Hate for a region that shall not be named
Recently Pew Research Center shared a report titled, “Negative views of Israel, Netanyahu continue to rise among Americans – especially young people.” The commentary included, “Six-in-ten adults under age 30 have a positive view of the Palestinian people, compared with 46% who see the Israeli people positively.”
Pew also advised in another report, “Young adults also stand out in where they get news on digital devices: Adults under 30 are much more likely to get news on social media than older adults. There is a 48-percentage point gap between the shares of Americans ages 18 to 29 and those 65 and older who get news on social media at least sometimes (76% vs. 28%).”
Sometimes it is useful to drill down and explore an example of the hate experienced by our youth. Let’s consider what they see as they as they spend hours on in the web’s social media domain.
It is what they use for communication; and worse, it is what they use for learning.
BradyYourTutor is a YouTube channel created by Brady Kelly. The fun format offers engaging short videos where viewer contestants are challenged on basic knowledge about subjects like geography and math. It’s an entertaining, innovative educational approach that has become a huge classroom with 3 million subscribers who make over 4 billion viewing experiences annually.
This BradyYourTutor channel is one of over 18 thousand video-based sources offered by YouTube. An amazing 41 trillion views occur on all of YouTube. The magnitude of these click-experiences trumps by far all other academic and traditional media experiences. And YouTube is just one of the wildly popular social media platforms enticing viewed, especially the younger cohort to spend blocks of their time.
Recently, the moderator Brady innocently quizzed, “What is the path from Angola in Africa to India that crosses the fewest sovereign borders.” This one episode garnered over 1.3 million views.
A featured participant named “Anderson” responded and began rattling off the sequence of countries. He started with Democratic Republic of Congo, and then to Central Africa Republic, Sudan and Egypt. When he came to neighboring Israel, he referred to it as, “…the region that shall not be named.”
His loathing of Israel was on full display. His phraseology, “…shall not be named” was inspired by the moniker given to the wicked Lord Voldemort character, the primary antagonist in the Harry Potter fantasy series. His choice of “region” was his dismissal of Israel’s sovereignty.
Sadly, solidarity with “Anderson” was revealed in the over 33 thousand submitted LIKES and the nearly 3 thousand affirming COMMENTS. These comments roundly concurred with his anti-Israel sentiment. He received respectful kudos for his insult of Israel, and not for his savant’s expertise in geography. He earned many GOAT accolades.
We can wonder if “Anderson” is aware that Israel occupies about .014% of the world’s governed land mass. For his information, Muslim-majority countries occupy 1300 times the land area of Israel. Does his nerdish knowledge base include any meaningful history of the Jews, modern Israel and Western civilization? Does his depth of knowledge get beyond the click-baited biased sources.
We can guess that “Anderson” couldn’t debate the righteousness and legality of Israel’s path to become a sovereign nation.
This spontaneous bit of vitriol didn’t receive the notoriety of the Ed Sheeran tour with the Robert Kraft firing of anti-Israel/pro-Palestine cheering Macklemore and the subsequent dropout of the show’s opening acts in solidarity with Macklemore. The story only spawns more negativity.
And “Anderson’s” mini outrage was not the afforded the headlines given to Israeli traitors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor who received a 25-minute virtue signaling standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. The creators of NAZA delivered a distorted, propaganda laden, unsubstantiated hit piece besmirching the IDF. They will succeed is harming their country.
But the facile animosity from the many “Andersons” is there influencing youth worldwide. It’s viral, it’s ubiquitous, and it’s potent.
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a leader of the US Reform synagogue community, in his recent Yom Kippur sermon said, “Unhinged and obsessive loathing of Israel is corrupting American values. If allowed to spread, it is not only Jews who will pay the price. America will too.”
We should wonder if the leaders of the many organizations chartered to battle against antisemitism and support Israel and the Jewish people are sufficiently focused on the tsunami of negativity flowing on the web. Are they equipped to make our case in this emerging modern virtual space or are they still using yesterday’s weapons? Are their proprietary efforts too little, too uncoordinated, and too late?
They need to accept that emerging Artificial Intelligence tools derive their “intelligence” from poisoned data sources, that entertaining and robotic platforms cause addictive behaviors, and that disinformation (fake news) is overwhelming truthfulness and reason. Facts and logic take a back seat to click-bait excitement and viral propagation.
Avinu Malkeinu (“Our Father, Our King”) is a beloved prayer of the Jewish fast-day services. The central theme was composed two thousand years ago by Rabbi Akiva. The tenth line calls out, “Our Father, our King, close the mouths of our adversaries and accusers.” The “mouth” of today’s web-enabled adversaries and accusers is wide, curled with unrelenting hate, and broadly spewing antisemitic venom at an unprecedented rate.
The next generation -the tranche of future voters and leaders- are subject to this obscene assault.
