfurter Allgemeine FAZ.NET 14. Oktober 2008. Quotes are taken from the authorised English translation, Facebook and Google Earth: Anti-Semitism in Web 2.0 published at Zionism On The Web, seen 22 November 2008
- Lisa Respers France, Facebook urged to remove Holocaust-denial groups, CNN.com, May 8, 2009.
- ^ Zerbisias, Antonia (2007-05-03). "Playing Politics on Facebook". Toronto: The Star.
- Social media users successfully face down Nasrallah on Facebook, Jerusalem Post, July 29, 2009
- Lungen, Paul (2008-09-25). "Anti-Israel Facebook groups infiltrated". Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 2008-09-25.
- Call for hate groups to be taken offline, The National, Dubai, June 15, 2009
- Is Facebook Changing its Tune on Holocaust Deniers?, CS Monitor, May 11, 2009
- 'Facebook doesn't bar hateful content against Jews', Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2009
- 'Tweet4Shalit' campaign reaches No. 2 spot in Twitter, JPost, August 27, 2009
- Happy Birthday for Gilad Shalit?, Israel National News, August 5, 2009
- 100 Most Influential Jewish Twitterers, JTA, May 1, 2009