Shimshon 9

The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” has asked me to remove the following Article since it’s not an official Translation.

Anti-semitism on the web 2.0

It was the massacre killing seven youths and one adult that turned David into an internet fighter. In March a radical Palestinian shot eight students of a Yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. Just a little later Ahmad from Saudi-Arabia founded a group on the Internet platform Facebook that praised the murderer Alaa Abu Dhaim as a martyr – and soon had 300 members. For David who had been a member of Facebook for years already this was the “key moment” that motivated him to go public to a greater extent and attempt to give a similarly clear response in turn. Together with some colleagues he founded the internet site “Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF)”, as a reminder of the Israeli armed forces IDF, the “Israeli Defense Force”. The logo of the JIDF is as bold as the name: a fighter jet in front of a blue-white Israeli flag with a Magen David.

It’s the aim of the site to counteract online anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli tirades of hatred on Web 2.0– on popular social networks like Facebook, Wikipedia or YouTube. The price of his job : after several threats on his life David does not wish to expose more of himself than his first name. For years he and his colleagues have observed the “increasing anti-Semitism” and have started different political campaigns – now they are planning to gather them under the publicity effective umbrella of the JIDF.

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According to the intelligence community in Israel, Hizbullah terrorists are becoming increasingly computer savvy, using Facebook to learn more about IDF soldiers, potential targets for kidnappings.

Yeshiva World News reported that IDF intelligence officials are concerned that soldiers may unwittingly give the enemy information through social networking sites or even arrange to meet an internet companion who is in fact a terrorist. The IDF has undertaken an aggressive awareness campaign for soldiers, instructing them to be careful regarding what information they may reveal, cautioning and instructing them not to reveal the name of the branch of the service in which they serve, unit details et cetera. This is especially true of soldiers serving in the air force, intelligence, and elite combat units.