What Are the Pro-Israel Trolls Trying to Accomplish?

2,000+ hateful comments and one week later, what have I learned from the Hasbara Trolls?

Over the past week or so I have literally read, screen-shotted, and deleted thousands of hateful comments on my Facebook posts, mostly posted on very recent Facebook posts, especially photos with me wearing a Palestine flag or a Palestine Action T-shirt.  I have blocked hundreds of troll accounts, which has only slightly lessened the flow of hate speech that continues to come in on my posts.  

I thought I'd try to unpack this phenomenon, and some of the specifics of the lying propaganda and historical revisionism the trolls are actively engaging in.  I'll start with the bigger picture and then zoom in.

First of all, in my case this whole campaign is happening on Facebook.  I'm as active on X and YouTube as I am on Facebook, and I have a similar number of followers on each platform.  There are always algorithmic explanations for things that happen on different platforms, and why they can differ so much in terms of who is seeing what content and responding to it, but it's abundantly obvious that what's going on here since last weekend is an organized trolling campaign.

I won't try hard to substantiate claims like that -- that there is an organized trolling campaign going on here, for example.  If it's both abundantly obvious and also hard to prove beyond a doubt, trying to substantiate my analysis isn't something I have time for, but I welcome anyone else who wants to create the footnotes for this.

Staying on the big picture, one aspect of this trolling that is fascinating to me is how the style and methods of the pro-Israel trolls are absolutely and completely identical to the style and methods of the allegedly "antifascist" trolls who have been targeting me actively since January, 2021.  The actual messaging varies a bit, in terms of the line of attack, but the methods and style is exactly the same, up to and including which emojis they prefer to use.

My previous experience with being targeted by trolls has been overwhelmingly on X and on Reddit, and very little on Facebook, for whatever reasons.  Previous experience has also truly paled in comparison to what's been going on over the past week.  The sectarian "antifascist" trolls seem to have far less funding than the Hasbara Trolls.  Though interestingly, their aims are demonstrably the same, and their accusations against me are the same as well -- that I'm an antisemitic supporter of terrorism, etc.

The overall impact of targeting someone with an organized trolling campaign is probably more significant than anything the trolls are specifically going on about, staying in the meta here still.  

The broader impact of a post being flooded with bile like that is easy to see -- where anyone responding to the bile or writing a positive comment related to me or the picture I've shared is inevitably themselves going to be flooded with the same kind of outrageously rude, disgusting, blatantly racist, sexist, and Islamophobic taunts and other forms of hate speech.  This kind of atmosphere on any kind of platform is toxic in so many ways, and the creation of the toxic atmosphere around a particular person or subject is presumably a big part of the aim here.

The campaign began on the day a charity connected to a group called UK Lawyers For Israel sent an email to a venue in Leicester, England, informing them that if they didn't cancel my appearance at their venue they may face legal consequences for hosting someone who is trying to stir up racial hatred against Jews.  This email was signed by a real person using her real name (Caroline Turner).  This is the above-ground part of the operation, while the trolls generally don't seem to be operating under their real names.

My prior experience with being targeted by a smaller "antifascist" troll farm was identical in this way, too.  There is one person who uses his real name to denounce me for my supposed antisemitism and fascist sympathies (Shane Burley).  Everyone else acts anonymously.

The phenomenon of targeting venues and artists like these pro-Israel or "antifascist" cancellation campaigners have done and are actively doing is an end unto itself.  Regardless of the actual accusations or warped narrative being presented, it is understood that having any association with the target (in this case, me) will result in being targeted for the same kind of treatment, with the possible consequences such as losing your job, becoming socially isolated, having your online reality being associated with massive amounts of toxic hate speech, etc.

In a previous missive, I responded to the accusations of transphobia being leveled against me, that caused a venue owner in London to cancel my appearance at her venue -- not because she thinks I'm transphobic, but because she's afraid of having her venue targeted by folks like the anonymous actor who emailed her to inform her of my transphobia.

The current accusations -- if it's really possible to elevate so much of this nonsensical idiocy by using a term such as "accusations" -- are, of course, related not to transphobia, but to the accusations of antisemitism that I and other critics of Israel have become accustomed to, in my case since September, 2000, when I wrote a song about Ariel Sharon's massacre at the Al-Aqsa Mosque that set off the Second Intifada.

Now getting into the specifics of the misleading tropes and falsehoods that are to be found in between the emojis of someone crying while they're laughing.  Anything we say about Palestinians being killed is always absolutely hilarious to the trolls, this is an overriding message they desperately seem to want to communicate -- it's all just so funny.

