3 min read
ByShoshanna Keats Jaskoll, Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll
'While we don’t have to answer every idiot online, we do need real access to real information in real time to undo some of the damage.'
December 3, 2020 13:36I didn’t know there was a list of the “top 40 global advocates for Israel” online. And I didn’t know I was on it until the congratulatory tweets came in. According to Jewish News Syndicate which compiled the list we are “inspiring leaders” and “have two things in common: “They are making a real difference and are fearless advocates for the Jewish state.”
I appreciate the moniker and I’m honoured to be listed with people who dedicate their lives to defending Israel and the Jewish people, whether through their job taking the UN to task for its bias (Hillel Neuer), as a tireless advocate for the Ethopian community and black Jews (Ashager Araro), as a British investigative journalist (David Collier ), or a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan (Col. Richard Kemp).
The list includes actors (Gal Gadot) and beauty queens (Sara Idan, Miss Iraq), those who speak up for Israel and Jews from deep in Europe (Conrad Myrland and Sacha Stawski) or in the politically fractured UK (Simon Cobbs and Jackie Goodall) and even India (Vijeta Uniyal).
It includes those advocating for coexistence here at home (Yoseph Haddad) and building international relationships for the city of Jerusalem (Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum), as well as those using the law to get justice for terror victims (Nitsana Darshan-Leitner) and to fight antisemitism (Brooke Goldstein). Others are politicians, advocates and journalists who speak out for the Jewish people and Israel proudly.
How do I fit in? No idea. I just talk a lot on Twitter.
As I said at the Knesset meeting where MK Michal Cotler-Wunch (also on the list) invited us for a meeting on antisemitism and how the government can help, I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. I learned many things from them. But the two that matter here are first, never be a bystander and that otherwise average people can be convinced of nearly anything when the speaker is passionate enough.
What we see online is a mass of misinformation, one that has no bottom. It is fed by international news outlets and even international bodies — including the UN. The result is that masses of people around the world think that Israel feeds on the blood of Palestinian babies just as the Nazis - and Christians before them -- believed that we fed on the blood of their babies. .
With so many blood libels and half truths incubating in an atmosphere of utter ignorance of history and reality, defending the Jewish people and Israel is like a game of Whack- A-Mole.
While we don’t have to answer every idiot online, we do need real access to real information in real time to undo some of the damage.
When people speak out against the so called “Apartheid Wall” but have no idea when it was built, why, and how it directly put an end to exploding buses and cafes, we need accessible fact sheets that can be shared. So too, when extreme left wing NGOs who are against Israel as a Jewish State put out a list of “discriminatory” laws, we need facts and context for them all — again they must be easily found and collated.
Words such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide are thrown around and are now part of the discourse, deliberately placed by anti Israel advocates to taint Israel before the conversation starts, truth and context be damned.
Supporters of Israel are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to the online onslaught. Both from the neo-Nazis, who recently uploaded a tweet of mine to 4Chan (an online platform where skinheads and white supremacists live out their Jew free utopia) and mobbed me to deny my grandparents’ stories - and the entire Holocaust, as well as from well meaning left wing progressives who can no longer tell fact from fiction, advocacy from anti semitism.
In addition, I called on us to truthfully face what is wrong here. We need to work on relations between Arabs and Jews. We must learn Arabic, ensure non Jewish citizens feel part and parcel of the country — even while it is Jewish in character and focused on being our safe national home. We need to add the Druze and other loyal non Jewish citizens to the Nation State Law.
While we reach out and build relationships across the Middle East, we need to build those here at home too. We are strong and can handle whatever is thrown at us online and on campuses — so long as we work together.
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll is a writer and activist