There is a phrase I trust less every year: “It is only the internet.” It often appears after something ugly has already been written — an antisemitic conspiracy, a call to attack Jews, a threat against a synagogue or a person who later claims it was only anger, sarcasm or a joke.
I have been thinking about this through two stories from my work as R.Verter at NAnews. For NAnews on Locals, I wanted to put them together because they show two different stages of the same problem: the normalization of hatred and the moment when words cross into a direct threat.
When a threat stops being “just a post”
The first story concerned threats against Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Asman. Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies identified a Kyiv resident suspected of publishing antisemitic material, including calls for violence against Jews, attacks on Jewish property and a threat to kill Rabbi Asman.
In the story about the threats against Moshe Asman, what mattered to me was not simply that one antisemite existed online. Every society has people capable of writing hateful things. What mattered was the response: authorities investigated, identified the suspect and treated direct threats and calls for violence as a legal issue rather than dismissing them as “just words.”
That distinction matters. Criticism, offensive speech, prejudice, incitement and a direct threat against a specific person are not the same thing.
The more dangerous story often begins earlier
The second story starts before the explicit threat appears. It is the old narrative that Jews supposedly steal money, control institutions and then “flee to Israel.”
I examined that mechanism in the article about the narrative that “the Jews stole everything and fled to Israel”. Corruption is a real subject and should be investigated seriously. But the moment individual criminal allegations are reorganized into an ethnic explanation, journalism ends and conspiracy begins.
A corrupt politician may be Jewish, Christian, Muslim or atheist. His background does not explain the crime.
This is how antisemitism often works: it takes a real anxiety — corruption, economic hardship or political anger — and offers one simple group as the explanation. Evidence becomes secondary because the conclusion has already been chosen.
Why Israel appears so often in these stories
Israel frequently enters modern antisemitic narratives as the supposed destination of “dual loyalty.” A person travels to Israel, has Israeli relatives or simply has a Jewish surname, and suddenly ordinary biography is presented as evidence of a secret network.
That is not investigation.
It is a ready-made explanation looking for facts to attach itself to.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains how to recognize antisemitism not only through direct violence, but also through conspiracy claims about Jewish control of politics, finance, media and other institutions.
This does not mean every offensive post leads to violence. It does mean societies should learn to recognize escalation: stereotype, normalization, dehumanization, threat — and sometimes action.
The rule for journalism should be simple
Investigate the person.
Investigate the money.
Read the documents.
Check the court case.
Establish who did what and when.
Do not replace evidence with ethnicity.
If a Jewish official is corrupt, report the corruption. If an Israeli citizen commits a crime, report the crime. Rejecting antisemitism does not require pretending Jews are incapable of wrongdoing.
The crucial distinction is between individual responsibility and collective accusation.
A person commits an act.
An ethnicity does not.
“Only online” is not a serious answer
Social media makes ugly ideas look temporary. A post disappears down the feed, a screenshot is shared for a day, another scandal replaces it.
But the cultural effect can remain.
A conspiracy theory repeated often enough begins to sound familiar. Familiar ideas become easier to repeat. Once a group is routinely described as corrupt, disloyal or secretly powerful, stronger language requires less effort.
That does not make violence inevitable.
It makes the environment more permissive.
And when somebody finally crosses the line from prejudice into a direct call for violence, “it was only online” is no longer a serious explanation.
The real question is what kind of language a society is willing to normalize before that point is reached.
#Israel #Ukraine #JewishLife #Antisemitism #MediaLiteracy #NAnews
