Opinion

OPINION Social media

OPINION PIECE BY ROBERT FESTENSTEIN

I have a love/hate relationship with my smart phone. I love the fact I can see money coming into my account, that I can pay bills easily, book restaurants and buy almost anything. I hate though the power it holds over me, always demanding I look at it; have I had another text, or e-mail, is the battery charged enough and have I got a voice-message?

What I also hate is the power that it gives the user to lie, harass, stalk and intimidate, and over the last few weeks I have seen all of these things. When it comes to Israel, no lie is too outrageous, no accusation too gross. This power of course comes from social media, in all its forms. Those over 40 or so will be familiar with Facebook and probably Twitter. Instagram and Tik Tok are more likely to be the territory of the younger age group.

The popular singer Dua Lipa produced some fairly one-sided posts on Israel. I have no idea why she felt competent to comment on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Perhaps she didn’t, but she went ahead anyway. When challenged in an advertisement put in the New York Times by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach she responded with a statement which ended with “I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people and reject all forms of racism”.

And there you have it. A major social media influencer claiming to be even handed whilst at the same time being anything but. There are others of course but I have picked on Ms Lipa for a number of reasons. Firstly her huge number of followers, over eight million on Twitter, secondly her anodyne response to the advertisement and thirdly and crucially, the influence that this ill-informed person has on so many people.

Social media is the modern pandora’s box. Once the tweet or Instagram post is out there, it is nigh on impossible to put it back. Once the words have been read and the pictures seen, they cannot be un-read or unseen. So when a picture appears of an injured child in Gaza which later turns out to be from Syria, it is too late. The belief that the Israelis were to blame has already been accepted and anything else is just not relevant.

There is no doubt that social media is capable of much good. There are many stories of lost pets being found and missing relatives traced. And not so good. When Noel Clarke, the black British actor was accused of sexual harassment, social media outrage was palpable and the response swift. The third and final episode of Bulletproof was not shown on television but instead shown on BBC iPlayer available only for a limited period of time. No trial, no formal finding by any tribunal, just a series of accusations and that was enough. Off the air.

On the 16th May a convoy of cars drove through Jewish areas of North London. One of the passengers using a megaphone was shouting ‘F**k the Jews, rape their daughters’. Whilst the support of the Government and the Metropolitan Police was most welcome, what was noticeable was the lack of support from those on social media who otherwise claim they stand firm against racism.

Many of those groups who claim to abhor anti-Semitism were nowhere to be seen. No outpouring of people onto the streets of Golders Green or Broughton Park declaring their solidarity with the Jewish people and certainly no demands for immediate inquiries into how this conduct could have occurred. Even Dua Lipa when condemning anti-Semitism a few days later appeared to have so little contact with what was going on around her, she was wholly silent on this convoy.

I am certain, that if instead of a Jewish area, it was a black or Muslim area, and the driver and his accomplices were tattooed whites, the internet would have been lit up with indignation and outrage as well as demands for changes in the law. It was only the Jews this time, so no indignation and no outrage. It is almost as if other than the standard objection to anti-Semitism the social media community is content for Jew hatred to exist.

So what do we do in the face of a social onslaught against us, and almost silence when we are targeted both physically and in social media? We need to act. Those telling the lies need to be challenged. The great and the good on social media are not going to help us, we need to do that ourselves. Complain vociferously to the BBC about their bias. Grumble bitterly to the likes of Dua Lipa who clearly know very little about the conflict and above all keep at it, calling out the lies told. We need to challenge these social media influencers about their facts, so they think twice before joining in a debate where they have little knowledge and less authority to comment.

Robert Festenstein is a practising solicitor and has been the principal of his Salford based firm for over 20 years. He has fought BDS motions to the Court of Appeal and is President of the Zionist Central Council in Manchester which serves to protect and defend the democratic State of Israel.

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