Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

We did not need the latest Iranian cyberattack on Israeli sites or their attempt a few weeks ago to attack the water supply to understand that the next front would begin not on the ground, but on the Internet. The world of cyber affects not only warfare and hackers, but every area of our lives. Anyone who was skeptical about this has learned over the last two months during the corona crisis that life could continue in another dimension. Did we say cyber?With excellent timing, this month, the Jerusalem Post Group is launching a new Internet initiative a cross-platform collaboration with Cybertech, the content-producing firm. The goal is to create content on the area of cyber on digital media, podcasts and pre-recorded broadcasts that will focus on the topic, together with The Jerusalem Post. The content will appear on the new Cybertech News section that will be part of the Jerusalem Post website. The section is intended not only for the general public that is interested in cyber issues, but also for those who only now have come to the realization that soon cyber will be an integral part of daily life. The cyber issue has recently become the hottest issue not only in the State of Israel, but also in large parts of the Middle East, says Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief of the Post. The recent attacks from Iran, the breach of Israeli sites and the like have put the issue on the map openly and visibly. If we previously thought that the subject of cyberattacks was hidden, it is now out in the open. Cybertech is essentially a hub for knowledge and excellence on all cyber issues today dealing with content, conferences, production and content creation. As the editor, I see what people want to read and this is definitely an Israeli success story.We were looking for a content partner that could deliver the most relevant and engaging content for our readers around the world, says Jerusalem Post Group CEO Inbar Ashkenazi. The goal of the productive collaboration is also to create content for a potential professional audience, awareness among the general public, and access to content, which is relevant to everyone these days. The cyber world touches every area of our lives, from securing our personal information to dealing more broadly with issues of the day.A world-changing eventCybertech is a content and information platform that began with a conference held in January 2014, by founder and owner Amir Rapaport, a former military correspondent and commentator for Yediot Aharonot and Maariv, who founded the website and magazine Israel Defense, which deals with security and technology. PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu at Cybertech 2019.The story of cyber is nothing short of a revolution. One could even say it is as important as the Industrial Revolution. Its a world-changing event, Rapaport says. Apart from the cyberattacks that we hear about, this is a revolution based on a broad area of life, in the automotive world as well as in the health care worlds. Corona centers and corona tracking, for that matter are cyber worlds. And of course, in the areas of wars and aviation everything is switching to cyber.In 2011, the State of Israel decided to establish a cyber venture under the prime ministers direction, which included investment in education, in ventures in the field, and development of an environment that promotes cyber entrepreneurship. Israel has unique advantages in the field, Rapaport explains. We have a lot of manpower that comes from IDF intelligence units, people who are very experienced in cyber and, of course, good universities and investment in the field. As part of the Israeli investment in cyber and the interest created, Cybertech, the content project, was also created.How did it begin?We created the first event in the country a conference that took all of the industries and reached thousands of people from all over the world. Everyone wanted to know what cyber was. Everyone was here, and our first conference soon became the largest cyber conference held outside the US. We have held the conference annually since January 2014, and it has become phenomenal.The Israeli brand Cybertech has spread its wings and has been adopted by many countries in the form of other Cybertech conferences held around the globe. Rapaport says that little Israel is considered a cyber superpower worldwide. Putting aside China for a moment, Israel is No. 2 in the world after the US and is considered a cyber power, to the extent that Israel has more cyber companies and research institutes than all the countries of the world together, except the US. In addition, about 20% of global cyber security investments come from Israel. Israel makes up a only small fraction of the worlds population, but 20% of the investment in the field is invested here, says Rapaport, so its no wonder that every week you hear about a company that is sold. Mobileye, Moovit and many others. The cyber industry has continued to grow even during the Corona period and has generated IPOs and investments.Apropos of corona, everyone has moved to the digital world. There is awareness of cyber security not only in large companies but also among individuals who use Zoom. Has this contributed to interest in cyber?Rapaport: This world existed even before corona, but there is no doubt that people who did not realize it existed in their daily routine did not know that you can continue to work out of the office or talk to your doctor from home. They discovered a new world. While the technology already existed, what changed was the need to use it at this time. If you cant fly to a meeting, you can meet in cyberspace. If people thought someone was eavesdropping on them, they wouldnt use it. So, it is worth noting that Israel is considered a leader in the world of security.Katz: We are seeing a dramatic increase in traffic, and The Jerusalem Post has millions of readers all over the world. The rise in usage is something that many international news sites share. People are looking for quality, reliable content in this era of fake news, especially now when dealing with an epidemic like corona. And as the world becomes digital and not just the school or workplaces but at the individual level of the average person, everyone needs information and protection.JERUSALEM POST Editor-in-Chief Yaakov Katz speaks at the annual Jerusalem Post Conference in New York City in June 2019. (Marc Israel Sellem)Who is the immediate audience that needs content today about cyber?Rapaport: Anyone who understands that our economy is becoming a cyber economy needs this content. Its a world that interests not just programmers and professional security experts. Opportunities exist for investors, for those who lead the economy. Ultimately, it is their responsibility to take their organizations to another level. This is exactly the time when companies are changing their business model. The media, the movies, even Netflix is very different from how NBC used to work. Anyone interested in and living with it essentially all of humanity can find an interest in the processes that go through cyberspace. Therefore, the target audience is very diverse and international, so the synergy with The Jerusalem Post was great for us.Katz: Today, cyber is part of the Israeli story. Of course, there are the politics and elections that we have had over the last two years and Netanyahus trial, and the traditional threats we have on the borders Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and yes or no to annexation. But cyber is one of the most important and fascinating stories that is happening in Israel and that interests the rest of the world. We know how to criticize when we see injustice or corruption, but at the same time, we also put a spotlight on the positive things that exist in the State of Israel. We are a Zionist, pro-Israel newspaper, most of whose readers are Zionist Jews, and Cybertech is an Israeli success story that needs to be promoted. Lets not forget that cyber is not only about attacking but also defending, which is something that everyone in the world needs. Its not unique to Israel. Everyone in the world needs knowledge and capabilities to defend himself, and Israeli companies are truly leaders in these areas.The new battlefieldIts important to note that this is not Rapaport and Katzs first meeting. The two met during the Second Lebanon War, then served as military correspondents Rapaport with Maariv and Katz for The Jerusalem Post and this collaboration is an exciting partnership for both.Apropos of your military past, it has been said that the main battlefield will become a cyber arena in the coming years. Will we abandon the guns?Rapaport: I think its already happening. This is not an attack that begins and ends with computers. Its an attack that starts with computers and goes into the physical world. A cyber attack can cause train collisions and can bring down planes. The world is going in this direction, unfortunately.Katz: Many people dont know this, but in 2007 when Israel attacked the Syrian reactor (Katzs book Shadow Strike is about this subject), according to foreign reports the planes used cyber capabilities that managed to darken Syrian radar screens. In 2010, The Stuxnet worm that damaged the Iranian nuclear program was, also according to foreign publications, a joint operation between Israel and the CIA, that managed to delay the nuclear program for two years without dropping a single bomb. We need to keep our fingers on the pulse, in order to be as sharp and as advanced as possible. Everyone becomes a potential soldier in such a war. Everyone with a mouse, a computer screen, and a network has the ability and potential to be a soldier in combat, and that has far-reaching implications for every country.Rapaport: Just as the Industrial Revolution and other human revolutions affected aspects of every area of daily life, from the money we use through courtship rituals, so too it will affect how wars are fought. This will be a very significant arena in the future. In 1850, when the rifle and the shotgun were invented, nobody believed there would be fighter jets and drones and yet, thats what happened. I think that war is going to be become cyber-like in just a few years.Katz: It is time to say that along with the pride of being a leading cyber power, we also need to remember that the Iranians established a cyber corps just a few years ago into which they have invested billions of dollars, and have allied with North Korea and other countries that have similar capabilities. Therefore, we must constantly develop our knowledge and information on the subject and not fall behind, so that we are not overtaken by our enemies. Not only is warfare moving to the cyber scene, but so is crime. According to research, every month, more information is stolen than in any armed robbery that occurs in a year, Rapaport says. Thats extremely powerful.Speaking of wars and crime, would it be correct to say that since we all run our lives from the smartphone, that we are more vulnerable on a personal level?Rapaport: First of all, we are vulnerable to losing our privacy. We must give up privacy whether we like it or not. Within a few years, there will be a camera that can identify our face. I imagine that most governments have this ability already. With the push of a button, they will know where we are now, and where we were five years ago. In China, it is already happening, and it will also happen in the West. Despite all the privacy laws, the governments will know everything about us. Big Brother will be inconsequential compared to what will be in the future.

