All I can offer is my own personal theory, if others want to chime in with their own, I welcome the discussion.
I think that the answer is the use of social media to spread anti-Israel propaganda and libel.
The period of time noted in the first screenshot mentions the latest round of fighting between Israel and Gaza. It’s a reflection of how we see an increase of antisemitic incidents, using Israel as an excuse to target Jews collectively. So the increase in antisemitic incidents during the fighting in May 2021 is attributed to that. Here’s an example:
Yet, the round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in 2014 was much more intense (longer, and with more casualties). So why were there less antisemitic incidents back in 2014? I believe it’s connected to social media and the anti-Israel propaganda spread on it: I had witnessed almost none here on Tumblr back in 2014, while in 2021, my dash was exploding with it. Jewish friends from all over the world reported being harassed here. If this is how bad Tumblr got, imagine how awful Twitter was to Jews. Jewish individuals and groups have documented countless incidents online of anti-Israel activists spouting anti-Jewish hatred.
Here’s one example. Note that the term Zio-Nazis is an antisemitic one (the majority of Jews are Zionists, and equating the majority of Jews with those who perpetrated a genocide against them is both untrue and highly offensive), it’s also an example of how they use ‘Zionists’ as a way of maligning Jews, because while Zionism as a political movement was born at the end of the 19th century (the term ‘Zionism’ was coined in 1890), this guy is justifying the persecution of the people he’s referring to ‘throughout time’, meaning he’s talking about Jews.
Here’s one more example, there are so many more.
The thing about this propaganda is that while it becomes especially viral when fighting is happening in Israel, it is there all year long, every single day. There are entire accounts on every social media app dedicated to libeling Israel with false accusations and misrepresentations of half-truths, for example by erasing the Jewish indigeneity in Israel (backed up by historical, archeological and genetic evidence) in order to misrepresent Jews in Israel as colonizers and earn the ire of anyone opposed to colonialism. Those who start this propaganda are antisemites, and then they use people who aren’t informed enough about Jewish history and identity to amplify this message, so that through anti-Israel attitudes they create ever-increasing legitimization for attacks on Jewish people. That’s why a round of fighting that lasted only 11 days in 2021, with more than double the number of victims in Israel, can lead to more anti-Jewish attacks than in 2014, because there is a type of indoctrination at work here that has been picking up speed over these past years.
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