Back in May of last year, I joined a Facebook group for women over 50 who enjoy traveling solo. Fantasizing about travel has always been an escape of mine, and I was inspired by so many of the posts. I even connected with an amazing Jewish woman from the town where I grew up who also lives in Israel, after we noticed one another in a post about Israel and I discovered that we had mutual friends from “home”. It’s a good thing I reached out to her so quickly, though, as that post about Israel (whose comment threat was rife with anti-Israel responses, despite the group rules) was deleted, after we—and probably others—reported the problematic comments to the group admins.
Together, we began to notice a pattern – posts mentioning travel to Israel often received negative comments (though there were always many wonderful comments as well) and then disappeared.
Separately, we each reached out to the group moderator to ask whether the posts were deleted by the original posters or by the moderators. We were both troubled by the phenomenon, and in light of the war and the sharp increase in global Jew hatred, we were keen to find out whether the group we both otherwise enjoyed would prove to be a safe space for Jewish and Israeli women.
The moderator shared with me that given the size of the group (there are currently more than 620,000 members), it was impossible to manually police all posts and comments to make sure that people were abiding by the rules. As such, posts whose comments received more than a certain number of reports to the administrators were automatically deleted. What this meant was that nearly all posts about travel to Israel are deleted automatically, as inevitably, the anti-Israel comments get reported.
So what does that mean in practical terms? If we choose not to report the anti-Israel comments (which are often nasty, petty, and full of ignorance and hatred), the post stays up – with the comments. If we report the comments “too much”, the entire post gets deleted. The moderator told me that those who write the offending comments are removed from the group, but that doesn’t seem to happen in every instance. In other words, either we allow people to ignore group rules and spew hate at us or we contribute to our own erasure and silencing by choosing to report the comments.
One of the more interesting ironies is that in this incredibly well-traveled group of women, posts about travel to countries with abysmal human rights records and countries where women have fewer rights than men are plentiful and celebrated. Over the past few days, members have gushing about how glorious it is to travel solo in Iran, and while many people do seem to draw the line at traveling there, so many others do not, enthusiastically embracing the notion and minimizing the possible dangers. Travel to countries like Turkey and Egypt is mentioned frequently and Qatar less so, and while they don’t have the same dangers as Iran, no one seems concerned about the human rights abuses that are rampant or by how women are treated in these and/or other countries. And, in this bizarre, upside down world in which we now find ourselves, some solo women travelers who are excited over the prospect of travel to Iran are saying the “mess with and threats from Israel” are the obstacles to making such a trip, because somehow, it would otherwise be safe…
One common theme that runs through all of the posts and comment sections, though, is the ability to distinguish between people and governments. In the posts about Iran, group members are quick to point out that the Iranian people are lovely and warm (being married to one and having met many, I’m inclined to agree). I’ve seen similar comments about Turks, Egyptians, Syrians, and nationals of so many other countries, with people quick to praise the citizens. Frequently, the governments aren’t mentioned at all. For the most part, no one is being nasty to those who bring up travel to these countries or writing rude comments – and this is as it should be.
Sadly, as I have seen in this group and in so many other online spaces, the same can’t be said when Israel is mentioned, regardless of the context. When it comes to Israel, the rules become irrelevant –people can’t seem to stop themselves from leaving vitriolic commentary and doubling down when they are called out by others. Incredibly, some of these women would rather risk being removed from this otherwise wonderful group than quietly scroll past the “offending” posts. The result, of course, is that these situations make Jewish and Israeli women feel less safe online – and obviously, I speak from vast experience when I say that these types of instances are not limited to a Facebook travel group.
The degree to which Jews and Israelis have been dehumanized over the past 15 months (and actually, for as long as I can remember and then some) is horrifying and depressing. It’s astonishing to me that people can separate citizens and residents of other countries from their governments, but not only can’t they separate Israelis from the Israeli government – they can’t even separate Jews who don’t live in Israel from the Israeli government. It actually feels even worse than that, though, because in my experience, far too many individuals actively choose not to make those distinctions, willfully and gleefully coming after us wherever they happen to find us and doing their best to wear us down until we retreat and disappear.
And in many instances, they are succeeding, because we are all just too exhausted to keep fighting for our right to exist in these spaces.