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The Cyber Revolution akin to the Industrial Revolution - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

It sounds like a no-brainer. To the question: Should a Jewish media site offer a well-known antisemite, a muse to the alt-right and associate of Holocaust deniers, thousands of words, including barely disguised threats, to repeat the Jew-hating and racist calumnies hes already published widely, all couched in a strangely cosy interview that amplifies his reach with no editorial or journalistic rationale other than "to know what they [antisemites] sound like"?

That is exactly what the conservative-leaning U.S. publication Tablet did last week, in a rambling and ethically incontinent interview with Kevin MacDonald, cogently described as the neo-Nazi movements favorite academic, whose work has been called "the broadest, ugliest, and most vicious antisemitism passing for scholarship." His theories, as Tablet itself notes, inspired the "Jews will not replace us" slogan chanted by neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017.

Conveniently, the Tablet interviewer, David Samuels, ditches any possibility of causation between reading neo-Nazis and attraction to neo-Nazism, based on the authority of personal anecdote: "I have encountered no shortage of racists and anti-Semites in all of these places [where hes reported from]. Yet I have found little evidence that their hatreds were the product of reading or hearing the wrong words."

This is a ludicrous assertion for every historical period, and not least for the social media age, with so much research-based evidence on how online racism radicalizes. MacDonald himself is constantly cited as a key influencer for converts to white nationalism. But the Tablet interviewers dismissal of causation at least makes his own position, and perhaps keeps his own conscience, clear.

Once the interviewer specifically noted his view that trying to "argue [antisemites] out of their symptoms" was a pointless exercise, its clear hell give MacDonald a full hearing, and MacDonald couldnt be happier, spewing out line after line of his "thinking" on Jews dark and malicious "group evolutionary strategy." This is almost as far from James Baldwin vs William F. Buckley as you can get.

That "thinking" is best summarized by Judith Shulevitz in Slate a few years ago, in her forensic pushback against MacDonald and the craven silence of his academic peers. MacDonald posits that Jews have "highly developed genes for mental and verbal acuity" and "social aggression (also carefully bred-in)," which gave them over history "powerful tools that enable them to dominate neighboring ethnic groupsa nefarious agenda of systematic breeding and control of resources."

To protect their position, MacDonalds so-called thinking suggests, Jews are engaged in an endless war against white America; Jews are genetically programmed not to cease from their endless strife to push immigration and multiculturalism to dilute white demographics and maintain control.

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And MacDonald, of course, has a solution to this Jewish problem: restoring "parity" between the Jews and other ethnic groups requires systematic anti-Jewish discrimination in college admission and the job market, and heavy taxation of Jews "to counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth."

In Tablet, MacDonald reels much of this out again, complete with a nasty threatening edge: that American Jews must "rethink" their support for immigration and multiculturalism because "[its] not fair to the white community, and that the world may not be very nice to them, eitherWe just saved you [Jews] in World War IIAt that same time, the Jewish community ramped up their activism against white America. What the fuck?

"Jews are just gonna destroy white power completely, and destroy America as a white country. I dont think thats necessarily in our interests, or their interests, and I think its shortsighted of them to think that."

Yes, its shocking stuff, but readers have had plenty of opportunities to be bombarded by this "thinking," and MacDonald has had plenty of platforms from which to promulgate them.

He is professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, retiring in 2014 after teaching there for some 30 years. He has published numerous books that are available on the open market. He voluntarily testified as a character witness for Holocaust denier David Irving in his libel battle with Deborah Lipstadt, where he characterized Irving as a victim of a concerted but typical Jewish plot. (MacDonald has also asserted that violence against Jews such as the Inquisition and the Nazi genocide were "rational" responses to Jewish behavior.)

