The Lag b’Omer tragedy at Mount Meron in Israel, which led to at least 44 deaths and injuries to many more, has been greeted with an outpouring of hatred on social media.
According to investigative journalist David Collier, a report of the deaths by Al-Jazeera had garnered 30,000 responses, and that “10,000 — 33 per cent — were either laughing at or loving the fact [that] innocent Jews have died. The most ‘liked’ comments were the most vicious”.
“It isn’t about a few sickos celebrating the awful tragedy in Israel. It is the scale of it,” he wrote on Twitter.
Another report of the incident on a site called New Press featured the line: “A number of Israeli settlers were killed and wounded due to a bridge collapse in Galilee, north occupied Palestine”.
This received reactions such as “Even the bridge wants them dead” from someone called ‘Levantine Pali’, while a poster known as Ms.Andry responded with a picture of someone yawning and the comment “Drinks on me, y’all”.
Also writing in response to the New Press article, one social media user called Rooqs said the news had made her night “1,000000 per cent better”, while another, Alishaq’, [apostrophe correct] said it was “about time we got some good news on our media”. A tweet by someone called “MeMe” said simply: “I feel so happy, actually”. Ali Salah wrote “May God ensure the bodies pile high”, while another poster declared: “Oh, God, send your anger and your distress to the Jews…God willing, complete their celebration in the fire of hell”.
In the same thread, a person called Tyre Beragh remarked: “Shouldn’t celebrate the death of any human, but we must also recognise if these occupiers weren't on stolen lands they would [be] alive”. And a person called MF Jackson responded: “Shut the f*** up — no-one would ever want peace with rapists and murderers, and yes, we will celebrate any loss of Israeli blood, even if it’s that of a child’s.”
It was reported that the international news agency Reuters had received similarly abusive responses after it reported the tragedy. A few tweets were removed but pro-Israel social media users claimed that repeated attempts to get Twitter to ban the abusive posts had largely been ignored.
