7amleh monitored 685 thousand racist and inciting speeches in Hebrew directed at Arab and Palestinian communities, an increase of 10% compared to 2021.
This statement was originally published on 7amleh.org on 28 March 2023.
The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, published the results of the index of racism and incitement in public conversations published in Hebrew on the Internet during the year 2022. The year 2022 witnessed a significant increase in the volume of violent speech directed at the Arab and Palestinian communities, as violent speech increased by 10% compared to 2021, and the number of violent publications published through networks in the Hebrew language reached 685 thousand conversations, compared to 620 thousand violent publications during the year 2021.
Several types of violent speech were widely used in Hebrew. There was a clear increase in the percentage of racist speech against Arabs and Palestinians, which reached 39% of all violent speech. 41% of the violent speech was insults directed towards Arabs and Palestinians, while 20% of it contained inciting language. The results this year show that the increase in public discourse against the Palestinian community on the network is related to the different attacks on the ground and the escalation of violence in the country during the presence of the Israeli Bennett-Lapid government.
The peak of racist discourse during the year 2022 was in the months of March, April and May, and this is related to the events that took place in Beersheba and the center of the country, while May was the most digitally violent month in the wake of the martyrdom of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh.
In terms of the spreading of violent speech on social networks in all of its forms, similarly to the previous year, Twitter remained the most popular platform for violent speech, scoring 51% of all violent discourse, and Facebook accounted for 20% of violent speech. Moreover, the percentage of violent speech in comments on Internet articles has increased over the past years to reach 26% of all violent discourse.
In this context, 7amleh indicates the need for social media companies to take decisive measures to prevent the spread of incitement, racism and violence against Arabs and Palestinians through various platforms. This type of content leads to an escalation of attacks against Arabs and Palestinians on the ground. Accordingly, 7amleh reaffirms its previous recommendations to social media companies on the need to develop a dictionary of hate speech in the Hebrew language and use it to monitor this type of content, and the need to enforce content management policies as required on Israeli content in the Hebrew language to limit and prevent the increase of attacks in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The Index of Racism and Incitement in Israeli social networks is an annual report published by 7amleh Center that monitors the intersection of racist and violent labels and words against Arabs and Palestinian throughout the year.