He became a well-reported guru to the 2016 onward rise of the alt-right and to then-GOP candidate Paul Nehlen in 2018. He has been on InfoWars, hes been on David Dukes podcast, hes had chummy public conversations with Richard Spencer.

What he says in Tablet is not new, and its not newsworthy. Its not even "fresh" material. MacDonald himself noted on Twitter that the "interesting" interview with an "interesting guy" had taken place a year ago, and he thought Tablet had ditched it. So why push this out now?

First of all, Black Lives Matter. As protests against anti-black police brutality and institutional racism spread, perhaps Tablet saw a tempting news hook. The piece is entitled "American Racist," though the URL emphasizes his antisemitism, and there is plenty of grotesque fodder to link an old interview to current events. MacDonald calls "the black community" a big problem that is biologically [IQ] related": Black Americans, in MacDonalds view "cant be educated" and are "crime-prone."

But again, what insight does this provide? What on earth is newsworthy about a white nationalist abusing black Americans for being "genetically inferior"? Isnt it one of the oldest threads of "American racism" from before slavery onward?

But there was another juicy news hook. The pieces introduction gives a knowing wink at the "present moment": voluntarily interviewing a bona fide antisemite like MacDonald is actually taking a principled stand against censorship. Yes, the link to "cancel culture," the baying liberal online mob and the Tom Cotton New York Times op-ed.

Tablet's interviewer rails against the "collapse" of "social tolerance for dissenting opinions," that "more and more people are identified as carriers of unacceptable thought," threatening what has made "the progressive expansion of freedoms in America possible."

The Tablet interviewer distinguishes himself from the wild "activists" seeking to silence "marginal" hate merchants. Activists' actions, he believes, boost those fringe voices: "The more powerfully such marginal views are repressed, the more power they seem to exert," turning them into "rebels and prophets."

According to this line of thinking, every mainstream publication should be publicizing unmediated Holocaust denial, anti-black racism and Jew-hatred daily, to defang their "repression" and weaken their power. Not surprisingly, rational editors and readers dont buy this argument. But Tablet is committed to doing its bit (and was lauded as "brave" by its Twitter fans for doing so.)

Its not groundbreaking or brave or principled to publish a neo-Nazi. It is not a stroke of intellectual genius to make a sly analogy between the rationale of publishing a white supremacist and a U.S. senator, or to frame hearing "dissenter" MacDonalds words as a strike for freedom.

It is not ethical for a Jewish publication to interview an influential, racist antisemite and praise their "kindness," and for the interviewer to make grossly inappropriate objectifying locker-room lines like, "My first little girlfriend was black. She was really cute."

It is not courage, it is self-abasement, for any Jewish publication to call up a Jew-hating white supremacist and be grateful for their time including this publications interview with a white supremacist who boosts antisemites.

Perhaps we can assume that Tablet would nix interviews with a subject who insisted on wearing KKK robes or full Nazi regalia. But surely the last half decade has taught us that for the far right, suits and smart casual are the new robes and swastikas.

Would Tablet reach out to David Duke, once of the robes, now of the suit? After all, in his 1998 autobiography, he wrote this: "In modern America, Jews lead the effort to de-Christianize America...Jewish power is ubiquitous...It is not a [Jewish] conspiracy. It is simply two nations Jew and Gentile in a state of ethnic war."

Very MacDonaldesque, you could say. So what is the clear blue sky between the insidious ex-academic and the insidious ex-KKK leader? And shouldnt Jewish publications have bright red lines about platforming incitement and hate?

When Kevin MacDonald himself appeared on the "David Duke Show" in January 2013, he declared: "Jews dont really have moral principles. What they have is a set of interests." Hard-line antisemites have perverted ideas about Jews that too often have led to discrimination and lethal violence. Its not censorship, it is basic self-respect, for Jewish publications to have the moral principle not to platform them.

Esther Solomon is the Opinion Editor of Haaretz English. Twitter:@EstherSolomon

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Jewish publications really shouldnt platform Jew-hating white supremacists - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Join us for an evening with Joshua Washington, director of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI). This organization is dedicated to education about the sacred bond between black Americans and Jews, particularly during the civil rights era to the present day. IBSI realizes that education is the key to a better pathway forward.

Never miss the best stories and events! Get JewishBoston This Week.

This program is sponsored by Lappin Foundation, Chabad of the North Shore Swampscott, Lynn, Peabody, Everett, Congregation Shirat Hayam, Congregation Sons of Israel, Congregation Tifereth Israel, Sephardic, Jewish Community Center of the North Shore, North Suburban Jewish Community Center, Shalom Hadassah, Temple Bnai Abraham, Temple Emanu-El, Temple Ner Tamid, Temple Sinai and Temple Tiferet Shalom.

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Unearthing the Bond Between Blacks and Jews - jewishboston.com

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

Jews these days seem to have a very complicated relationship with who we as Jews are, many think Judaism is a religion, it is not. Judaism is something that Jews practice. Someone who converts to Judaism does not genetically become Jewish, but practices Judaism. And many liberal Jews especially, erroneously view themselves as racially white, which is interesting, considering that white people never considered us part of their race, and they are correct.

The outdated categorization of race is based on skull composure, divided into Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. With the advent of genetic technology race is now more defined based on haplogroups and genes. Science has confirmed what Jews have known for thousands of years, that we are an ethno-religious tribe, connected genetically. Lighter skinned Ashkenazi Jews have more in common with darker skinned Mizrahi Jews than they do with any European. The issue in America in terms of Jews mistaking identity is that many here are Ashkenazi, those whose families are from European countries. In Israel, the majority of Jews are Mizrahi and are primarily from Arab countries. Yet all Jews are from Israel, and even more specifically, Jews today have been traced back to Judea, the tribes of Judah and Levi specifically.

The argument many liberal Jews, in particular, make about race is that because Hitler weaponized race, that Jews should not be considered a race. In the US, even before the Holocaust near decimated the Jewish community in Europe, Jews were never considered white. Today the talk is focused on systemic racism, yet there was also systemic anti-Semitism.

