Taking Issue: Cyber-hatred in Israel and South Africa are cousins

Geoff Sifrin

In the Scottburgh Magistrate’s Court on Monday, former estate agent Penny Sparrow was fined R5 000 for her racist Facebook post in January comparing black beachgoers in Durban to monkeys. She was also sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years.

In June, the Equality Court ordered her to pay R150 000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation.

Other South Africans have been punished for online racist comments, including government employee Velaphi Khumalo who said black South Africans should do to whites what “Hitler did to the Jews”.

The country’s racial history makes such remarks particularly hurtful. In Israel’s case, however, the issue goes beyond offensiveness into the realm of life and death, where Facebook becomes a platform for incitement to terrorism. Not only can one be brainwashed online with terrorist ideologies, but instructions on how to kill innocent people are easily available.

Israeli Information Minister Gilad Erdan created a flap in July following a terrorist attack by saying Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has “blood on his hands”.

On Monday, Erdan and Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked met with Facebook officials to request removal of posts containing words such as “Intifada”, “Nazis”, “stabbings”, “shahids”, “death to Jews” and “death to Arabs”, claiming such language incites terrorism.

Although Facebook prides itself on being a liberal platform for free expression and is careful not to be seen to be controlled by any government, it generally accedes, and has removed 95 per cent of 158 inciting posts at Israel’s request.

Israel wishes social media companies to go further, however, and be proactive, not merely reactive. Thus far Facebook’s policy has been that when people complain, it reviews the complaints. But Knesset bills being prepared want the online platform to remove such postings within 48 hours, even before being asked, or face fines.

Erdan says Facebook and Internet companies are responsible for content on their platforms encouraging terrorism and must “behave actively in order to find and remove them”. In the last wave of terror, he says, the Internet was a “breeding ground for terrorism”.

Facebook has the technical ability to control incitement on its network, similar to how it prevents pornography and copyright-infringing content. The Israel Democracy Institute, however, opposes the bills, saying in their current form they disproportionately violate the right to free expression and information in cyberspace.

Reflecting the proliferation of online hate speech, a recent UN conference found that every year some 250 000 anti-Semitic posts are made public across social media platforms. An Israeli company which monitors social media found that every hour, an average of two anti-Semitic posts are put up calling for violent action against Jews, representing seven per cent of all anti-Semitic posts; another 18 per cent of anti-Semitic posts depict Jews as devil worshippers.

Some 60 per cent of anti-Semitic content is written in the United States, 25 per cent in Europe and the rest in Arab countries. Anti-Semitism is among the most prevalent forms of hate postings, together with anti-black hatred and homophobia.

Sparrow’s and Khumalo’s racist postings which caused an outcry some people thought was disproportionate, seem innocuous compared to the terrorism posts Israel and Western countries deal with, as if they’re on a different planet from ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s followers who use cyberspace to promote their murderous mission.

But defining the limits of freedom of racist expression online is part of post-apartheid South Africa’s non-racial project. When allowed to go viral on Facebook, racism which dehumanises people – even at Penny Sparrow’s level – becomes a not-too-distant cousin of terrorist language promoting actual violence.

Read Geoff Sifrin’s regular columns on his blog sifrintakingissue.wordpress.com