Jewish Internet Defense Force
Israel advocacy | |
Website | thejidf.org (Archived February 2014, now dead) |
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The Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) was an organization ran social media campaigns from 2000 to 2014 against websites and Facebook groups that it described as Islamic terrorism or antisemitism. The group's website, whose former domain now links to a gambling site, described the JIDF as a "private, independent, non-violent protest organization representing a collective of activists".[1] The JIDF was termed "hacktivism" by the BBC and Haaretz.[2] The JIDF web site was live in February 2014 with little activity, and is no longer available.
Organization and methods
According to the JIDF, they "formed as a grassroots effort in 2000, to mount mass e-mail campaigns, in response to the outbreak of the
The group focused its attention on websites like
In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Appletree maintained, "The Jewish establishment... has completely failed Israel and the Jewish people in every way imaginable."[9]
On Facebook
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Conservatism in Israel |
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During 2007, a controversy on Facebook was reported involving "the drop-down list of places members can use to show where they live".
According to a November 2008 article in Haaretz,
In July 2009, the JIDF and
The JIDF criticized Facebook for allegedly condoning and hosting Holocaust denial groups on its network. The group charged that Facebook is hypocritical in removing groups that support the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, while not removing what it considers Holocaust denial groups and claimed it would continue to criticize Facebook over the matter.[13][14][15]
Elsewhere on the Web
JIDF's measures "include reporting Wikipedia editors it claims are anti-Israel, and taking action against entries seen as including one-sided or false accounts of the history of Israel and the Mideast conflict," Haaretz wrote. The group sought to have Palestinian villages listed as having been destroyed during the foundation of Israel removed from Google Earth and campaigned against the description of "Palestine" as a country.[8]
The JIDF organized a pro-Gilad Shalit campaign in 2009 on the social networking site Twitter. During the "Tweet4Shalit" campaign Twitter users drove the Gilad Shalit name to the second highest trend on the day of his 23rd birthday. Tweets for Shalit ranged from the demand to "Free Shalit" to requests for international supervision of the case.[16][17]
The JIDF was recognized by the JTA as one of the "100 Most Influential Jewish Twitterers" in 2009 and was ranked as the top-ranked Jewish Newswire.[18]
Criticism
In October 2008, the German newspaper the
In May 2009, CNN wrote that the JIDF is "sometimes guilty of sweeping generalizations of its own",[22] citing a 2008 interview published on Facebook critic Brian Cuban's site in which a JIDF representative discussed "the issues surrounding [then-candidate Barack Obama's] terrorist connections as well as his racist and anti-Semitic church, which has supported Hamas and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan", and the reply when asked how the Jewish and Muslim communities saw the JIDF, that "99.9% of Muslims hate us".[23][unreliable source?] CNN quoted a JIDF spokesperson as saying he would rather people not focus on those specific quotations as the interview had been "informal" and Cuban "would not let us correct any of our statements after we quickly answered him to help him meet his deadline."[22] Asked in the Cuban interview, "What is the position of the JIDF on the 'Palestinian Question' regarding disputes over occupied lands", the spokesman replied, "Palestinians should be transferred out of Israeli territories. They can live in any of the other many Arab states. We are against all land concessions to our enemies. We are against the release of terrorist prisoners from Israeli prisons. ."[23]
See also
- Public diplomacy of Israel
- Internet activism
- Internet Haganah
- HonestReporting
- Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
References
- ^ "About the JIDF". JIDF. October 2008. Archived from the original on 13 January 2013.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "Gaza crisis spills onto the web". BBC News. 14 January 2009.
- Hartman, Benjamin L. (8 November 2011). "Israel's Internet intifada". Haaretz.com. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
- ^ The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
- ^ The Jewish Week
- ^ a b Morrison, Sarah (4 March 2008). "Jewish Activist Battles For Israel on Facebook". Israel National News.
- ^ Morrison, Sarah (27 July 2008). "Jewish Activists Hack Anti-Semitic Facebook Group". Israel National News.
- ^ a b Moore, Matthew (31 July 2008). "Facebook: 'Anti-Semitic' group hijacked by Jewish force". London: The Telegraph.
- ^ a b c d e Benjamin Hartman (14 November 2008). "An online battle for Israel's legitimacy". Haaretz.
- ^ "JIDF Fights for Israel Online". Israel National News. 31 May 2010. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
- ^ a b Zerbisias, Antonia (3 May 2007). "Playing Politics on Facebook". The Star. Toronto.
- ^ Social media users successfully face down Nasrallah on Facebook, Jerusalem Post, 29 July 2009
- ^ Lungen, Paul (25 September 2008). "Anti-Israel Facebook groups infiltrated". Canadian Jewish News.
- ^ Call for hate groups to be taken offline, The National, Dubai, 15 June 2009
- ^ Is Facebook Changing its Tune on Holocaust Deniers?, CS Monitor, 11 May 2009
- ^ Miller, Elan (27 August 2009). "'Facebook doesn't bar hateful content against Jews'". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
- ^ Ryan, Josiah Daniel; Miller, Elan (27 August 2009). "'Tweet4Shalit' campaign reaches No. 2 spot in Twitter". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
- ^ Happy Birthday for Gilad Shalit?, Israel National News, 5 August 2009
- ^ 100 Most Influential Jewish Twitterers Archived 17 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine, JTA, 1 May 2009
- ^ Christoph Gunkel, Antisemitismus im Web 2, Frankfurter Allgemeine FAZ.NET 14. Oktober 2008. Quotes are taken from the authorised English translation, Facebook and Google Earth: Anti-Semitism in Web 2.0 published at Zionism On The Web, seen 22 November 2008
- ^ Must see Religion of "Peace" Photo of the day Archived 15 September 2012 at archive.today JIDF website, May 19, 2010.
- ^ During Ramadan Celebrations, Obama Supports Ground Zero Mosque (as do the "protesters"...just not at Ground Zero) Archived 14 September 2012 at archive.today JIDF website, 14 August 2010
- ^ CNN.com, 8 May 2009.
- ^ a b Cuban, Brian (29 July 2008). "Inside The Jewish Internet Defense Force". Brian Cuban. Archived from the original on 5 August 2008.