Stop. Step back. Look at what you wrote. Do you mean to say that and if so, what does it say about you? This advice should guide every social media post and comment – and, of course, any written discourse, including this column.
Lately, I have seen increasing numbers of social media posts where someone whose profile is dedicated to messages of peace has felt free to write the vilest diatribes against Israel, Israelis, Jews, and what has now been inelegantly truncated to “Zios” (Zionists).
Some of the posts are clearly produced by bots, not humans; but behind every bot, there is funding and intent. The intent of the anti-Israel posts is evil: to poison minds. It is a powerful attack on the country. Social media has become another war front, as if seven physical fronts, cyberwar, and lawfare were not enough.
The trigger for this column – and I could use the word “trigger” in more than one sense – was a long thread of comments on a news story about Sunday’s London Marathon. More specifically, it was a report on two pro-Palestinian activists from a group with the very entitled name “Youth Demand” who threw red powder paint as they jumped in front of runners crossing London Bridge.
The group is apparently linked to the Just Stop Oil environmental movement because intersectionality is alive and kicking and, in that parallel universe, if you want to stop the use of fossil fuels, you need to also erase Israel (but not any of the oil-producing Arab nations) from the map.
It’s not only the logic that’s twisted. The thinking is also perverted. One Facebook commentator with a Jewish surname noted that she had been “supporting the Batman runner. Running in memory of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, two innocent babies who loved Batman and were kidnapped and then throttled to death by Palestinians in Gaza – the people Youth Demand are representing.”
The comment, in the worst way of social media, kicked off a string of hateful remarks. One smartass – or at least ass and useful idiot – wrote: “How do babies love Batman?” and a string of nasty comments against Israel and the IDF. I should probably have taken my own advice and stayed out of the fray, but it’s hard to let someone get away with ridiculing the deaths of Israelis in general, and these two children in particular.
Ariel and his baby brother, Kfir, who were abducted on October 7, 2023, in the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad invasion and mega-atrocity, were murdered in Gaza along with their mother, Shiri. Their father, Yarden, was wounded and abducted separately and returned in February from over a year of captivity in a Hamas terror tunnel under a hostage-terrorist release deal.
I wrote: “Ariel was four years old when he was kidnapped from his home. He was a very enthusiastic Batman fan. His brother Kfir was just nine months old, so, you’re right: he might not have been a Batman fan even if he wore Batman shirts. And he will never get the chance to grow up and love Batman or butterflies or anything else his older brother liked. (He did love the family dog, Tonto, a rescue dog that was also killed by the Gazan terrorists.)”
The Batman comment was one of the mildest. Many comments, in keeping with a prevalent trend and parroting Hamas’s lies, blamed the deaths of the Bibas boys and their mother on Israel itself, claiming that they were killed in an Israeli air strike. The allegation is not only that Israeli planes killed the hostages but that this was deliberate.
Assuming, just for argument’s sake, that Israel’s autopsy reports were wrong and the Bibases hadn’t been strangled – although I believe the autopsy evidence over the claims of the Hamas terrorists – I still don’t see how anyone purporting to be a decent, moral person can justify the abduction of these three from their home on that dreadful Saturday, Kfir in diapers, and Ariel sucking on a pacifier with a bewildered look on his young, innocent face.
THE HAMAS-LED, Iranian-backed invasion and assault on October 7, 2023, when 1,200 were murdered and 250 abducted to Gaza, culminated in such atrocities that a new word was created to describe it: kinocide.
The word was coined by the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. It is used to describe the deliberate targeting of families in their homes – what is meant to be a safe space – to increase the terror. The terrorist invaders purposely tortured, raped, and murdered family members in front of each other to intensify the pain; exploiting tight familial bonds to heighten the horror.
Speaking at this week’s JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, commission founder and chair Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy said the term had been decided on together with international human rights expert and former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler.
While the Nazis hid their crimes, Hamas bragged about theirs
Unlike the Nazis, who hid their crimes against humanity, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists boasted of theirs. Elkayam-Levy noted that terrorists had recorded themselves on GoPros and mobile phones and shared the footage in real-time. In some incidents, the terrorists uploaded the footage of attacks and murders onto the social media profiles of their victims so that the victims’ friends and families were exposed to the horrors as they were taking place, but powerless to stop them. Add digital violence to physical and emotional violence.
The murders weren’t random but were carried out systematically to amplify the most vicious effects, Elkayam-Levy said.
The commission’s report, titled “Kinocide: The Weaponization of Families,” can be found on the website of the Dvora Institute for Gender and Sustainability Studies, founded and headed by Elkayam-Levy. “The report identifies ‘kinocide’ as a global issue, drawing parallels to similar atrocities in Iraq, Syria, Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar, and other conflict zones. These findings underscore the urgent need for international recognition and action to prevent and address such targeted violence,” the Dvora Institute site notes.
Sadly, terrible atrocities continue to take place, including massacres in Sudan and the mass murder of Christians by jihadists elsewhere in Africa, but these receive less media attention and less social media attention.
Why did Hamas and PIJ terrorists boast about their crimes as they were carrying them out? Because they thought they could get away with them – to literally get away with murder. And to a certain extent, at least in cyberspace and the battle of public perception, they have. The mass protests against Israel began before the country even began to fight back.
Their jihadist invasion and attack are not the focus of world attention. That’s reserved for Israel’s response. And the continued abuse of the remaining hostages – 24 out of 59 presumed to be alive – is part of this phenomenon: The terrorists cynically publish heartrending psychological warfare videos to increase the pain of the hostages’ families and friends, and try to deepen the rifts in Israeli society around the dilemma of how best to deal with the situation; how to gain the hostages’ release without endangering the country in the future with the mass release of terrorists from Israeli jails; and leaving Hamas in power, armed and dangerous.
The use of social media in today’s war is, to a certain extent, the continuation of the Palestinian terrorist attacks of the 1970s, including the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre when Black September terrorists held Israeli team members hostage, ultimately murdering 11 of them, all the while exploiting media attention on the Games. Palestinian terrorists and their supporters excel in kidnapping and hijacking people and world opinion.
But let’s go back to the London Marathon. The Youth Demand anti-Israel PR stunt wasn’t the only affront to affect the event, which is dedicated to good intentions and raising money for charities.
Nike had almost the last word: In a stunningly ill-conceived ad campaign, the sporting merchandise company published billboard signs along the route that read: “Never again, until next year.”
Turning the words “Never again,” widely associated with the pledge that the Holocaust will not be repeated, into a marketing slogan is more than bad taste. The marketing campaign was the result of either shocking insensitivity or gross ignorance. Either way, there’s a problem. And it needs to be acknowledged and addressed for “Never again” to mean anything.