Anti-Semitic attacks and other incidents are increasingly fueled by online platforms. At a conference in Brussels, delegates from Israel, the US, the UK and several other countries met to discuss the growing phenomenon of online anti-Semitism with the representatives of major social media platforms including Meta and Twitter and Google.

The conference was a follow-up to a previous meeting during which delegates discussed online Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. The most recent conference discussed progress made in these two areas. Government delegates discovered that while some progress has been made towards limiting Holocaust denial on social media, the platforms are unwilling or unable to give concrete answers regarding how they identify and handle Antisemitism. Their handling of anti-Semitism is often at odds with their handling of hate speech against other minority groups.

None of the platforms was willing to agree explicitly that blatantly antisemitic content is against their platform guidelines, and in other cases were unwilling to comment. They also refused to fully accept the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is now accepted by most Western countries, including those represented at the forum.

Please pray for accountability for online anti-Semitism. Secondly, please continue to pray for protection over Jewish communities around the world, which increasingly face anti-Semitic attacks.