Israelis Use Social Media To Mock Victims Of Gaza

During the summer, Israel launched a brutal military offensive against the Gaza Strip which left more than 2,000 Palestinian civilians (including 500 children) dead, and tens of thousands of homes destroyed.

In response, Israel relies on paid and unpaid spokespeople to cast such clouds of doubt over each incident, so that every death is classed as disputed.

Israeli students were being paid to troll social media and counter any and all criticism of Israel. The ‘Hasbara’ rooms are units directed by the Office of the Israeli PM, and students are paid $2,000 a year to create the impression of social media support for Israel, and to denounce stories critical of the state.

There are also unofficial groups, such as The Hasbara Network, that perform the same function.

Then there were unpaid, predominantly young, Israelis who were just in it for kicks.

So throughout the war, Israeli social media buzzed with bilious denunciations of the Palestinian death toll and the horror unfolding across the Gaza Strip.

Israeli game-makers came up with the game ‘Bomb Gaza‘ so android phone users could join in the fun on their phones.

The Times of Israel published a blogpost entitled “When Genocide is Permissible,” which posited a yes answer to the question:

If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?

A Facebook page titled “The People of Israel Demand Vengeance!” set up in the wake of the murder of three Israeli teens saw fellow Israeli teens post sun-drenched selfies, no different than so many others filling Instagram…except for the fact they are holding placards calling for “Death to All Arabs”, or the one below, which reads: Hating Arabs is Not Racism, It’s Moral Values.

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And on the same page, this reaction to the kidnap and murder of teenage Palestinian Mohammed Khadir, in a so-called ‘revenge’ attack that saw the boy forced to drink petrol and burned alive:

A002Meanwhile, offline, signs were going up on apartment buildings across West Jerusalem reading: “There Are No Innocents in Gaza.”

In the midst of all this were the Taglit-Birthright tours.

Taglit-Birthright organizes free group trips for young Jewish adults to Israel to claim their birthright. More than 400,000 people from 66 countries have participated in Birthright trips since the organization was founded in December 1999.

The organization refused to cancel its tours over the seven week offensive against Gaza, despite 30 to 40 per cent of July participants reportedly withdrawing from their planned trips.

So, a Tumblr was set up, photoshopping gleeful birthrighters into scenes of Gaza devastation in an effort to highlight the contradiction between Israel’s public image and private horror, but also the callous social media behavior detailed above.

The slideshow below features images from the satirical Tumblr account:


How did Israel sink to such depths? One observer lays it plain:

All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp – all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word “fascism,” which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse.

This observer is Israeli. This observer is Gideon Levy, writer and editorial board member of Haaretz newspaper, whose grandparents fled to Israel in the 30′s as Nazi Germany annexed Czechoslovakia. A man who dare not use the word fascism lightly, uses it now – despite receiving threats of death and violence from his fellow citizens for so doing.

Gideon is joined by those 56 Israeli reservists who refused call up as a protest against the assault on Gaza, by the five thousand that attended the anti-war protest this week in Tel Aviv, by the likes of former IDF pilot Yonatan Shapiro who continue to speak out against Israel’s illegal occupation and war crimes.

However, with 86 percent of Israelis opposing the ceasefires that could have brought the massacre in Gaza to an earlier end, it is only this brave minority of Israelis who stand apart from the fascist crowd. Crowds like those in the video below, who cheer the slaughter of innocents while draped in their national flag.