Jews were often grouped in with black people in terms of limits to where Jews could work, where Jews could live, and where Jews could study. It was not until 1968 that Jews could live in parts of Florida. Housing discrimination against Jews was firmly in place in parts of Illinois and in Michigan. Only in 1968 were Jews finally allowed to purchase property in areas of Southern California. From the 1920s to 1960, Jewish people faced severe admissions quotas at Ivy League universities. This term was titled Limitation of Numbers. Hollywood was created by Jews as an outpost of Jewish theater which resulted from Jewish actors not being hired by whites. The KKK was not against white people, but had and still has hate towards blacks and Jews alike.

Originally I was eager to emphasize that Jews are a race due to 2020 being a Census year, and the importance to ascertain Jewish rights especially when anti-Semitism was at its apex in 2019. Protection under religion does not carry the same weight as protection under race, and after numerous years of attempting to legalize Jews as a race once again in the US (until a few decades ago, Jews had the option to choose Hebrew on the census), President Trump legally granted Jews racial protection under Title VI.

Right now with the band-aid on race ripped off after the brutal killing of George Floyd, liberal Jews especially are now wrongly identifying as white to join in the collective white guilt felt across the left. It is not wrong to want to reform criminal justice, it is not wrong to want justice for those who were killed while unarmed. It is wrong to pretend to be white when the white people always considered you the other.

The alt-left and the alt-right today lie that Israel is a colonialist country with white Jews who enslave Arabs. That is the messaging from CAIR, from Black Lives Matter, and from a slew of other antisemitic groups. To accept being falsely labeled as white by others and within, is to completely misunderstand who Jews are, it is to eschew the very real connection Ashkenazi Jews have to Sephardic Jews, to Mizrahi Jews and to black Ethiopian Jews, to Indian Jews, to Bukharian Jews, to Persian Jews.

Being Jewish in America should not carry guilt, but pride. Pride that despite thousands of years of systemic oppression in every land we lived in outside of Israel, we as a people rose above victimhood. And in America we were determined to thrive despite every obstacle and assault. Yet to those Jews who are leftist, you should feel guilty, guilty for voting for racist political policies.

When Democrats bar school choice for black inner-city parents, that is racist. Defunding the police will only hurt innocent black people who want protection from criminals, just like any other group. The negative effects of police reduction already have been proved in Ferguson, Missouri and other locations. Voting for Joe Biden, who in 1994 passed the most racist crime bill in the history of the country, affecting black youth to this day, is not advocating for black people. Hating President Trump who passed the First Step Act, an actual criminal justice reform initiative to reduce excessive sentencing for non-violent crimes, is hypocritical.

While the leftists demonize white people, and though being white is not a crime, Jews have never been, are not now, nor ever will be racially white. If Jews do not know who we are as a people, we will not have a firm foundation upon which to stand when pushing back against anti-Semitism, which today is most pervasive on the left.

Laureen Lipsky is a pro Israel advocate living in New York, and is the founder of Taking Back the Narrative.

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Jews, Race, and Liberal Guilt | Laureen Lipsky | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

One of the only issues to generate consensus among the Israeli press during the coronavirus crisis is the Shin Bets surveillance of COVID-19 patients and those they had come in contact with. Such monitoring is extreme and unnecessary, journalists protested.

Public condemnation of this surveillance has, in some ways, become a form of expressing allegiance to Israeli democracy. Reporters who have grown accustomed to attacks during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus election campaign and his corruption trial have finally found a topic where they feel a semblance of safety where they can take a critical position without being portrayed as enemies of the state.

Knesset members who had never been vocal on issues of the right to privacy before also spoke out against surveillance. Even former officials in the defense establishment, including recently appointed Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, expressed their criticism of the security agencys monitoring. After Ashkenazi dared to speak up, several conservative military reporters did the same.

The High Court of Justice, which tends to keep its finger on the pulse of the Jewish majoritys opinion on such matters, accepted petitions by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Adalah, and Atty. Shachar Ben-Meir. It ruled that the Shin Bets response to the coronavirus crisis must be anchored in legislation, rather than a set of emergency regulations that the executive branch rolled out in March. This week, the government announced it would freeze a bill that would regulate the Shin Bets monitoring, and thus the surveillance is expected to come to an end.

In its response to the petitions against Shin Bet surveillance, the state argued on April 12 that Israels Health Ministry looked into proposals by at least 10 different Israeli companies for alternatives to Shin Bet surveillance. It soon became clear, according to the state, that the technologies they offered were even more invasive than those of Israels security service, and involved gathering information from apps, cellular and credit companies, and even security bodies.

The state also referred to a statement made by Yisrael Beiteinu MK Eli Avidar to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees Subcommittee on Intelligence and Secret Services on March 26: The solution is not always found in civilian apps. Such apps can pose a far greater risk to civil rights.

It would be an understatement to say that most journalists who were horrified by the monitoring of Israeli citizens could not care less about the daily surveillance of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Much of Israeli media also continues to ignore the story of how these surveillance technologies are exported to non-democratic countries, where states of emergency are a permanent feature of life, and where these technologies can be used to take away freedoms and sometimes even cause physical harm.

It is disappointing to witness the media behave this way. Israeli reporters could have asked a simple question: if not a single Israeli company offers a less intrusive surveillance system than the Shin Bet, why do the Foreign and Defense Ministries grant licenses to export those same surveillance tools to countries that are known to violate human and civil rights?

Israeli surveillance cameras in a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The silence of the press can be explained by the fact that raising this question would inevitably lead to a confrontation with the Defense Ministry, which serves as an inexhaustible and central source of information for Israeli reporters. In a country where security-related stories form the crux of almost all news in major media outlets, there are only a few brave editors and journalists who are willing to take risks, possibly burn bridges and lose sources, and subject themselves to sanctions.

In early 2015, about a year after the civil war broke out in South Sudan, human rights activists there told me about a building in Juba in which Israel reportedly installed a surveillance system. I contacted various media outlets and journalists, but no one wanted to be the first to publish or investigate the matter. Eventually, blogger and linguist Dr. Idan Landau agreed to run the story on his blog.

A year later, on Jan. 22, 2016, a United Nations Security Council panel of experts on South Sudan released a report confirming that the surveillance system was indeed purchased from Israel following the outbreak of the civil war. The panel also asserted that the system was used to carry out grave human rights violations and political persecution by the National Security Service (NSS). According to the report, the NSS carried out arbitrary arrests, torture, murder, disappeared those affiliated with the opposition, and operated death squads.

