Earlier this week, The Guardian published leaked Facebook guidelines for moderators charged with deciding whether to take down hateful content from the social media site. Possibly the most controversial revelation is how Facebook determines whether to remove content which denies the Holocaust. According to the documents, moderators should only take down such content in four…
The Forward regularly monitors the surge of anti-Semitism across the country and around the world. The mission of this column is not to unduly alarm, but rather to raise awareness of a disturbing trend that, from some vantage points, can prove difficult to spot. While Donald Trump was en route to Saudi Arabia last week,…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — FBI Director James Comey called for improvements in how law enforcement reports hate crimes in a speech to the Anti-Defamation League on Monday. “We must do a better job of tracking and reporting hate crime to fully understand what is happening in our country so we can stop it,” he told the…
The future of dozens of programs aimed at countering white nationalist extremism is unclear following a decision by the Trump administration to put their funding on hold. According to a CBS News report more than 30 organizations that had received $10 million under Obama to combat violent extremism were told that the grants are now…
(JTA) — New York State reportedly will establish a hate crimes task force. The task force, which will identify and investigate hate crimes and discriminatory practices, will be established using $1 million set aside in the new state budget passed earlier this month, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. It will be made up of members…
Why did protestors from Westboro Baptist Church choose to target Yeshiva University for a placard-waving protest? Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of church founder Fred Phelps, put it simply: “That’s where the Jews are.” It was an ironic moment. The church earned notoriety as a hate group because it usually targets gays and lesbians, not Jews,…
(JTA) — Reports of hate crimes in Toronto increased by 8 percent, with the city’s Jewish community targeted the most, according to a police report compiling last year’s data. Hate crimes in the city increased to 145 in 2016 from 134 the previous year, the Toronto Police reported. Forty-three of the reported attacks, or 30 percent,…
Police in Rochester, New York, are investigating the toppling of 21 headstones in the Waad Hakolel Jewish cemetery as a hate crime, said Meredith Dragon, head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester. “The Rochester police are treating this as an anti-Semitic incident,” Dragon told the Forward on Friday. She also said that she believed…
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