Anti-Palestinian racism and incitement by Israelis on social media increased by 16 percent in 2020, according to a new study.
Carried out by the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement (7amleh), the study, “Racism and Incitement in Israeli Social Networks", showed that 2020 witnessed an increase in violent discourse towards Arabs compared to the year 2019.
It said 574,000 posts in Israeli social media included violent anti-Palestinian text, or one in ten posts, an increase of 79,000 posts from 2019.
The height of incitement was recorded during parliamentary elections in March 2020. It decreased sharply starting August, following the announcement of the peace agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
The center gave examples of the posts against Arabs such as: “This is a Jewish state. Death to Arabs,” and “Too bad they did not expel all Palestinians to Jordan and Syria during the Six-Day War. Had they done so, we would have been liberated from this headache of 53 years.”
The results showed that the coronavirus pandemic led to an increase of 21 percent in racist posts towards Palestinians, with insults and incitement making up 29 and 7 percent of the posts respectively.
Twitter is the main platform used for incitement with 61 percent of the violent posts, which is more than double compared to 2019, the report said. Facebook came second with 19 percent, a 20-percent decrease compared to 2019.
The index of racism and incitement in Israeli social media is an annual report issued by 7amleh, in cooperation with the FIGO of the Yifat group. It monitors the use of racist and violent posts against Arabs and Palestinians throughout the year.
7amleh is a non-profit organization aimed at enabling Palestinian and Arab civil society to effectively utilize the tools of digital advocacy through professional capacity building, defending digital rights and building influential digital media campaigns.