Based on reports by both the United Nations Mission in South Sudan and the African Union, the law in South Sudan forbids the NSS from making arrests on its own, permitting it only to engage in intelligence gathering. Yet the organization has persecuted, detained, and harassed journalists and human rights activists. The reports state that illegal arrests, torture, and disappearances are part of a systematic and widespread policy of the South Sudan government, amounting to crimes against humanity.

In May 2016, I filed a petition alongside Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg to revoke the Defense Ministrys export license for the surveillance system to South Sudan. Both the petition and the reports that informed it hardly made a dent in Israeli media. Other members of Knesset were not interested in the matter, and the High Court issued a gag order on the ruling.

Sudanese soldiers seen patrolling the streets of Juba, the capital of the Republic of South Sudan, on August 20, 2011. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)

As far as we know, the surveillance system remains in South Sudan to this day. The name of the company operating the system has never been revealed.

Imagine a scenario in which reporters actively look into the use of an Israeli surveillance system in South Sudan. Newsrooms would send reporters to Juba, while media personalities would tweet condemnations and demand answers from both the company operating the monitoring system and the Defense Ministry. Members of Knesset, too, would publicly criticize the ministry, and the Knesset would hold a fierce debate on the issue. The High Court would gauge public opinion and conclude that it should issue a verdict open to the public, which would be full of poetic language on the right to privacy and public safety in South Sudan.

The Israeli surveillance system in South Sudan is only one of many examples of local medias near-total disregard to Israels arms exports, often to regimes that routinely violate human rights. And when the issue nevertheless comes up in public discourse, rather than pursue critical and independent investigations, coverage is usually limited to referencing reports in international media outlets.

One would think that Israeli medias almost overwhelming opposition to Shin Bet surveillance of COVID-19 patients would also influence its position on exports of such surveillance systems. In the wake of the pandemic, numerous articles were published by philosophers, futurists, and publicists explaining why and how everything will change after the coronavirus. But there is one thing that even a deadly virus will not be able to change: the interests of Israeli media.

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on The Seventh Eye. Read it here.

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For Israeli press, surveillance is only a problem when targeting Jewish citizens - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

With the subject racial injustice at the forefront of peoples minds, many Americans (including many Jewish people) learned about Juneteenth for the first time this week.

In fact, June 19 is the date of the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.

The date is based on when Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas in 1865 with news that the war had ended and the slaves there were now free men, women, and children. This was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation became official on January 1, 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce it.

Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement, according to juneteenth.com; but the Jewish Multiracial Network created a Black Lives Kaddish to reflect on this moment, in memory of the black people victimized by the racism that still persists in this country.

We are lifting up the suggestion of Black Jewish journalist Robin Washington and we are asking our friends and allies in the Jewish community Jews of Color and White Jews, Sephardic and Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, religious and secular, in private or on Zoom to recite a Kaddish for Black Lives during this Shabbat, the organization said on its Facebook page.Depending on your practice, you may choose to recite it along with the traditional Kaddish or, after candle lighting, join us in reciting Psalm 31 (traditionally said to ward off hatred) on this special Juneteenth Shabbat.

The text of the prayer is below:

rkohn@midatlanticmedia.com

@RachelKTweets

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This Juneteenth, a 'Kaddish for Black Lives' - Washington Jewish Week

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

Exciting debuts to shake up your takeout and delivery routine.By Tae Yoon

Published on 6/17/2020 at 3:44 PM

Were three months into the era of eating from home (in addition to WFH). And if youre anything like us, you might be blasting this 10-hour video of a busy restaurant on repeat as a soundtrack to your meals. Its the closest thing that makes us feel like were dining among people again, which is currently slated to begin with outdoor dining in Phase 2 of New York Citys reopening (learn more about when that might be and what to expect).

Until then, takeout and delivery still rule. But the good news is that new restaurants in the city are starting to emerge once again, offering a semblance of life from before COVID-19. For your next meal, try one of the following five spots to reinvigorate your played-out takeout routine.

Lower East SideChef Jacob Siwak (formerly of Olmsted) has teamed up with chef Mark Coleman (formerly of Rezdra and Marea) and baker Brian Maxwell to serve up traditional Roman cuisine at Forsythia. All three have worked in kitchens in Italy, and the menu consists of meal kits that include antipasti like suppli, a Roman street food of fried rice balls, and hand-made pasta like braised oxtail pappardelle.How to order: Call 646-450-5406 or via website, Caviar

Thrillist TV

Nashville

Please Dont Hang Up: The Best Things to See, Eat, and Do in Nashville

Chelsea MarketAt Pulkies, chef and managing partner Harris Mayer-Selinger celebrates his New York and Ashkenazi roots with Jewish-style barbecue. With the spirit and flavors of traditional American barbecue, turkey (pulled, hand-sliced pastrami-style, glazed wings, and salad) and brisket (chopped and hand-sliced) are the main focus -- along with soups, salads, sides, spreads, and schmears.How to order:Takeout via website (complimentary dessert when picking up), delivery via Caviar, UberEats

WilliamsburgAmir Nathan (formerly of Via Carota and Maison Premiere) and executive chef Jordan Anderson (formerly of Olmsted and Maison Premiere) pull inspiration from family recipes in Sami & Susus Mediterranean inspired menu. In addition to breads like rolled bureka, spreads like matbucha, and both small and large dishes alike, Picnic Sets starting at $48 are also available.How to order: Call 718-302-9023 for takeout, delivery via Caviar, Grubhub, Seamless

East VillageChef Luigi Petrocelli (formerly of Hearth) is behind The Wild Sons new East Village location, which will replace the original Meatpacking District locale. The menus casual anytime fare includes a white anchovy sandwich with pine nut hummus, a fennel and carrot salad, shareable plates like charred chicken, and more.How to order: Via website

Park SlopeWinner Caf & Bakery in Park Slope from chef Daniel Eddy (formerly of Rebelle) is open seven days a week. Winner offers baked goods and coffee in the morning, bread and sandwiches like their BLT in the afternoon, and chicken dinners for the evening that must be ordered in advance the night before by 10pm. A rotating list of collaborations for their Friends & Family Meal and Weekend K-Pop Up! series are also available on their website.How to order: Takeout window or email info@winner.nyc

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5 New Restaurant Openings in NYC You Need to Know - Thrillist

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

Petitions from the Graduate Employees Union, or GEU, Michigan State professors, and members of the MSU community have called for the removal of Stephen Hsu as vice president for research and innovation, denouncing him of scientific racism, sexism, eugenicist research and conflicts of interest.

