Pro-Palestine Activists Are Facing Horrifying Abuse Online Speaking out for Palestine triggers a torrent of racism, misogyny, and violent sexual threats. “I was terrified that someone would do something to me,” one activist says.- Samaa Khullar in The Nation

A person wearing a scarf on their head stands among tents as student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, 2024, in New York City. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)

Samaa Khullar

Note: This piece contains disturbing content about sexual harassment and assault.

It started, as it often does, on X. In early October 2023, Maryam Iqbal, then an 18-year-old freshman and pro-Palestinian activist at Barnard, was doxxed. Her X account was flooded with replies calling for her to be subjected to sexual violence. In the same breath, she was told that she supports the rape of Jewish women. People behind their keyboards began describing all the ways they hoped to violate her body.

Iqbal is far from alone in experiencing this kind of hatred. Over and over again, pro-Palestinian activists have found themselves on the receiving end of violent, sexually explicit, racist harassment online. The bile is not limited to student activists or to Muslim or BIPOC women—for instance, Ruth, an attorney and vocal anti-Zionist Jew, says that she has received many misogynistic and antisemitic messages, including people calling her a “Kapo c**t” and a “self-gassing Jew”—she says that these messages are incredibly disturbing, and sadly not the worst that folks get.

Nor did this trend begin in October 2023. In 2021, Leila (a pseudonym), a Palestinian journalist, published an op-ed urging her university in the UK to divest from Israel. “Soon after it was released, I received a message from an anonymous account that wasn’t following me of a picture taken from my profile with another woman’s naked body superimposed on top. It looked incredibly realistic, and it was an obvious threat,” Leila says. “After I gathered myself, I took to the police to see what I could do; I was dismissed immediately [because] the nude ‘wasn’t real,’ even though anyone who looked at it would think it was my body.”

She was 21 years old at the time.

But things got exponentially worse once Israel’s genocide commenced—leaving the victims of this hatred traumatized, angry, and doubting that their attackers will ever face serious consequences.... READ MORE  https://www.thenation.com/article/society/palestine-cyber-sexual-harrasment/

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