By Henry odu-
Murdered Jamal Khashoggi displayed signs of anti semitism on twitter during a seven year period between 2011 until 2018. The outspoken Saudi journalist has been accused of being anti semitic through posts he made on twitter. The details of Khashoggi’s despicable anti semetic tweets was highlighted to this publication on a day that tweeter announces plans for a fresh initiative starting in June where users can hide tweets that are abusive. Many of the offensive posts are yet to be deleted from twitter.
Khashoggi was rumoured to have strong affiliations with the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. He would have had a number of issues with Jews, arising mainly from the injustice he feels is in operation in relation to the long running Israel and Palestine conflict. Many other Muslims and none Muslims share his views about the conflict, but don’t go as far as tweeting several condemning messages on twitter about Jews, or even harbour a hatred against them because of a historical and political dispute.
Khashoggi was brutally killed at the Turkish consulate in Instabul in 2018 when he went to the Saudi embassy to collect documents permitting him to marry his fiancée. His death was evil and wicked, widely reported to have been plotted by his killers who cunningly prepared his gruesome murder. His killing has been condemned on this publication, but news that he frequently posted antisemetic tweets, many of which remain on twitter, raises other questions and presents further challenges for the twitter to improve their proactive chase of any material marked with hate on their platform.
PROACTIVE
Twitter today said that it proactively seeks out abusive tweets now at a rate much faster than the past without waiting for them to be reported. Whilst twitter’s efforts to address the failings of its system is commendable, it is disappointing when tweets they would be expected to about have still not been destroyed by deleting the users accounts. Twitter was a brilliant product of creativity, but it must also creatively find solutions to its problems, and good solutions.
Khashoggi was no fan of Jews, and once wrote that Jews had no roots in historical Palestine. The writer killed at the Turkish Consulate in Istanbul in 2019 said that one must know how to speak to Jews when meeting them. He also said Jews were conspiring to divide al-Aqsa Mosque. Khashoggi’s antisemetic tweets remained online for 7 years . One of his most worrying tweets related to a complaint that the West had laws preventing Holocaust denial.
CLOSE TIES
Khashoggi had close relationships to the Saudi kingdom’s diplomats , but fell out with the leadership and left the country for the U.S in 2017. A columnist for The Washington Post with close links to Qatar and Turkey, he was murdered in October 2018 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, allegedly at the direction of the highest levels of the Saudi government. Khashoggi once suggested that Saudi Arabia returned to its religious roots and have an alliance with political Islam and the Brotherhood. According to the article, he said Riyadh should work more closely with the Palestinians in the struggle against Israel.
In December 2011 and July 2012, tweets by the late writer made reference to the marginalization of Jewish women by “religious Jews,” and the “superstition of the Jews” in reference to Israel and prayers at the Western Wall, calling Jews “deceivers” or “swindlers.”
In August 2012, Khashoggi argued in relation to Israel: “There is no land that God has made for a people,” noting that while Jews defeated the Canaanites, the Romans defeated the Jews, and it was Muslims who made the land “for all religions.” He was also skeptical of Jewish heritage in the Land of Israel, a theme that returns several times in his tweets. In July 2014, he referred to Jews in Israel as “usurpers,” implying they had stolen or occupied the land.
Another example of Khashoggi’s strong dislike of Jews was reflected in an interview he gave in 2012.In September 2012, after an anti-Islamic video in the US led to riots in Egypt and Libya, and to the murder of the US ambassador in Benghazi . Khashoggi was asked why it was permitted to have a film critiquing Islam in the US, but not questioning the Holocaust. “The reason,” he replied, “is that the Jews passed legislation that criminalized the [questioning] of the Holocaust, while even Catholics failed to criminalize the abuse of Christ.”
WRONG
Khashoggi’s answer was wrong because the questioning of the Holocost was never criminalized. On September 13, 2012, he tweeted, “If this was skeptical of the Holocaust, America would not allow it to be published, because the Jews succeeded in obtaining a law that would prevent it in America and Europe.”
In September 2013, he tweeted that Jews were being “pumped up” with a proposal to divide al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, spreading the conspiracy that Israel seeks to destroy the mosque and take over the Temple Mount.
“The Jews have no history in Palestine so they invented the Wailing Wall, which is a Mamluk structure, and after 1967 saw the tomb of Joseph in Nablus and they decided to take it,” Khashoggi wrote in October 2015. It was one of two tweets arguing that the tomb of Joseph near Nablus was a “Jewish lie,” and that it had been built during the era of Turkish rule.
An earlier tweet by Khashoggi stated that Jews had invented an entire history in Palestine, a comemnt that conflicted an earlier tweet in which he said Jews came to Palestine after the Canaanites. Arguing that the Western Wall or the Temple Mount were constructed in the Mamluk era of the 13th century would seem to contradict the fact that al-Aqsa Mosque, which is above the wall, was constructed in the eighth century.