This past summer, as Israel sought to squelch Gaza rocket and tunnel attacks, Israelis and Palestinians alike found inspiration in the Hamas hit Up, Do Terror Attacks, a Hamas pop production in Hebrew intended to scare Israelis with their musical call to kill and expel all Jews from the land of Israel (aka “Palestine”).
Israelis didn’t get scared, they got creative, giving Hamas a lesson in music production. Enterprising musicians seized on the Hamas anthem to create their own versions, from a Capella to acoustic, mocking their pathetic impotence and calling attention to their genocidal goals. Up, Do Terror Attacks shows that hatred for Israel is a part of Palestinian pop culture, as catchy as a pop song.
So I decided to out-do Hamas. Just because Hamas is a death cult doesn’t mean its propaganda has to be so dark and dreary. Just because Gaza women must wear stifling hijabs and burkas doesn’t mean they can’t express their individuality. Gaza is in desperate need of pink bubblegum terror pop.
And so the Gaza Girls was born, a fictitious Palestinian girl band made up of three devout Muslim women fighting the evil Zionist occupation. The chorus of their debut single out-hates Up Do Terror Attacks with the more classic anthem: Kill All the Jews (KATJ), sung to a Village People Y-M-C-A style dance with the “burka back-up” dancers.
As an experiment in fake Palestinian activism, I marketed the Gaza Girl’s debut music video on a “Gaza Girls” Facebook and Twitter account, lush with the #FreePalestine hashtag.
YouTube quickly expelled the video as “hate speech.” Kudos to them?
So I uploaded it to the “Gaza Girls” Facebook page, where I boosted it to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. The post got 87 likes in a few days, with 60,000 engagements.
But the anti-Israel crowd understood that no Gazan would be so openly Hitler-like to Western audiences – or that no Gazan woman would dance and sing so Britney-like.
Terror apologists immediately detected a “Zionist ploy.”
Well, now that’s settled. Those “Free Palestiners” have nothing wrong with “peaceful Jews.” But who are “peaceful Jews,” exactly? Jews who don’t live in Israel? Anti-Zionist Jews? Jews who will agree to live as dhimmis in Islamic “Palestine”? That Jewish baby mowed down in Jerusalem?
Some social media trolls, however, didn’t get the “memo” and became fans of Gaza Girls, like bea4Palestine:
Elletra Palastina sent this message to Gaza Girls via Facebook.
When YouTube rejected my appeal (which was offered in the form of a check box and hardly any room for explanation), I uploaded “KATJ” on Vimeo, this time clearly marking it as a SPOOF. Talkbackers outed me fast, because who knew if the anti-Israel crowd would actually like the video, completely embarrassing the #FreePalestine cause.
@Bea4Palestine quickly backtracked.
And then something unexpected (or not) happened. Islamist and radical Leftwing social media predators, led by anti-Israel blogger Ami Kaufman, expressed horror at the fake anti-Semitic video, verbally abusing me on Twitter (only this time without the usual “burn in hell” death threats – since that would prove my point), calling on all trolls to flag the video as “hate speech.”
Before Yom Kippur, Kaufman gloated about his Facebook victory.
Meanwhile, Kaufman and his followers haven’t worked this hard to remove authentic anti-Semitic videos and calls for Jewish genocide. Facebook has yet to take down these violent pages and posts:
- Death to Israel page depicting Palestine obliterating Israel
- Let’s Blame Everything on Israel page depicting the ugliest anti-Semitic tropes
- This YouTube video of a Palestinian girl promising to kill Israeli soldiers
They could also do the Jews a favor and protest the plethora of genocidal preaching in Palestinian media monitored by organizations like Palestinian Media Watch and Memri.
How come when a Jewess parodies Jew hatred, it’s a violent, “racist,” obscenity, but when jihadi mascots like Nahul the Bee preach murder of Jews, it’s ignored or, worse, excused? Alternately, if anti-Jewish clips like Ahmed the poet’s ode to killing Jews can remain online for educational purposes, then shouldn’t KATJ remain online for the same reason?
“Free Palestiners” can dish it, but they can’t take it. During my few days as a fake Palestinian troll, I witnessed blood libel after blood libel. Anti-Israel activists incite violence by trafficking misleading (doctored?) pictures of wounded Palestinian children or “Zionist” soldiers stepping on Palestinians. Only they don’t mark their propaganda as “fake.” Here’s just one example.
KATJ blows their cover. Through Western language, it reveals the #FreePalestine cause for the anti-Semitic cause that it is. The medium is fake, but the message is frighteningly real.
The media outlet that demonstrated integrity and courage throughout this process is Vimeo, the YouTube underdog. Unlike YouTube, Vimeo apparently cares more about quality communication than in pleasing and drawing the masses.
The trolls succeeded in knocking me off Vimeo three times. Each time that happened, I wrote an e-mail to Vimeo’s support center and received a personal response. Algorithms based on the number of “red flags” must generate automatic disabling of videos, but upon my third clarification to Vimeo, an actual human being apologized for the inconsistency and let me know my account was now “whitelisted.”
Meanwhile, after my automated appeal was rejected by Facebook, I was banned from posting on Facebook for three days. I couldn’t reach a human being at either YouTube or Facebook (unless my query was related to advertising).
I do admit to one exaggeration in my KATJ video. The more honest title would have been “Kill the Majority of Jews,” since the Palestinian cause hates and sees as a legitimate target any Jew who may believe Israel has a right to exist. I guess Ami Kaufman will be spared.
Orit Arfa is a journalist, video artists, painter, and author of The Settler, a novel about modern Tel Aviv. Read more at www.oritarfa.net
