Around thirty percent of Spanish language Google search results for the word Jew link to anti-Semitic content, the Buenos Aires-based watchdog group Observatorio Web revealed in a new study, conducted by the World Jewish Congress' affiliate the Latin American Jewish Congress, the Argentine umbrella organization Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentina and the AMIA Jewish community center.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Spanish language report the anti-Semitic videos on YouTube are garnering an increasing number of likes, with 484 Spanish Holocaust denial videos collectively being liked 1.7 million times.
“There is a worrying positive viewing of anti-Semitic content and that is a growing trend. The most viewed are about Holocaust denial,” the director of Obervatorio Web told the JTA, adding that he believed Argentina, which already has an anti-discrimination law, needs to update it "to include the Internet and social networks.”
Last month British Jews welcomed promises of a crackdown on online hate by their country’s public prosecutor, who said that it would be treated with "the same robust and proactive approach used with offline offending.”
The British Board of Jewish Deputies welcomed the tougher new Crown Prosecution Service guideline. "This is a positive step towards tackling hate crime in the UK. Whether it is face to face or online, hate speech is illegal and must be treated as such," said Board of Deputies Chief Executive Gillian Merron. "Social media companies must also continue to up their game in fighting hateful attitudes online and we will continue to raise this in our meetings with them.”
Practically speaking, this means that the Crown Prosecution Service will now go after abusive social media posts that are considered to be racist or hateful.
“Hate crime can be perpetrated online or offline, or there can be a pattern of behaviour that includes both. The internet and social media in particular have provided new platforms for offending behaviour,” the CPS announced in a statement reported by The Independent.
The World Jewish Congress last year found that more than 382,000 anti-Semitic posts were posted to social media platforms over the course of 2016 – an average of more than 43.6 posts per hour, or one post every 83 seconds. The report on this was published in April.
In July, the WJC launched a campaign to expose and remove Arabic-language anti-Semitic content on social media platforms, beginning with YouTube, and has already met with some success.
The WJC compiled a precise list of the most prevalent materials that appeared on YouTube using the search term “Holocaust” in Arabic, finding pages of Nazi glorification, Holocaust denial, and blatantly anti-Semitic content. The WJC brought the matter to the attention of YouTube’s director of public policy, and expressed its concerns. Within a few days, YouTube informed the WJC that every piece of anti-Semitic content it had flagged had been removed.