To the extent that the campaign isn't just about spreading toxicity and stifling anyone who dares to speak out against this US/UK-sponsored genocide, it's about sowing doubt and confusion about recent events and history, in a fairly desperate effort to reshape a narrative of colonization, apartheid, displacement, and slaughter carried out by a western-backed regime that is now carrying out a textbook genocide -- and being condemned by national leaders around the world for doing so.

The talking points over the past week from the Hasbara Trolls targeting me have revolved around the following themes:

• Palestine never really existed
• If Palestine did ever exist, it's all very recent history
• The idea of a Palestine Museum is absolutely hilarious and ridiculous
• Jewish history, and Judaism, dates back further than Islam -- "we were here first"
• Islam is an evil, sexist, homophobic, genocidal religion
• Palestinians were offered peace repeatedly but always refuse it
• Arabs start all the wars, Israel is always defending itself against aggression
• Israel is surrounded by antisemitic regimes that want to kill all the Jews
• Hamas has always wanted to kill all the Jews
• Hamas is just like Islamic State
• Hamas is the aggressor in this conflict
• The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem supported the Nazis
• Modern Palestinians are also Nazis
• Supporting Palestinians is just a bandwagon to get on these days
• People supporting Palestinians don't care about other victims
• People supporting Palestinians are just virtue-signaling, woke types
• If you're a privileged white person you just don't understand and should shut up about this
• Supporters of terrorists like Hamas should lose their jobs and be punished for their views
• Supporters of Palestinians are supporters of terrorism
• Hamas raped and beheaded Israeli women and children
• If you don't support the war on Gaza, you support raping and beheading women and children
• Collateral damage is inevitable, and all the Palestinians support Hamas and hate Jews anyway
• Life was fine in Gaza, Israel provided them with everything, but they still complained
• If people like me went to Gaza they would not be safe if they were gay or played music
• If people really care about Palestinians they would drop everything and go to Gaza right now
• Hamas has lots of rockets, therefore they're the reason Palestinians are now starving
• The Palestinians deserve to starve since they elected a terrorist group to govern Gaza

All of these statements are false.  I don't know how much sway they have with the general public, but I suspect each of these talking points actually has quite a bit of power over people who are not as familiar with reality and history as, say, I am.  Having uncertainty about any of these talking points, especially with several of them at the same time, could easily cause someone to shut up about all this Palestine stuff and play it safe.  And that's exactly the purpose of the trolling campaign, or one of them.  Which, again, is the same modus operandi of the "antifascist" trolls trying to instill the notion in people that I'm antisemitic or some kind of Third Way neofascist Strasserite or whatever nonsense.  The point is not to actually prove any points, but to spread rumors and uncertainty about a person or a cause.

To thoroughly dispel the nonsense involved with the list of lies would require a book or two.  Many great books have been written, conveniently enough.  You might start with Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky, or Phyllis Bennis.  But for a much shorter, capsule refutation of these tropes, I'll take them one at a time right now.

Palestine never really existed

Twentieth-century history is all very wrapped up in the post-World War 1 divisions made of so much of the world by the victorious powers.  Prior to the "independence war" of the Zionist movement in Palestine that led to the creation of the state of Israel and the massacres of unknown numbers of Palestinians and forced exile of over 700,000 of them, there was indeed a place called Palestine, with tourism posters and postage stamps in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.  A place with distinctive cultural traditions just like everywhere else.

If Palestine did ever exist, it's all very recent history

Prior to the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War 1, a whole lot of the world was part of the Ottoman Empire.  The age of nation states rather than empires was very new.  Countries like Italy and Germany only came to be defined with borders similar to what they are now during the 19th century.  The various regions of these new countries of course had their own rich histories and traditions, but the concept of being "German" or "Italian" or "Belgian" today bears little resemblance to whatever these concepts would have meant a couple hundred years ago, if they meant anything at all.  This doesn't mean these places are not countries with national identities and traditions today.

The idea of a Palestine Museum is absolutely hilarious and ridiculous

It seems if you have no other argument against something, the thing to do is ridicule it.  Of all the Facebook comments from these trolls over the past week, the most popular one has involved coming up with a new way to say that the very concept of the Palestine Museum (from where I posted several photos) is a joke.

Jewish history, and Judaism, dates back further than Islam -- "we were here first"

The idea that anyone can claim that 2,000 years ago people they are probably not related to were forced to move, and therefore now they have the right to take land that has been farmed by the same families for centuries, is patently ridiculous.  

