from NYT today in "An old conflict with digital twists"
Shira: What did you find unusual about the WhatsApp groups of Israeli
extremists organizing violence against Palestinians?
Sheera: I was caught by surprise at just how explicit people were.
They were doing things like setting a time and place to smash windows
of Palestinian-owned businesses and coordinating to make sure they
weren't targeting Israeli businesses by mistake.
How does this compare to other extremist violence online?
What I saw in the Israeli WhatsApp groups was a notch different from
what we've seen in India or Myanmar or at the Capitol riot in January
where people spread hate or misinformation online, but it wasn't
targeted at individuals or businesses. I and people who study
misinformation had never seen organized violence on social media or
communications apps in quite this way.
Did you find extremist Palestinians using WhatsApp to organize their
attacks, too?
There has been Palestinian violence against Israelis, but we didn't
find online mobilization in the same way. One Israeli official told
me, in dark humor, that there is so much surveillance of Palestinians
by the Israeli police and security forces that WhatsApp mobs would be
found before they had a single member.
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