As of 11:00 p.m. Wednesday, a general petition has about 700 signatures and a separate petition of Michigan State professors and graduate students has about 470 signatures.

A counter petition in support of keeping Hsu has also begun circulating. As of 11:00 p.m. Wednesday it has about 970 signatures, from faculty from various universities across the world. The letter to Stanley says that the accusations calling Hsu a racist and sexist are rumors and lies, and they believe he should not be removed.

There are 460 signatures in the open letter petitioning Hsu's removal that reference current affiliation with MSU, including students and faculty, about 66% of responses.

In the open letter urging that Hsu remains at his post, about 90 signatures reference any affiliation with MSU, including students, faculty or explicit reference to alumni status, about 9% of responses.

Hsu stated in his June 12 response post that a signature from Corey Washington, the research office's director of analytics and his podcast co-host, was forged.

The general petition says that due to the nature of the open letter, submissions cannot be completely verified and those whose names were falsely submitted or have an error should submit an email to president@geuatmsu.org or organizing@geuatmsu.org.

The petition supporting Hsu has the same issue, those who find errors should email psychology professor Joseph Cesario at cesario@msu.edu, Eli Broad College of Business professor John Jiang at jiangj@broad.msu.edu, College of Engineering professor Wei Liao at liaow@msu.edu, or Corey Washington himself at washington00@gmail.com.

In other words we have no way of verifying how many of these signatures are legitimate this in itself is a serious problem considering the magnitude of accusations and suggestion that Dr. Hsu be even stripped of his tenure and professorship, Washington said in a letter in support of Hsu.

The GEU did not call to strip Hsu's tenure or professorship in the physics department, rather to remove him from a leadership post that determines who gets research funding, said MSU GEU President Kevin Bird.

As a vice president, Hsu is an at-will employee meaning he can be removed from his vice president position without notice or reason, but his tenure position will remain and would have to go through a longer dismissal process, MSU spokesperson Emily Guerrant said.

MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. said on Monday that he is aware of these petitions that were sent to him over the weekend.

I am very aware of this issue and the petitions. I am concerned about this and fully reviewing this matter, Stanley said.

The petition in support of Hsu host letters from Cesario, Jiang, Liao, Washington and professors from University of Minnesota, and Utah Valley University defending him from the accusations.

"There is no question that the push for racial justice and equal rights has been and continues to be a noble and important cause," according to the petition in defense of Hsu. "In the narrow case, removing Hsu from his position will in no way advance this cause. In the general case, removing Hsu will do permanent damage to the university and will undermine the core values that we must uphold."

Talks of a lawsuit

In a June 12 blog post responding to the Twitter thread by the GEU, Hsu added a note to his initial response to the Twitter allegations, seeking help and funds to form a legal team to sue those speaking out against him online for slander or libel. The note has since been deleted.

James Madison College Professor and scientific racism historian John Jackson, who has written a series of blog posts about Hsu, suggests suing his critics is an indication Hsu is unfit for his position.

"For a brief time, Hsu had a this note up on his website indicating he would sue his critics," Jackson said in a blog post. "This is a sure indication that he is unfit for his office and that the talk about 'free inquiry' is merely posturing for his poor behavior. I wonder if Hsu knows that the discovery process during such a trial applies to him as well as his critics."

Editor's note: The original blog post from Jackson used the phrase "had a this note" instead of "had this note."

The MSU-Maryland study on police bias

The GEU's thread addressed Hsu's promotion of Cesario's 2019 study on racial disparities in fatal police shootings in partnership with University of Maryland. The study concluded that there is no disparity in rates of police shootings by race once crime rates are controlled by group.

In his letter, Washington clarified he was the one who asked Cesario to be on their podcast, Manifold, to discuss this study. In timeliness with the current national unrest, he felt these findings would be interesting. He also added that despite Cesario's conclusions, he also acknowledged other studies that do show disparities in police stops, and in all other uses of force, controlling for confounding factors.

Washington said before the podcast he read Stanford University psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt's book, "Biased," which argues that implicit bias is largely responsible for disparities in how police treat minority suspects.

A 2020 study from University of Pittsburgh statistics professor Lucas Mentch found for most races, "the number of shooting victims observed was not at all reasonable to expect based on local population demographics,"

However, the findings are expected when victims are considered a random sample of arrest rates, rather than crime rates.

"Stated differently, these findings would support the notion that whatever biases may exist on the arrest level also carry through to the level of fatal shootings," according to the study.

Studies rely heavily on databases created by The Guardian and The Washington Post, which started in 2015 as the first source of national data on fatal shootings.

One issue with the database is that it does not gather other forms of fatal police encounters or data on police shootings where the victim survived, according to the Pittsburgh study.

Additionally, race categories are different across databases, complicating the research further.

Cesario and Mentch, along with many other researchers, are calling for a public national data collection of police shootings.

Antisemitism allegations

Hsu was also criticized for his relationship with Holocaust denier Ron Unz, who was also on the podcast. Washington said he was unaware Unz 'flirted' with Holocaust denial and these views were not discussed on the show. He also said there is always risk when interviewing controversial people in order to learn from a conversation with the person.

Jackson addressed this in a blog post, as he has already written about Hsu's relationship with Unz before.

"Hsu hosted his friend Ron Unz, a Holocaust denier, on his podcast," Jackson said."Corey Washingtons letterin support of Hsu claims 'Unz has flirted with Holocaust denial' which is completely false; he has not 'flirted' with it, he actively promotes it at unz.com and Hsu actively promoted unz.com."

Washington has been a friend of Hsu for 30 years, and said Hsu is not a Holocaust denier or anti-Semite and did not invite Unz to advance these views. However, Jackson wrote that no one ever said he was.

