Anti-Palestinian social media incitement in Israel continues to rise

Anti-Palestinian incitement continues to rise in Israeli society, according to a new report by 7amleh – The Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media.

7amleh’s annual index revealed that in 2019, one racist social media post was published on average every 64 seconds – a total of 495,000 “violent posts against Arabs and Palestinians”.

To compile the index, 7amleh analysed social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Facebook hosted the largest proportion of violent discourse (41 per cent), with Twitter hosting 30 per cent of the anti-Arab discourse (up 14 per cent from 2018).

Overall, during 2019 one out of every 11 posts about Arabs used “inciting language”, including racist slurs – a five per cent rise “in inciting posts in comparison to 2018 statistics”.

According to 7amleh, the latest index also demonstrated that “the peak of incitement against Palestinians and Arabs in 2019 was correlated with the two rounds of Israeli election”.

The 2019 Index of Racism showed that the two rounds caused an eight per cent “rise in violent discourse against the Arab community concerning politics”.

In particular, “violent discourse” against the Joint List slate “emerged from the violent posts against bodies and individuals, as members of the Israeli Knesset Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi received the second and third most violent and racist comments”.

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