Rita sings "Hatikva" at a huge march against anti-Semitism in London/PR
Urban dictionary, an online slang dictionary that allows users to enter definitions for various terms themselves and publish them on the site, recently turned out to be an inciting and anti-Semitic site when it defined "Israeli" as "a person who tells you that your property is his (when of course he is not), and demands that you simply give him this property , and if you refuse, they take him by force and the law will somehow be in their favor."
On the website, it should be noted, you can order any term and have it printed on shirts, hats and mugs, so you will likely find the humiliating message not only on the website itself but also in the homes of Israel haters around the world.
ISRAELED - the dictionary definition according to Urban Dictionary/screenshot, Urban Dictionary
Following this, and after receiving many requests, the movement to fight anti-Semitism on the Internet appealed to the website administrators to remove the anti-Semitic content, claiming that it violated the rules and was inciting, but even today, almost a month later, its requests were not answered.
Barak Aharon, director of monitoring in the movement to combat anti-Semitism online,
told Walla: "It is sad to see how Israel haters try to perpetuate hatred and spread it in any way possible. In this case it is not a social network but a website that is a dictionary of concepts and slang. It seems that there are people or groups making an effort spread hatred against Israel and anti-Semitism in any way, which makes them very creative. We contacted the site with a reasoned request to remove the entry on the grounds that it is offensive and under the category of hate speech. We are awaiting the site's response."
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Not only against Israelis
However, from browsing the site it appears that Israelis are not the only ones who suffer from discriminatory treatment on the site.
Many other terms that appear on the site show hatred to our Palestinian neighbors as well.
For example, the term Gazalighting describes "a terrorist group from Gaza that commits a massacre, then denies it and blames the victim", while the term Hamasexual is described as "someone who is sexually or romantically attracted to Hamas and/or Palestine Liberation Movement activists, especially October 7, 2023".
The latter term even indicates the inherent absurdity of the "Queers for Palestine" protest movement - a surprisingly dominant group of LGBT people working for the liberation of Palestine, while in practice such activists would be in danger of death the second they set foot on Palestinian soil.
More "pearls of wisdom" from the creator of Urban Dictionary/screenshot, Urban Dictionary
On this Barak says: "All hate speech is bad. This site spreads hatred to millions. As a movement to fight anti-Semitism online, we only operate in the context of anti-Semitism and hatred towards Israel. There may be content there that hurts others, but that does not make the anti-Semitic content legitimate."
I show Barak the findings and he adds an important point: "We also need to consider the fact that this is a platform that probably publishes indiscriminately, and has no control over what enters and is published on it, which is problematic in itself.
But just as there are all types of hate on social networks, here too we cannot to completely eradicate the phenomenon, then we are dealing with content related to us that bothers us. The rest is not relevant to us."
How is it different from anti-Semitic content on social networks?
"On social networks it is more orderly because there are very clear definitions of what hate speech is and there are guidelines that determine what is allowed and what is not. This time we deviated a bit from our practice because we were contacted several times about this in the last month and of course because this is a sensitive period, so we decided to contact and try to influence even that A little out of our scope."
he tells
"Maybe it's legitimate in the US because there, according to the constitution, freedom of speech is enshrined in law and it's allowed to say almost anything, so legally you can't make them remove the content, but they do have a responsibility.
It should be remembered that this is a large site.
It's not Instagram, but it's not on the dark net either.
This is not some esoteric group, this is a respectable and large company in San Francisco.
So just as we contacted Facebook about offensive content and they removed it, we expect Urban Dictionary to do the same.
Even Tiktok, which is known to have chosen the Palestinian side, if they explain and follow the rules, then even there content can be removed because they have legal responsibility for everything that is published there."
Barak, how about some Jewish humor?
After all this is a satirical site
"It doesn't matter. We as a movement deal with removing anti-Semitic content that offends Jews. It was important for us to contact them because as soon as you publish something like this, you are directly or indirectly aiding the discourse of hate. Think of those who have not been exposed to such slang, which is hateful content, but deep in their hearts were He may have anti-Semitic thoughts that he did not dare to express out loud. Such a thing can intensify all kinds of opinions that until now have remained in the drawer, and the path from there to violent incidents is a slippery slope. We have already learned that virtual reality has a direct connection to our physical reality, and even so it is not a good time for Jews in the world and in the United States "In particular, so why give it a hand," says Barak.
How can you help?
This week the world celebrates International Holocaust Day in a particularly tense atmosphere.
It's time to go to the Urban Dictionary website and report the offensive content by marking it with a flag as well as send them an email (you can use this wording) explaining why you were offended by the content, demanding that it be removed.
More on the same topic:
Oxford Dictionary
Dictionary
Social Networks