Islam is an evil, sexist, homophobic, genocidal religion

One of the important ways defenders of Israel, whether intellectuals or trolls, try to rewrite history and contemporary reality is by portraying Islam in a very negative light.  This rhetoric is particularly galling coming from Jews.  The reason is simple:  throughout most of the past thousand years of European history, Jews in various parts of Europe at various times have been targeted for repression, discrimination, massacres, and even total extermination.  None of this kind of thing was going on in any of the many Muslim lands with large Jewish populations, such as the Ottoman Empire.  In fact, the Ottoman Empire rescued the Jews of Spain from being killed in 1492, sending the entire Ottoman fleet to Spain in the effort, welcoming the Sephardim to Ottoman lands, and forbidding discrimination against them.

Palestinians were offered peace repeatedly but always refuse it

This is exactly like saying that Native Americans have refused peace, and that's why all the treaties had to be broken by the US government.  It's completely turning history on its head.  Palestinians have been further disenfranchised at every turn, with all offers of peace coming from the Israeli regime being disingenuous.

Arabs start all the wars, Israel is always defending itself against aggression

The Israeli War of Independence -- or the Nakba, the Catastrophe, when 700,000 indigenous people were forcibly displaced from their homes and became refugees -- was a supreme act of aggression.  Every effort since 1948 on the part of Palestinians and their supporters at various points in the Arab countries has been to try to at least partially right this wrong, or to try to prevent things from getting even worse.

Israel is surrounded by antisemitic regimes that want to kill all the Jews

While Israel's Jewish-supremacist, colonial state has provoked a lot of backlash of all kinds, mainstream elements within Arab governments, Arab civil society, and even armed resistance movements has, rather, generally made a distinction between regular Jewish people and the leadership of the self-proclaimed "Jewish state," in much the same way the average Vietnamese person can tell the difference between an American civilian and an American soldier firing at them from a helicopter gunship.

Hamas has always wanted to kill all the Jews

Hamas started out as a group Israel was supporting as a counterweight to the PLO.  Like so many other resistance groups and religious movements, its orientation has evolved over time, to become less ideological and more pragmatic, even under the awful circumstances of regularly being bombed and starved within their walled ghetto.  In recent years Hamas' charter has been focused on international law, equality between people, and the right of return for refugees.  These notions are generally conflated by dishonest, pro-Israel actors as meaning "death to all the Jews."  The end of an anti-democratic, ethnonationalist Jewish supremacist state may be very threatening to supporters of such a state, but overcoming this kind of regime is not the same as killing all of its citizens.

Hamas is just like Islamic State

As the US has repeatedly discovered, if you destabilize a society thoroughly enough, kill and torture enough people, you can help give rise to some wild stuff.  A movement that would never have gotten off the ground under the government the US violently overthrew became very powerful in Iraq and Syria, and committed terrible crimes against humanity in those places.  To say that IS has anything to do with Hamas is like holding the Methodists responsible for the crimes of the Puritans -- they're two different groups with two different histories.

Hamas is the aggressor in this conflict

Hamas is a popular political organization with an armed wing, which was elected to administer life, such as it is, within the walls of their ghetto in 2006.  Hamas doesn't run a country, has no military or airport or access to a port.  They run an occupied, besieged enclave, they can't possibly be an aggressor, any more than the Black Panther Party was an aggressor against the police who were hunting and assassinating their leaders.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem supported the Nazis

When Jews were not allowed to emigrate to the US, Canada, or Cuba and were being turned away if they tried, Nazi Germany and the British government were making emigration of European Jews to Palestine much easier.  The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was very concerned about this huge influx of Jewish refugees into Palestine, and in his capacity as representative of the interests of his people, he indeed met with whoever would talk to him from the German and British governments of the day.

Modern Palestinians are also Nazis

The self-proclaimed "Jewish state" claims to represent all the Jews in the world, and claims all the Jews in the world support Israel.  When that's the situation, and the self-proclaimed Jewish State is committing genocide, it's probably not surprising that there's a rise in what gets categorized as "antisemitism."  However, despite being terribly persecuted by a state whose military is made up almost entirely of Jews, the vast majority of Palestinians can still tell the difference between a regular person of Jewish lineage like me, for example, and a genocidal maniac like Netanyahu or Ben-Gvir.

Supporting Palestinians is just a bandwagon to get on these days

This trope may be helpful in getting those who are actually jumping on a bandwagon to jump off of it when they, perhaps, realize they don't know enough of the details about the situation to have an opinion.  While the genocide of Palestinians may indeed be a popular bandwagon to get on these days, there's a reason for this -- it's a genocide being perpetrated.

People supporting Palestinians don't care about other victims

There are many reasons why some conflicts get covered by some news outlets and others get ignored by virtually all of them, and there are lots of terrible conflicts and crises around the world that are overwhelmingly ignored by most press and most people.  However, massive numbers of the people marching in the streets around the world today did not just discover the fight against injustice, and are fully capable of expressing concern for people other than Palestinians, and quite likely have done so repeatedly.

