At the invitation of the World Jewish Congress, OHPI’s CEO, Dr Andre Oboler, delivered a special presentation on Online Hate Speech for a forum on Hatred and Antisemitism in Cyberspace at the meeting of the World Jewish Congress in Hungary.

The presentation was part of a two part panel with colleague Dr Rafal Pankowski, Deputy editor of Never Again from Poland and Ariel Seidler, Director, Observatorio Web in Argentina. A second panel featured Tal Dror, founder and coordinator of ‘Students Against online Anti-Semitism’ (a project of the National Union of Israeli Students), and Elie Petit, Vice-President of the French Union of Jewish Students (who in the middle of a legal battle with Twitter as we met in Hungary).

The OHPI Presentation gave a snap shot view of online antisemitism. The important conclusions were that:

• Online antisemitism is not something the Jewish community should have to monitor and then campaign to resolve each time there is a manifestation
• Online antisemitism is also not something the Jewish community  that can be ignored with the excuse that it is “too hard”, “not real” or “someone else’s problem”.
• The Jewish Community must respond, but must do so to achieve a long term change