1 min read
ByTracy-Ann Oberman, Tracy-Ann Oberman
A couple of years ago on this page, I penned a call to action.
George "I'll Embrace Genocidal Tyrants But Not Acknowledge Israelis" Galloway had just been elected Respect MP for Bradford almost solely on the back of his Twitter campaign. I urged readers to get up to speed with social media - the frontier battleground for winning hearts and minds particularly among the young.
If a lie is left unchallenged for too long it becomes a truth. When it flies around the internet at the speed of a mouse click, it transforms into a Global Fact.
But a counter argument - an informed article, interview or blog - re-tweeted and re-posted instantaneously on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube can open up a debate and plant a seed of doubt.
My plea was pretty much ignored.
We need our tech-savvy youth to lead a campaign
The story now being told is entirely of the Palestinian plight. News editors don't want to analyse the nuanced historic path leading to today.
No one gets a chance to reframe Israel's reportedly "disproportionate" response" in the context of a collapsing region rife with Islamic militants baying for the destruction of the Zionist entity and every Jew with it. Read the Hamas charter.
Last week, Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi effectively compared young British Muslims joining ISIS to young British Jews joining the IDF. This has morphed online to the IDF being the equivalent to ISIS.
The same goes for how easily Britain has slipped into everyday antisemitism. The removal of our kosher food, arts projects and film festivals in the face of bullies is normalised.
Our community has to respond properly. We need a new organisation run by tech savvy youth - a concerted online campaign: "Criticise Israeli policy but don't delegitimise Israel. Criticise the Israeli government but don't damn Israelis. And stop the antisemitism."
If this doesn't happen, then I guess it's up to us individually to be as vocal as our counterparts. And I know how scary it is to go on social media and challenge the current, one-sided view.
But it is has to be done.
Hamas have grasped the importance of social media. They have a predetermined number of social media posts that need to be generated daily to keep hammering their message home. And they have guidelines for differently phrasing tweets both to Arab and Western readers
We have many brilliant young minds at the forefront of social media. There is an existential threat as powerful as the physical one.
Israel and - by association - Jews are being demonised as the secular world accepts so-called "facts".
We need new slogans and new headlines that are easily remembered, factually correct and positive. Let's reframe the narrative.
