Jewish journalist criticises Twitter after becoming victim to the 'yellow Jewish star of the digital age'

A Jewish journalist has called on Twitter to crack down on trolling, after he became the victim of antisemitic and homophobic abuse online.

Benjamin Cohen, who is CEO of PinkNews, was inundated with around 500 hate-filled messages last week after he tweeted that he had “been busy reading a lovely gay inclusive book to my three and one-year-old nieces”. The book was King & King, which tells the story of a prince who finds a same-sex partner.

One tweet read: “If all Jews would go gay and lesbian we’d all be happy. Would save on our gas bill later.” Another user wrote: "This is why your people get Shoah’d”.

Writing in The Evening Standard this week, Mr Cohen, 33, said that the initial reaction to his tweet had been positive, but within 24 hours “my digital life descended into hell”.

He wrote: “It started with some Twitter users telling me I was a paedophile but very quickly the attacks turned into the sort of antisemitic language that you could have heard under the Nazis.”

Mr Cohen revealed that while Facebook automatically hid the negative reactions he received, Twitter pushed hundreds of hateful tweets directly to his phone.

He added: “One person found a photograph of me taken in Berlin’s Jewish Museum and Photoshopped in the yellow star that the Nazis put on Jews in the ghettos before sending them to the concentration camps. His friend added that soon it will be a real star, before I am killed.”

Mr Cohen revealed that many of the messages displayed his name in three sets of brackets, which he described as the “yellow Jewish star of the digital age”.

He said: “It turns out that this is a form of dog whistle for antisemites to inform other neo-Nazis who their current victims are.

“These bastards scour Twitter for Jews marked out in this way so that they can all pile in together, overwhelming the target and compounding their victimisation. In a sense the ((( ))), or echo, as the trolls call it, is the yellow Jewish star of the digital age.”

While Twitter says users can report inappropriate posts, Mr Cohen believes the social media site is not doing enough to stamp out online abuse.

He said: “It is not outside the realms of possibility for Twitter to develop an artificial intelligence bot to seek out those who spread this filth and block them before they cause real distress to the victims.

“It won’t, of course, due to pressure from free-speech campaigners in the US, but if Twitter doesn’t deal with this problem it has very little chance of increasing its user numbers.”

The Metropolitan Police are currently investigating the tweets.