MADRID (WJC)–Jewish associations in Spain have filed an official complaint after nearly 18,000 anti-Semitic messages were posted on Facebook and Twitter in response to Israeli basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv’s victory over Real Madrid last weekend.
Twelve Jewish groups in the autonomous region of Catalonia lodged the legal complaint over the messages, which flooded onto the Twitter network after Maccabi’s narrow win in the Euroleague final on Sunday. Angry Spanish supporters created an expletive anti-Semitic hash tag in their messages after the match, which briefly became one of the most popular keywords on Twitter in Spain.
Ruben Noboa of the Jewish group Israel in Catalonia said he launched the lawsuit after seeing references in some messages to death camps and the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust. “When we saw reactions to Maccabi’s victory such as ‘Jews to the oven’ or ‘Jews to the showers’, we decided to lodge this judicial complaint,” Noboa told the news agency AFP. Eleven other Jewish associations have joined in his lawsuit, in which he presented copies of anti-Semitic tweets to state prosecutors, he said.
The associations singled out five people who were identified by their real names on Twitter, accusing them of “incitement to hatred and discrimination” — a crime punishable by up to three years’ jail in Spain. The state attorney, who specializes in hate crimes and discrimination, will have to decide whether to proceed with the investigation.
A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League said Spain ranked third in Europe for prejudice against Jews, after Greece and France.
Jews have been few in Spain since their large communities were mostly expelled by the country’s Catholic rulers in the late 15th century. “Hardly anyone here knows any Jews, but the clichés and stereotypes persist and are also fed by Catholicism,” said Noboa.
“I strongly believe in the freedom of expression, but there must be a limit,” Jai Anguita of the Bet Shalom Jewish Community told Spanish newspaper ‘El País’. “We could argue these comments are the result of high spirits after a defeat, that they are nearly jokes. But history has shown us where these jokes can lead.”
*
In New York, Abraham H. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League’s National Director, issued the following statement:
“The sheer number and intensity of anti-Semitic hatred unleashed via Twitter in Spain is alarming and outrageous. That a blatantly anti-Semitic hashtag became a ‘trending topic’ in Spain because of the result of a basketball game is yet another example of the power of social media to instantaneously propel hate-filled bigotry not just around the block, but around the globe.
“It is critically important for government officials, civic and religious leaders to forcefully and publicly condemn this outpouring of anti-Jewish hate which flowed through Twitter’s vast social network platform.
“While our recent global poll on anti-Semitic attitudes found 29 percent of respondents in Spain harboring anti-Semitic attitudes, we know most of those people may not be likely to engage in openly hostile behavior toward Jews. The ease of access to the expressions of others who are willing to say and do hateful things through popular platforms like Twitter and other social media sites can, however, reinforce those attitudes and loosen inhibitions to express them.
ADL noted the reaction of Spain’s Interior Minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, who said: “I am glad that there are such complaints, because they will allow the Police and the Civil Guard to clean up the web,” and also welcomed the condemnation by the Euroleague.
In 2012, a similar incident occurred in France, where the #unbonjuif (“a good jew”) hashtag prompted an outpouring of anti-Semitic tweets and became a “trending topic” on Twitter. ADL then called on Twitter to establish clear standards to block or remove racist, hate-filled tweets and re-tweets, rather than relying on a standard of “illegality” as the threshold for intervention.
ADL developed a platform in 2013 to help internet users better navigate the various mechanisms available for reporting online hate speech. Additionally, at the behest of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA) comprised of parliamentarians from around the world working to combat resurgent global anti-Semitism, ADL also convened an internet hate working group bringing together industry experts, academics and impacted communities to develop best practices for understanding, reporting upon and responding to Internet hate.
*
Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress