, 09.07.2024 05:25 PM

My latest: Hamas U.

Hamas U. is back.

Across the country – across the United States and Europe – post-secondary students are returning to class. And, with them, the Israel-hating, Jew-hating lunatic fringe are returning, too.

This week, at the University of British Columbia, a blood-red banner is hoisted alongside a real pig’s head: PIGS OFF CAMPUS, said the “People’s University for Gaza.” At the University of Calgary, a monument to Israeli hostages was vandalized within hours of its creation. At Toronto’s Metropolitan University, at its clubs fair, the Jewish Hillel club was attacked by screaming anti-Israel bullies, telling Zionists (ie., Jews) to get “off our campus.” And, at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., a professor was propagating misinformation about the war in Gaza – in a course syllabus.

The haters and the hate are back. So, where are students – Gen Z and Millennials, mostly – getting this misinformation about Jews and the Jewish state? Why have so many embraced antisemitism? Because, make no mistake, they have: as one Canadian pollster has revealed, 35 per cent of Canadian Gen Z “support the destruction of Israel,” and 41 per cent say “extreme violence” is “justified against innocent Jewish civilians.”

Young Canadians (and Americans, and Europeans) are getting antisemitic conspiracy theories and disinformation online. And they’re being led by Hamas and its axis into the dark side.

Cyabra is one of the world’s leading firms in fighting disinformation. They uncover fake profiles and disinformation and publicize the results. And they have now published shocking a shocking report about the avalanche of Jew hate that has overwhelmed the Internet since October 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 Jews, raped Jewish women and girls, and committed an untold number of atrocities.

Cyabra found that thousands of fake accounts started to sprout up on social media almost exactly 18 months before October 7. They were at first mostly benign, posting in Arabic or English about cricket matches or kittens. And then, in the early hours of October 7, the fake accounts sprang to life.

One, called “RebelTaHa,” had just 82 followers before October 7. When Hamas attacked Israel, RebelTaHa’s followers suddenly grew exponentially – just one of his antisemitic posts would be seen 170,000 times. It went viral.

RebelTaHa, Cyabra found, wasn’t real. It was fake. And, with the clever use of hashtags and interactions with 162,000 other fake accounts – and, with boosting by what Cyabra calls “non-state actors” – fake accounts like RebelTaHa reached an extraordinary 530 million social media accounts in just two days.

[To read more, subscribe here.]

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