Last Sunday, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib shared on social media a video purporting to show Israeli soldiers attacking Palestinians celebrating Ramadan in at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.
“This is the violent apartheid government of Israel,” Tlaib, a Democrat who represents Michigan’s 12th congressional district, wrote. “Don’t look away.”
It quickly came to light though that Tlaib’s tweet was a distortion of reality. In fact, the video, originally posted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), showed a brawl between Palestinians, with Israeli police intervening to separate them.
However, in terms of slandering Israel, the damage was already done. A data analysis conducted by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in partnership with the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) on Wednesday identified a noticeable spike in tweets using the terms “Israel” and “Apartheid” coinciding with Tlaib’s post.
While causation cannot be assumed, it is clear that the rhetoric of elected officials have an impact on public discourse, and they therefore have a responsibility to speak facts, rather than stoke hatred and divisiveness with baseless accusations.
This is particularly critical at a time of rising antisemitism, in both the United States and across the globe.
Just last month, in Tlaib’s home state of Michigan, a heavily-armed man was arrested by the FBI after threatening to kill all Jewish public office holders.
Three examples from the sampled tweets follow:
