Dozens of videos have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram showing harassment of Palestinians and activists

TikTok has removed an account belonging to an ultranationalist, pro-settlement Israeli influencer for breaching hate speech and bullying rules after the Guardian flagged videos showing him harassing activists in the occupied West Bank.

The Guardian has reviewed dozens of videos posted by various social media figures that have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram documenting the harassment of Palestinians as well as physical attacks on Israeli and international activists.

The accounts began to proliferate after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, since when Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. In recent weeks violence has intensified further, with repeated attacks on homes.

The burgeoning far-right ecosphere has risen in tandem with the growing influence of far-right parties and figures in Israeli politics.

“Dehumanising Palestinians is now mainstream in Israel,” said Yuli Novak, the executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. “Influencers gain popularity through incendiary messaging.”

  • Corporal_Punishment@feddit.ukEnglish
    54·
    4 hours ago

    Its still insane to me that a group of people who were nearly exterminated entirely by the far right, could themselves turn out to be just as bad.

      • Bazell@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        1 hour ago

        They are not equal. True. But, without Judaism Zionism wouldn’t have existed. So, it is like an offspring that gained all the worst traits from the parents.

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 minutes ago

          Zionism has it’s roots in Christianity.

          Ilan Pappe has a very detailed book about the origins to the modern day lobbying apparatus

          Zionism began as an evangelical Christian concept and later an active project. It appeared as a religious appeal to the faithful both to aid and be prepared for the ‘return of the Jews’ to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state there as the fulfilment of God’s will. But soon after, the Christians involved in this campaign politicised this ‘theology of return’, once they realised that a similar notion had begun to emerge among European Jews, who despaired of finding a solution to the never-ending anti-Semitism on the continent. The Christian desire to see a Jewish Palestine coincided with a similar European Jewish vision in the late nineteenth century.

          For Christian and Jewish supporters of Zionism, Palestine as such did not exist. In their minds, it was replaced by the ‘Holy Land’ and in that ‘Holy Land’, from the very beginning, there was no indigenous population, only a small community of faithful Christians and pious Jews remaining after most of their co-religionists were by and large expelled by the Roman Empire or survived under hostile governances. For both anti-Semitic and philosemitic Christians, the ‘return’ of the exiled was an act of religious redemption.