"My point is that Holocaust deniers are well known to leverage any opportunity to appear respectable," Jackson said in his post. "Hsus actions, regardless of what hethoughthe was doing did exactly that. By his own admission, Hsu has been friends with Unz for years and they worked on a campaign together at Harvard. As I said before, Hsu either knew of Unzs antisemetic views and decided that Unz must be heard anyway or Hsu did not know which means Hsu didnt bother checking what unz.com, the site he was promoting on his podcast, actually was. Either option shows Hsu to be incompetent to judge 'research integrity.'"

Editor's note: The original blog post from Jackson spelled "anti-Semitic" as "antisemetic."

He also addressed that Hsu chose to defend the decision rather than apologize.

"First, of course, I certainly have not charged Hsu with sharing those ideas but rather lending his name, and Michigan State Universitys credibility, to those political activists," Jackson said. "Indeed, it is probably advantageous for white nationalists to appear with people whodo notshare their views."

Free inquiry

In sum, Hsu's support letters outline that no concrete claims have been made to support his failing to do his job in a fair and unbiased manner, and that the university should refrain from firing him. Additionally, those who support him say there is no evidence of him being racist, sexist, or a eugenicist. "Therefore, the pressure to remove him is really about removing people who hold different viewpoints about controversial topics," Liao said in an email.

Jackson said in his June 16 blog post that the letters misunderstand the nature of free inquiry and academic freedom, and removing Hsu would not be a violation of academic freedom but a fulfillment of it.

Washington said in his letter that "free inquiry requires that investigators be free to research whatever they like. I might not be very interested in what you are studying, and I might not like the questions you are asking or the data or answers you are coming up with, but you need to be free to study them regardless of my opinion or my ideology."

Jackson addressed this position as well.

"Hsus supporters and Hsu himself throw around the phrase 'free inquiry' quite a bit," he said. "Theletter they addressed to President Stanleyclaims 'More important, however, is thatthecore values of educational institutions and of scientific discovery are the principles of free inquiry and free expression.' 'Responsibility,' you will note, is not mentioned, but it is the core concept of academic freedom. Our responsibility, as academics, is to sit in judgment of what counts as knowledge."

Hsu told Washington that one thing he agreed with from the GEU's thread was that while all professors have the right to free speech, it is different with the vice president of research and innovation.

"VP of research is a political position and as such may be subject to greater constraints on free expression because ones comportment can be criticized if it reflects badly on the university," Washington said in his letter. "I agree only to a certain extent. I believe that the visibility of the position sets it up as an example of what is involved in living up to the values that the university espouses, including those of free expression and free inquiry, and the ability not to judge a persons fitness for a position based on their personal or political views."

Hsu's role in this administrative position is where Jackson and others' concerns stem from.

"My concern is that Hsus behavior has demonstrated he cannot fulfill the duties of his office," Jackson said in his blog. "His office requires him to ensure 'research integrity' which means, at a minimum he should be the best possible example of those practices. His responsibility is to make sure that his behavior reflects the responsibilities of his office. He has manifestly failed to do so. ... That is what the case is about. It is about whether Michigan State University believes that he is the best person to reflect our values as a research university. We should oppose his continuation in his present positionbecausewe value scholarship and scientific inquiry."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:20 p.m. June 18 to include updated links to Hsu's support letter and petition.

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Dueling petitions: Calls growing both for removal and support of VP of research Stephen Hsu - The State News

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

There are currently two dangerous phenomena which threaten Holocaust remembrance and education in many countries all over the world. The first is Holocaust denial, which needs no explanation, and already began in the course of World War II.

The second is that of Holocaust distortion, which does not deny that the Shoah took place, but seeks to alter its narrative for political reasons. It began after World War II in Communist countries, which purposely refused to accurately identify some of the perpetrators and the primary victims, and has become increasingly more dangerous with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The former is in large measure in remission in the Western world, having been effectively refuted by numerous scholars and defeated in very important court cases, especially that of David Irving, but is still a severe problem in the Arab and Muslim world. The latter, on the other hand, has for many years been for the most part ignored and allowed to flourish unhindered in post-Communist Eastern Europe.

It was only in wake of the controversy over the Polish Holocaust bill in 2018, that the issue received wide exposure, but almost exclusively regarding Poland and not about any of the other major offenders such as Lithuania, Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Belarus, Romania and Estonia. And that is why this book is important and despite numerous historical mistakes and a few significant flaws, should be required reading for all Western government leaders, Foreign Ministry officials, and anyone interested in issues concerning Holocaust commemoration and education.

After presenting a very detailed description of the historical, political and ideological roots of Holocaust distortion, which help explain its success since 1990, and the dangers it poses to European unity and the future of the European Union, Suboti, a professor of political science at Georgia State University at Atlanta, focuses on how this problem has developed in Serbia, Croatia and Lithuania.

My assumption is that her choice in this regard was based on her personal history and knowledge of the Balkans (based on her preface, she is of Serbian origin), but is somewhat problematic, since the extent to which Serbian Nazi collaborators participated in the mass murder of Jews was relatively minor, especially in comparison to the events in Lithuania and Croatia.

The Serbs, moreover, were the victims of a genocidal campaign launched against them by the Croatians, and hence the issue in Serbia is nowhere as prevalent and dangerous, as it is elsewhere in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the fact that both Serbia and Croatia were part of former Yugoslavia offers an instructive opportunity for comparison.

In each case, she begins with a description of how the Soviet Union or the local Communist regime did their own manipulation of the history of the Holocaust. Thus, for example, in all three countries she deals with, the unique fate of the Jews, who were identified as a major ideological enemy of the Third Reich and were therefore singled out for total annihilation, was never acknowledged by the authorities, a fact which made it easier for the creation of different false narratives after the fall of Communism.

Once the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe was achieved, efforts began to offer an alternative narrative to the events from 1939-1990. In direct contrast to the accepted Western history of that period, the former Communist countries presented a narrative in which Holocaust crimes shared equal billing with those of Communism, which they claimed were worthy of being categorized as genocide, even though that was not the case.

In several countries, among them Lithuania, denial that Communism was genocide became a criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment. In Croatia, names of schools, streets and public buildings named for Communist or partisan leaders were changed to those of prominent figures from the pre-Communist era, including persons associated with the notorious Ustasha regime of 1941-1945, which murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Catholic Croats. In Lithuania, leaders of the post-World War II resistance against the Soviets have become national heroes, even in cases in which they actively participated in Holocaust crimes.