People supporting Palestinians are just virtue-signaling, woke types

It is undeniably the case that a lot of people don't do anything beyond posting on social media when it comes to any issue they may be concerned about.  Doing a lot more than posting on social media is a very good idea, but to dismiss people who are posting as just virtue-signalers is just a way of trying to shut people up.

If you're a privileged white person you just don't understand and should shut up about this

This identitarian-style argument is a popular one, and has been for a long time now.  It's a way of arguing that if you don't have the right identity, you don't have the right to an opinion on the subject, whatever it may be.  As if you have to be a Jewish citizen of Israel to understand whether committing genocide is OK, or whether stating your opinion about committing genocide is OK.

Supporters of terrorists like Hamas should lose their jobs and be punished for their views

International law says people have a right to resist occupation through force of arms, and that occupying powers have a responsibility not to collectively punish or displace populations, even under such circumstances.  But the trolls, both anonymous and otherwise, make efforts far beyond Facebook comments to follow through with threats like this one.

Supporters of Palestinians are supporters of terrorism

The notion that you don't think Palestinians deserve to be occupied and subjugated must, in the eyes of the Hasbara Trolls, mean that you support the most indiscriminate example of armed resistance that can be recollected.  Supporting one thing means supporting another, it's a logical progression where in the end you always end up as some kind of Nazi.

Hamas raped and beheaded Israeli women and children

These foundational myths about October 7th, 2023, have been proven to be based on testimony elicited under torture, and has nothing to do with what actually happened on October 7th.  These claims are lies.

If you don't support the war on Gaza, you support raping and beheading women and children

If it were true that there was a ghetto uprising that involved terrible crimes being committed against civilians and children, this would ostensibly justify the country occupying the ghetto to destroy the whole place and kill people indiscriminately.  International law and human morality say otherwise.

Collateral damage is inevitable, and all the Palestinians support Hamas and hate Jews anyway

The idea that children raised by terrorists will grow up to become terrorists and therefore might as well just be killed now is a fundamentally genocidal framework.  It's also very common, profoundly flawed, and reprehensible.  Anyone who has raised children knows that they are products of their environment more than anything else.  If their environment is one of arbitrary bombings and campaigns to starve them to death, they may not think highly of their occupying power when they grow up.

Life was fine in Gaza, Israel provided them with everything, but they still complained

A popular trope of the Hasbara, it's completely false.  Gaza has been under siege by Israel since 2006.  The only reason people have managed to survive in Gaza since 2006 has been because of the United Nations.

If people like me went to Gaza they would not be safe if they were gay or played music

The idea that you can't play music in most Muslim-majority countries is an Islamophobic trope.  In reality, music is very popular across the Muslim world -- even at Palestine solidarity protests.  Regarding the trope about throwing LGBTQ people off of rooftops:  different societies are at different levels of development with concern to a lot of things, including equal rights for women and folks with different sexual orientations.  The idea that bombing a country will help them become more progressive is a pretty hard case to make.

If people really care about Palestinians they would drop everything and go to Gaza right now

It is a cruel taunt, among many other cruel taunts, to tell people who are protesting a genocidal bombing campaign that if they want to truly stand in solidarity with the victims of it, they'll go get bombed themselves.  The trope also ignores the fact that it's virtually impossible to get into Gaza because US client states Israel and Egypt control border access, and Israel imposes a constant sea and air blockade.

Hamas has lots of rockets, therefore they're the reason Palestinians are now starving

The idea that a governing body running a ghetto putting resources into defending themselves from the far more powerful occupying army controlling their lives means the governing party doesn't care about feeding the people is not sensible logic, and it would never be applied to an actual country run by a government that wanted to be able to mount a defense against an aggressor.

The Palestinians deserve to starve since they elected a terrorist group to govern Gaza

Like so many other democracies, the brief effort at democracy that was exercised in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza during the 1990's and early 2000's saw two main parties running against each other, as within the US and so many other places.  One of the two groups, Fatah, was obviously more corrupt than the other, and had a proven record of corruption.  Many people voted for the party that had a track record of running towns much more efficiently, without the corruption.  That party was Hamas.  Both Hamas and Fatah and many other parties and organizations have armed wings.  Using words like "Islamist" to describe Hamas, whatever the word is supposed to mean, would be a lot like emphasizing the Christian origins of so many European parties that have "Christian" in their names.  What defines Hamas, and why so many people voted for it in the first place, is that it is a party that stands for resisting displacement and ethnic cleansing, rather than collaborating with it.