Are Israeli politicians encouraging violent discourse online?
According to a special report prepared to mark Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the most violent pages on Israeli social networking sites belong to politicians.
The most violent pages on social networking sites in Israel belong to politicians. The Berl Katzneslon Foundation published data about violence on the internet in a special report prepared ahead of Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. TV Channel 2 pointed to the report as part of a discussion about “unjustified gratuitous hatred,” which Jewish tradition cites as the cause of the Second Temple’s destruction.
The study tracked down all expressions of hatred appearing in Hebrew on Israeli social networks between June 2015 and May 2016. The total number of such comments was a staggering 4,241,653. These included curses and inflammatory and offensive remarks of varying degrees of severity, including 175,000 calls for physical violence. The study also found that the most frequent terms in this category were “kill” (27,000 times) and “eliminate” (12,000 times).
