Knesset Speaker demands Mark Zuckerberg block harassment of Israeli politicians on social media

Hostile Whatsapp messages include death threats, harassment, pornography, and violent images. 

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana requested that the Meta founder and CEO take “swift and decisive action” to prevent Whatsapp text message attacks against Israeli politicians.

Since the beginning of the war,  MKs and other politicians have been inundated with Whatsapp messages, many apparently from pro-Palestinian activists, containing death threats, harassment, pornography, and violent images.

Ohana wrote, “The coordinated attack overwhelms us with thousands of WhatsApp calls and tens of thousands of WhatsApp messages. ”

The letter continued, “Most Israelis rely on the application as a primary source of communication for their work and in their daily lives,” and  hundreds or thousands of threatening messages “prevent elected officials and public servants from doing their jobs during wartime.”

Many of the messages contained “murder threats, child pornography, violent content and disturbing material.”

Ohana pointed out to Zuckerberg that “these are violations of the terms of use of WhatsApp, a violation of Israeli law and apparently also violations of the laws of the country from which these attacks are carried out.”

Among the long list of government officials who have received hateful messages on WhatsApp are Miri Regev, Yoav Kish, Yariv Levin, Ofir Akunis, Gila Gamaliel, and Shlomo Karhi, as well as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan.

Many of the messages were death threats, with phrases like, “I will kill you. I’m in your house. Say hello soon!” and “You’ll understand me in hell.”

These attacks are apparently a coordinated effort, partly because of the similarity of the messages and the fact that the numbers include an international prefix 62+, the country code for Indonesia, although the messages seem to be from Palestinians.

Chief of Staff at cybersecurity company Check Point Software, Gil Messing explained how groups target Israeli politicians and bombard them with messages, “Several groups of activists distribute phone numbers or accounts in their groups on social networks with the aim of ‘bombarding’ their owners with a lot of inquiries at the same time.”

Messing added, “This happens automatically, at the click of a button or several buttons, and that’s how you get to a huge amount of calls.”

KnessetMark ZuckerbergPro-Palestinian activistsWhatsApp