Due to the paucity of scholarly research on Holocaust distortion, this book is quite valuable. It is not, however, without flaws and factual mistakes. Among the former are, for example, Subotis exaggerated claim that Holocaust distortion destabilizes the core of the European Union, which was built on the memory of World War II-no WW II, no European Union.

If that were indeed the case, the EU would long ago have taken strong measures against the new democracies, when in fact, none of the guilty parties has paid any price for distorting the history of the Holocaust. A second flaw is its failure to devote virtually any attention to the issue of the prosecution after independence of Eastern European Nazi war criminals, which is one of the most important aspects of how seriously these countries are dealing with Holocaust-related issues.

Thus, for example, there is no mention whatsoever of the most important trial of a Holocaust perpetrator conducted in Eastern Europe, that of Jasenova commandant Dinko Saki, probably the most positive step taken by the Croatian government to date to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

The numerous mistakes regarding Holocaust history also diminish the importance of this book. To list just a few. Hungary is not the most extreme case of Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Ukraine and Croatia are far worse. Nor had 60,000 Jews already been murdered by the Hungarians by 1942, that was the figure of fatalities prior to the mass deportations to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. Lithuanian hopes for independence were not squashed a few months after the Nazi invasion of late June 1941, but rather after a few weeks, in early August 1941. The murder of 16,000, mostly Jewish men, by late August 1941, hardly represented most Jews in the countryside, where 100,000 Jews resided when the Nazis invaded.

The Lithuanian Ypatingas burys murder squad which carried out the Ponar killings were not the white-banders. Those were men who joined the makeshift vigilante squads formed as soon as the Soviets began to retreat, and were identified by white armbands, since they did not have uniforms.

The number of Jews living under the Nazi occupation was 220,000, not 165,000. The latter figure was the number of Jews in Lithuania in the mid-thirties, but 80,000 Jews living in Vilna and its environs came under Lithuanian jurisdiction in 1939, when the Soviets occupied eastern Poland and turned the area over to the Lithuanians.

There is much to be learned from Yellow Star, Red Star, but it is a shame that the author was not more precise in the historical accounts on which she based her assertions. n

Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the director of the Centers Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. His latest book, together with Ruta Vanagaite, Our People; Discovering Lithuanias Hidden Holocaust (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) deals extensively with Holocaust distortion in Lithuania

Yellow Star, Red Star; Holocaust

Remembrance After Communism

Jelena Suboti

Cornell University Press:

London and Ithaca, 2019

Hardcover, 264 pages; $29.95

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Shoah distortion - how the narrative of the Holocaust is being rewritten - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2020

Amid ongoing protests against police brutality and racism, a new campaign from organizations including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League is urging advertisers to pull their spending on Facebook ads for July, emphasizing the platforms repeated failure to curb hateful and false content. The campaign, which is called Stop Hate for Profit, is just the latest effort to hold Facebook accountable for how its platform enables and even benefits from racism and misinformation.

The organizations, which also include Color of Change, Common Sense, Sleeping Giants, and Free Press, point to several examples where they say Facebook has failed. They specifically point to the social network enabling incitement to violence against protesters amid recent anti-police brutality demonstrations; its decision to make Breitbart a news source on its platform and to enlist the Daily Caller as a fact-checking partner; its failure to remove Holocaust denial from the platform as a form of hate; and allowing voting disinformation to target black voters.

The campaign, which was announced in a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, adopts a similar approach as previous advertiser-focused efforts that have targeted specific shows and websites. The advertising watchdog Sleeping Giants, which has helped launch similar campaigns against Fox Newss Tucker Carlson and Breitbart, is also supporting the Stop Hate for Profit effort. For civil rights groups some of which have tried to work alongside Facebook in the past the approach marks a clear shift in focusing on the core of Facebooks business.

We have been continually disappointed and stunned by Mark Zuckerbergs commitment to protecting white supremacy, voter suppression and outright lies on Facebook, said Color of Change president Rashad Robinson in a published statement. A key way for major corporations to demand racial justice is to withhold their dollars until Facebook becomes more responsible and accountable to Black communities on the platform.

The campaign follows news that Facebook will now allow users to turn off political ads as part of the platforms larger effort to expand its voter outreach and information efforts. That change followed intense internal debate among the social media platforms employees over the companys decision not to act against a post by President Donald Trump in which he wrote when the looting starts, the shooting starts about the protests in Minneapolis. That message appeared to threaten violence against protesters and also echoed racist language used during the civil rights movement.

After Twitter labeled a tweet with the same statement as glorifying violence, Trump did attempt to walk back the phrasing, but Facebooks refusal to take action against the content stirred internal dissent, including resignations and a virtual employee walkout. Facebooks decision also prompted a call between civil rights groups and Zuckerberg, after which leaders of those organizations said that the Facebook CEOs explanation for permitting Trumps posts to remain left them frustrated. He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trumps call for violence against protesters, they wrote.

Now the organizations behind Stop Hate for Profit are calling for specific changes to Facebooks products. These include establishing a threshold of harm on the platform, in which someone suffering harassment or hate can interact with an actual human who works at Facebook, as well as creating a specified content moderation pipeline for people who say theyre experiencing hate based on religion or race.

The organizations also want Facebook to make changes to how it generates revenue, including creating internal mechanisms that automatically remove ads on content thats labeled as hateful or misleading and providing refunds to advertisers whose content ends up tagged to such violative content.

The Stop Hate for Profit campaign also calls for moderators affiliated with Facebook to be involved in any online group including more than 150 people and for the company to provide an internal mechanism to automatically flag content in private groups associated with extremist ideologies for human review. That comes following extensive reporting documenting how misinformation, including fake news about the coronavirus, can especially thrive in private groups.

In response to the campaign, a Facebook spokesperson seemed to emphasize its view that the company was in a difficult spot, though its yet to generate widespread sympathy.

There are competing pressures every day when managing a platform, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Our focus is to act on what is most important: removing hate speech and content that harms communities, while using our platform for efforts like providing authoritative information about registering to vote.

Of course, how the Stop Hate for Profit campaign will spur change at Facebook is yet to be seen. But since the cornerstone of Facebooks business model is advertising, this new effort does aim to hit the company where it hurts.

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