Crif - Speaking at the WJC panel “From Digital Hate to Real-World Bloodshed: The Interaction Between Online Extremism, Antisemitism, and Offline Violence”

On the sides of the AMIA commemorations, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) hosted a panel on the intersections between online hate and its offline expression.

The panel featured David Scharia, UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, Dr. Gustavo Galante, Prosecutor in Argentina, Eric Ebenstein, Senior Director of Public Policy at TikTok, Adi Cohen, from Memetica, and Marie-Sarah Seeberger, from CRIF.

The discussion was moderated and hosted by Yfat Barak-Cheney, Director of the WJC Institute for Technology and Human Rights.

Read Marie-Sarah Seeberger's speech on the state of online and offline hate as seen by the Jewish community in France, as well as the recommendations that should be considered:

"Thank you Yfat,

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this panel. I’m very honored to share the floor with these distinguished panelists.

I will be talking as the representative of Crif, the umbrella organization for the French Jewish institutions, so my views would mainly be France oriented and we should keep in mind that the Jewish communities in the World have their very own specificities and ways to address antisemitism online, and offline.

So I would like to share with you a few key points about this matching between online and offline hate and violence.

First of all, a number, from the latest report on antisemitism in France in 2023, made by the Security service of the French Jewish Community and the Ministry of Interior : 58% of antisemitic acts are acts of physical violence against people. The recent survey of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency, the FRA, presents similar data showing that 83% of the French respondents hide their Jewish identity because they are scared to be attacked in the streets. That means the violence is real, and the fear of violence is also real.

These figures are about the years 2022 and 2023, before October 7. As you can imagine, the situation has not improved but it is important to emphasize that hatred and violence have always been part of the daily life of French Jews. They did not suddenly appear on October 7, 2023.

However, since October 7, several changes must be noted regarding online hate and its offline expression.

We are first witnessing an impressive rise in extremely violent antisemitic messages, including death threats directed at Jewish users on social networks. Jewish activists are the targets of messages of extreme violence. Our CyberSecurity Officer, who regularly posts on her X account, was  recently targeted by a tweet that said “You deserve to be beaten to death and thrown in the back of a pick-up truck”, directly referring to the images of Shani Louk, broadcast on social networks. 

We therefore have imagery which is fed directly by reality and which reproduces itself without limit.

A few weeks ago, a 12-year-old French girl was attacked and raped by teenagers because of her Jewish identity and her “bad words about Palestine.” The scene was filmed. Here too, without any comparison, we are reproducing modes of operation which have been broadcast and sometimes praised on social media.

In this specific case, the hatred is not only antisemitism, it is also sexist and sexual violence. And sexual violence is also an issue of online hate that feminist organizations are increasingly addressing, particularly on the issue of free access to violent pornography and the presence of sexual violence in video games.

Among the violent content, we also find threats in private messages, sometimes addressed to Internet users who simply have a Jewish-sounding name, without prior interaction.

In December 2023, our cybersecurity team reported for instance a message to the Jewish community security from a man who said he wanted to kill Jews. Two days later, he made an appointment with a dentist with a Jewish-sounding name. The security service had gone to the clinic and it turned out that the man had been locked in the toilet of the office for a long time, refusing to come out and the dentist was very concerned about his behavior. The man was arrested and an investigation is underway.

I think this is a good example of this matching between online hate and its offline expression.

Since October 7, we have also witnessed an excessive doxxing of Jews. Doxxing is a practice of disclosing information about an individual’s identity and privacy on the Internet for the purpose of harming them.
In France, there have been numerous cases of doxxing, particularly from public and political figures. I am thinking in particular of Member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan who published dozens of telephone numbers and names of people who call her, which is also reprehensible.

Doxxing can be extremely dangerous and there have been several cases in France where Jewish Internet users ended up being placed under police protection.

Before October 7, online antisemitism could be categorized into 4 main groups: violent messages, traditional conspiracy, anti-Zionism, and Holocaust denial. Today, we must add a fifth category, the negation of October 7, 2023. This negation comes from very influential personalities, sometimes highly placed in public or political life, which gives relativism and a democratization of his violent remarks, in no longer being false.
The same MP Rima Hassan who I spoke about earlier, for example, recently tweeted that dogs were being trained by the Israeli army to rape Palestinian prisoners.

This radicalization in online and offline discourse is also unfortunately found within Jewish communities who no longer know how to respond to a surge of violence and hatred. Everyone shouts a lot into the void. And ultimately all that remains are words and images of extreme violence, which necessarily influence the mental health of those primarily concerned, the Jews.

Recommendations

The latest survey of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency stands out that 96% of the respondents have been confronted with discrimination and violence online.

This is what Crif President Yonathan Arfi calls “antisemitism of atmosphere”, an antisemitism which floats in the air, which intrudes into all spheres and which ends up making the air unbreathable for Jews.

This figure seems almost mind-blowing at first reading: it means that almost every Jew interviewed has been confronted with antisemitism online. But, when you think about it, what could be more normal? I challenge anyone to open a social network and spend 15 minutes there without seeing antisemitic messages.
This can’t become the new normal.

So, first of all, my recommendation would be to never surrender and to never accept this as the new normal.

At Crif, we have two departments working on a daily basis on the topic of online violence and antisemitism, we have the digital communication team who mainly monitors the content and do some moderation on our social networks, and we have the cybersecurity team who works on reporting hateful content to the social media platforms or the Ministry of Interior.

You all perfectly know that the last 9 months have been very difficult, especially for people working almost 24/7 on the topic of online hate.

Our teams got really overwhelmed at some point and we had the feeling that we were trying to put a bandage on a very open injury.

I would like to see a stronger cooperation between the Jewish organizations and the public policies and the government services dedicated to online hate, like the DILCRAH - the department of the French Special Envoy. We, as Crif, always advocate for a stronger DILCRAH, with higher budget and tools in order to keep the fight going in the best way possible.

We need to make sure that we are working in the same direction and with the same level of intensity. The work of the Jewish communities won’t be enough, and it won’t be relevant so cooperation is key, whether it is with public authorities or NGOs or initiatives from the civil society.

Regarding the work of the social networks themselves, I want to underline the good relationship that we built with Meta. I know we are one of the only countries to present this result but, for us, the work has been good with Meta regarding online hate. It is very important for us to have direct contacts with the Head of Public policies in France, and to keep organizing several training sessions for the moderators.

We, as well as the World Jewish Congress, work on different topics with Meta, the last one being an important rule change: the word "Zionist" is now recognized by the platform as a substitute for the word "Jew" or "Israeli" in the context of antisemitic insults, and will be therefore banned in different cases such as dehumanization and calls for violence.

So, I would encourage initiatives like that and reinforcement of the link between Jewish communities and social media platforms, especially through training sessions, on moderation based mainly on wording.

Finally, I would have a recommendation to invest in 2 areas regarding online hate. The first one, as I said earlier is sexist and sexual violence online, as we know that one violence never comes alone, it comes with all its siblings.
I praise the Special Envoys here to take this into consideration. It reached another level after October 7 and now is probably the time to have a good look at it and make policies out of it.

The second area would be the work place. After October 7, Jewish people have been targeted online either because they work in a Jewish environment, or by co-workers that would harass them, knowing their Jewish identity.
This is a recommendation not only for online hate, but also offline antisemitism in the workplace, that might actually begin online.

I think the governments and the policy makers have to take very seriously the need to protect the Internet users, in the cases of doxxing, or violent threats and also to adjust or to make more clear the sanctions in the case of online harassment, whether it is antisemitism or any other form of hate."