HERALD SUN
MEGAN PALIN
FACEBOOK has been slammed for making “hateful” animations including a dancing Hitler and Nazi flags available to users to share on the social media site.
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), a leading Australian and Jewish civil rights organisation, has called on Facebook founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg to “personally intervene and immediately pull Nazi, Hitler and anti-Semitic GIF’s from Facebook Messenger”.
Facebook did not respond to questions from news.com.au.
Facebook users currently have access to hundreds of Hitler and Nazi animated images and clips, known as GIFs, to share with friends and family through the site.
Among the GIFs: Hitler with a Santa Clause hat dancing; Hitler with headphones listening to music; SS officers breakdancing; a smiling Hitler with a young girl sitting on his knees; a burning swastika; and a series of clips of Hitler giving the Heil Hitler.
ADC Chairman Dvir Abramovich described the GIFs as “hateful and repugnant”.
“GIFs that have given Hitler and the Nazis the funny makeover are not a laughing matter,” Dr Abramovich said.
“Facebook has crossed the line of decency by allowing its users to casually mock the memory of those who perished during the Holocaust and to callously re-victimise and trample on the feelings of survivors.
“To turn a homicidal monster into a cartoonish, playful character that is supposed to generate giggles as well as a powerful figure of admiration is beyond the pale.
“Maybe Mark Zuckerberg would like to explain to the survivors of Hitler’s Final Solution who have suffered unimaginable torture and who lost relatives in the death camps the reason that his company is giving people the go-ahead to treat the Nazis and the horrific crimes they committed as light entertainment”.
Dr Abramovich said there was “nothing funny or harmless about a bestial dictator responsible for the extermination of six million Jews and millions of others”.
“And there is nothing amusing about Nazi soldiers who murdered babies, who shot entire families and who pushed women and children into the gas chambers,” he said.
“I’m sure that there are White-Supremacists who are rubbing their hands in glee knowing that the leader and evil ideology that they celebrate are being humourised (sic), normalised and made acceptable.
“When you are the world’s largest social media platform, you have a responsibility to act morally and to realise that some things are simply out of bounds.”
Dr Abramovich said the world has a “duty to remember the Holocaust appropriately and respectfully as survivors” and “not as material for a crass punchline and a gag”.
“I call on Mark Zuckerberg to deal with this matter in a forthright manner and to show sensitivity and good judgment by having these GIFS removed immediately,” he said.
“Facebook should be a vehicle that fights racism and genocide, and should send a clear message to young people that the Nazis and the indescribable atrocities they perpetrated are not a game or a joke.”
Last week, vandals scrawled graffiti claiming the Holocaust was “fake history” on an exterior wall of a Seattle US synagogue, leading the rabbi to urge President Donald Trump to more forcefully denounce a wave of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months.
Seattle police said they were investigating the vandalism at Temple De Hirsch Sinai as a hate crime after an off-duty officer spotted it on Friday. “Holocaust is fake history!” read the spray-painted message, with each letter S written as dollar signs.
The graffiti, along with bomb threats that led to evacuations of Jewish community centres in Wisconsin and upstate New York, were the latest incidents targeting Jewish organisations in the United States in recent months. In Seattle, Rabbi Daniel Weiner linked the incidents to what he characterised as permissiveness toward white supremacy from parts of the electorate during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“A message needs to come from our president, not only decrying anti-Semitism but specifically indicting white supremacists and in particular those who support his candidacy,” Mr Weiner said, also referring to the bomb threats, vandalism against Jewish cemeteries and aggression against Muslims, Sikhs and immigrants. Mr Weiner did not blame Trump or his administration directly but regretted “the tone that has been set throughout the campaign,” when white nationalists embraced the Trump campaign.