As soon as the day after the attacks, some social media influencers were spreading denial of the events.
From CyberWell:
Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2024, CyberWell analyzed one of the latest trending phenomena in online Jew-hatred – denying the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. The Holocaust and the October 7 massacre are two distinct historical events and CyberWell cautions against conflating the two without appropriate context and nuance. However, aside from purposeful violent targeting and mass murder of the Jewish minority, the two events share another commonality – propagation of the denial of the occurrence and scope of both events being leveraged to promote Jew-hatred. Whereas Holocaust denial at its height was limited to fringe academic circles and extremist hate groups who gained a limited following through traditional media, conferences, and papers, today social media platforms provide an algorithmically enhanced stage to disseminate the antisemitic narrative of October 7 denial directly into the mainstream from a select few influential accounts.According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, a globally recognized consensus definition, Holocaust denial and distortion is antisemitism. Often this takes the form of claiming that Jews invented the Holocaust to gain sympathies for the establishment of the State of Israel.On October 7 mass atrocities were committed by Hamas terrorists against the Jewish people in Israel. These atrocities were fueled by Hamas’ expressed charter to wage a holy battle against the Jews. Hamas’ charter was updated in 2017, replacing the word “Jews” with “Zionists”; however, it maintained the position of being engaged in a holy war against the “Zionist project”, describing it as the enemy of the Arab and Islamic nations. Furthermore, Hamas leaders have continuously evoked virulent, hateful, and violent statements against the Jewish people in public and through religious statements.The central role that social media played during the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians is historic and unique. First, Hamas terrorists harnessed social media as a vehicle of psychological torture, live-streaming their brutal attack. Second, Hamas terrorists and their sympathizers exploited social media as a mass misinformation and disinformation machine, amplifying claims that deny the reality of the atrocities and asserting that victims, survivors, and first responders are lying or exaggerating their experiences.
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