The Times of Israel today reported on the arrest of a Spanish woman for posting antisemitic videos calling for the murder of Jews.
Amid fears of resurgent anti-Semitism across Europe, Spanish officials have arrested an unnamed woman for online incitement to kill Jews.
The woman, 28, a foreign national residing in Ribaforada, Spain, uploaded a number of videos calling for the maiming and “extermination” of Jews and Zionists, Eldiario reported (Spanish).
Officials issued an arrest warrant for the woman due to the “brutality of the content” she created, for which she is expected to be tried on several counts of inciting hatred and violence through audiovisual material on various social networks.
A number of her videos garnered thousands of views, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior said in a statement.
Officials also confiscated computer and video equipment from the woman’s premises when she was arrested Saturday.
In one video, three women in Muslim garb were reportedly seen chanting, “Catch and kill all the Jews. Strike them and make the Jews bleat like animals. Exterminate the Zionists. Exterminate them, exterminate them, the world will be better off,” while one of the women stabbed a doll of an Orthodox Jew with a knife.
The Anti-Defamation League praised the move, but claimed that little else was being to done to stem the tide of growing anti-Semitism across Europe.
“If you call for Jews to be killed, you should be prosecuted and go to jail,” ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement Wednesday.
“That should be the standard, especially in Europe where we have seen several anti-Semitic murders over the past few years. Spain deserves praise for upholding that principle in this case, even though Spain and other European governments have failed to prosecute other instances of clear incitement to murder Jews,” he said.
![TOIarticle2[1]](https://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/TOIarticle21.jpg)
The original version of the report included a screen capture purporting to be of this vile woman:
At this point, it hit me like a tonne of bricks.
That was none other than Israellycool contributor Orit Arfa, in character as one of the Gaza Girls, the parody group she created precisely to highlight Jew hatred and incitement coming out of the Muslim and palestinian world.
SATIRE “Kill All the Jews” Gaza Girls Hit Single from Gaza Girls on Vimeo.
Besides the word “Satire” in the title in caps, the video description includes the following:
*The music video is a satire/spoof of Antisemitism prevalent in social media, in the Hamas charter, in Palestinian media, and in the Koran. Learn more at: israellycool.com/2014/11/02/reader-post-kill-all-the-jews-punked/
The video demonstrates that Antisemitism is, in some societies, part of “pop culture,” often expressed through hatred of Israel. It also exposes that modern Antisemitism is masked as anti-Zionism, and it highlights the indoctrination and suppression of women in the Muslim world.
We call upon people of conscience to combat authentic Antisemitism, hate speech, and calls for Jewish genocide, which today are expressed in the defamation of Israel and in calls to destroy the Jewish state.
The creator is Israeli-American journalist and author Orit Arfa. Learn more at oritarfa.net.
For examples of such Antisemitic hate speech (particularly those translated from Arabic), check out videos posted by media watchdog groups such as Palestinian Media Watch and Memri.
Which begs the question: Who is the Spanish woman arrested? Is she someone who took Orit’s video and posted it with Spanish subtitles?
And if she did, did she know it was satire? Or did she just have reading and comprehension difficulties?
After all, it happened when Orit first posted the video; real Israel haters loved it, and disseminated it on social media, YouTube banned it and Facebook temporarily removed the Gaza Girls page.
But there are other questions we need to ask here.
How could the Times of Israel, a major news outlet here in Israel, post this without knowing the backstory? After all, Orit used to blog there, and they had even reported on Orit’s Miley Cyrus parody videos! No-one there recognized her?
It might be that they based everything on the original Spanish report, in which case the whole thing would be somewhat reminiscent of their modus operandi of blindly taking AFP wire pieces and republishing them without doing due diligence.
But it gets worse.
After realizing their mistake, the Times of Israel did not issue a correction or an apology to Orit for publishing her photo as the woman accused of antisemitism. Instead, they quietly changed the report, and added a paragraph, with bonus insult!
However, Spanish news reports purporting to show the offending video pointed to a parody created by Israeli right-wing provocateur Orit Arfa last year.
There was no immediate response from the Spanish police or Interior Ministry regarding the video.
No, Orit is not the victim of their sloppy reporting. She is just a “right-wing provocateur,” after all.
I call on the Times of Israel to do the right thing here: issue a correction and apology.
Update: TOI were even sloppier than first thought. According to the Spanish report they cited, it was a young man who was arrested, not a woman (hat tip: Elliot).
La Guardia Civil de Navarra ha detenido a un joven de 28 años, de nacionalidad extranjera y vecino de Ribaforada, como presunto autor de varios delitos de odio por difundir a través de diversas redes sociales material audiovisual incitando al odio y a la violencia.
Transation: The Civil Guard has arrested a young man, 28 years old, of foreign nationality, as the presumed perpetrator of various hate crimes by spreading through various social networks audiovisual material inciting to hatred and violence.
