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Jewish celebs speak out against TikTok and sudden spike in antisemitism: ‘Shame on you!’

November 18, 2023 | | Print Article

Jewish celebrities clapped back at viral antisemitism as an Osama bin Laden letter trended on TikTok: “Shame on you!”

From college campuses to federal employees and rampant across social media, trending expressions of hatred and violence toward Jews spiked in the weeks following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel. Now, as impressionable minds readily influenced by their preferred talking heads on TikTok have found sympathy toward the terrorists behind 9/11, Hollywood Jews directly challenged the platform’s executives.

According to a report from The New York Times, Wednesday, after submitting an open letter to the platform the week prior, more than 30 participants joined a call with head of operations Adam Presser and global head of user operations Seth Melnick to demand TikTok “flip a switch” to shut down the antisemitic rhetoric.

Including the likes of comedians Sacha Baron Cohen, Amy Schumer and actress Debra Messing, the complaints not only spoke to the circulating letter from bin Laden but also the prominent use of genocidal rhetoric like “from the river to the sea.”

“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” decried Baron Cohen, who has repeatedly spoken in association with the Anti-Defamation League which identified as much as a nearly 1,000% increase in incidents of hate. “Shame on you!”

“If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” he contended.

“Obviously a lot of what Sacha says, there’s truth to that,” remarked Presser on the call.

Meanwhile, an official statement from a platform spokesman expressed, “We recognize this is an incredibly difficult and fearful time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community.”

“Our leadership has been meeting with creators, civil society, human rights experts and stakeholders to listen to their experiences and feedback on how TikTok can remain a place for community, discovery and sharing authentically,” the statement continued.

As had been reported, the terrorist’s “Letter to America” which attempted to justify 9/11 and the murder of nearly 3,000 on American soil was circulated on the platform as Hamas sympathizers continued a push to support the recent slaughter in Israel

After trendy terrorism had been loosed from Pandora’s box, TikTok had argued that they were working with their moderating team of around 40,000 to discern where rhetoric was being used “casually” and where the genocidal chant would be considered a direct threat.

“Where it is clear exactly what they mean — ‘kill the Jews, eradicate the state of Israel’ — that content is violative and we take it down,” Presser explained. “Our approach up until Oct. 7, continuing to today, has been that for instances where people use the phrase where it’s not clear, where someone is just using it casually, then that has been considered acceptable speech.”

Meanwhile, Messing lashed out, “It is much more responsible to bar it at this juncture than to say, ‘Oh, well, some people, they use it in a different way than it actually was created to mean.’ I understand that you are in a very, very difficult and complicated place, but you also are the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate.”

Social media users saw fit to point some blame at communist China for sowing discord in the West with one remarking, “And it’s easy to demonstrate: when gross Islamist apologism for Bin Laden was trending there, did any of the videos mention the Uighur concentration camps? I think we all know the answer.”

Kevin Haggerty
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