A/75/329
antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. In September 2019, the Special
Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, identified rising global
antisemitism as a threat to the human rights of Jews and non-Jews and as a
phenomenon that, when left unaddressed, was “toxic to democracy”. 5 Just months
later, global antisemitic rhetoric online and offline identified Jews and/or Israel as
having manufactured or spread the coronavirus to advance global control.
Stigmatization and conspiracy theories exploit historical tropes of racialized fears of
disease. 6 For example, as far back as the fourteenth century, Jews were accused of
poisoning wells to spread bubonic plague. In much the same way, the Community
Security Trust, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reports
an “explosion of antisemitic conspiracy theories that began to populate social media
as soon as news emerged of a dangerous new virus spreading across the world”. 7 In a
submission to the Special Rapporteur, for the present report, the Jacob Blaustein
Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights pointed to the geographic breadth,
similarity and mode of transmission of the incidents, as evidence of the significant
transnational effect of antisemitic rhetoric online.
53. The Jacob Blaustein Institute reported an 18 per cent increase in antisemitism
globally in 2019 alone, noting that antisemitic expression and violence had persisted –
and even increased – in over 20 countries around the world between October and
April 2020. 8 There has been a possibly coordinated campaign of antisemitic
“zoombombing”, whereby racists and trolls invade virtual synagogue services and
other meetings that are held on Zoom and other videoconferencing sites to spread
antisemitic abuse. 9 A prayer service at a synagogue in Toronto, Canada, was
“zoombombed” by individuals yelling antisemitic insults at participants. A meeting
hosted by the Embassy of Israel in Germany on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day
was “zoombombed” by persons who posted pictures of Hitler and made antisemitic
comments. 10
54. As highlighted in the Jacob Blaustein Institute submission, news outlets and
social media platforms worldwide reported variations of antisemitic conspiracy
theories, for example, that the COVID-19 virus had been manufactured and spread by
Jews and/or Israel as a form of biological warfare; that Jews were financially
benefiting from the pandemic and using it to weaken other nations; or that the
COVID-19 virus had been developed by drug companies of the United States of
America and of Israel to increase their profits.
55. For example, in France, a Jewish former Minister of Health was accused on
social media of withholding an effective treatment for the virus from the French
public for financial gain; her face was superimposed over the antisemitic “happy
merchant” meme, depicting her poisoning a well. A Swiss Holocaust denier claimed
that the coronavirus had originated in a Chinese laboratory financed by Jewish
financier and philanthropist George Soros. In the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
Aporrea, a left-leaning news website, published articles claiming that coronavirus
was a method of biological warfare created by the United States and Israel. Similar
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See A/74/358.
See, for example, Brian A. O’Shea et al., “Infectious disease prevalence, not race exposure,
predicts both implicit and explicit racial prejudice across the United States”, Social
Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 11, issue 3 (April 2020), pp. 345–355.
Community Security Trust, “Coronavirus and the plague of antisemitism”, Research Briefing
(2020), p. 3.
Submission from the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights,
“COVID-19-related antisemitic incidents”.
Community Security Trust, “Coronavirus and the plague of antisemitism”, p. 3.
Submission from the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights,
“COVID-19-related antisemitic incidents”, p. 2.
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