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December 24, 1999/15 Tevet 5760, Vol. 52, No.17
Communication tool of new century is minefield
The future is now
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
As the year 2000 looms, the information superhighway known as the Internet is increasingly being strewn with anti-Semitic landmines.
Local and national experts say electronic mail, chat rooms and sites on the World Wide Web increasingly are being used to harass Jewish people and spread messages of hate and bigotry. Especially at risk of being lured to hate that leads to violence are kids, the experts warn.
Gail Zachary, special counsel on technology crimes for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, says hate Web sites tend to give isolated youth a sense of community and belonging.
She notes that the two youths responsible for the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado earlier this year were known to have visited hate sites.
"I absolutely think that what was wrong with the Columbine kids was wallowing in that stuff," Zachary says. "I don't think that what a child reads leaves a young mind untouched. Everything you're exposed to is grist for the mill. It turns into who you are. ... If (kids) spend a lot of time looking at Web sites that urge violence, that urge ... contempt for other people, it's got to have an influence on their behavior."
Marc Lieberman
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"These (hate) sites are recruitment tools for the unsure, the weak-minded and for the seemingly disenfranchised," says Marc Lieberman, regional board chairman of the Anti-Defamation League in Phoenix. "They try to lure these kids in so they feel wanted. Thousands of kids every year buy into that crap."
Lieberman notes that the ADL has developed software that can filter out hate sites, thus allowing parents to keep their kids from stumbling across them while they're surfing the Internet.
"If we prevent even two or three kids from buying into this crap, we've been successful," Lieberman says.
The Hate Filter software can be downloaded and previewed for free by going to the ADL's Web site (www.adl.org). Anybody wanting to continue using it can order it for $29.95.
Even filtering out hate sites, however, won't stop hatemongers from reaching Internet users, including children, through e-mail and instant messaging.
"In order to be able to do the e-mail stuff, all you need is an e-mail account; it requires no skills," notes Brandeis University Professor Simon Klarfeld, who studies anti-Semitism. "(This) gives an enormous amount of power of communication to anyone who wants it."
Klarfeld says that while hate sites on the Web are certainly troubling, e-mail sent to harass people can have the greater effect.
"An e-mail that is sent to you is incredibly invasive of privacy," Klarfeld says. "It's similar to a hate letter. It means that people know where you are. There's a little more anonymity, because you just may be so-and-so@aol.com, but from a psychological perspective, it's as if this person has gotten into your computer, has found you, and is telling you something very personally."
Hate-tracking organizations such as HateWatch.org and the Southern Poverty Law Center report that there are hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of sites on the World Wide Web that espouse hatred of Jews and call for a racial war of extermination against them.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, groups such as the National Alliance use the Internet "to showcase (their) racist and neo-Nazi ideology."
David Goldman, executive director of HateWatch.org, believes it's important to educate young people about hate sites.
Goldman, whose organization tracks Internet hate sites, says: "Teaching by prohibition doesn't teach; it merely prevents access. ... Rather than say, 'We're not going to allow you to look at this,' say, 'We're going to sit down together and look at it together.' Give the child information and use the bigots' words against them."
Goldman says there are 400 hard-core hate sites on the Internet. However, the Internet, while giving hate groups a vehicle for spreading their messages to a vast audience, is also working against them by stripping away their cloak of anonymity, he says.
"We can use the bigots' words against them because we can point to a Web site and say, 'This is what a bigot looks like; this is what they say, and this is what we can do to counteract them,' " Goldman says. "The more they express themselves, the better it is for civil-rights groups to use them for educational benefits."
John Zondlo, a criminal analyst coordinator for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, says that, next to the United States government, Jews "are the second-most hated group in the United States."
"They have always been at some type of risk, and it fluctuates depending on how the people in the (anti-Jewish) movement are," Zondlo says.
The next 10 days may be particularly dangerous ones for Jews, as some people believe that the dawning of the year 2000 will trigger a chain of events leading to a holy war and the apocalypse. The FBI, in its Project Megiddo report released earlier this year, noted that Buford Furrow, indicted in the August shootings at a Los Angeles Jewish community center's day care center, and Ben Smith, who killed himself after a shooting spree across Illinois and Indiana that left two people dead and 10 others wounded, including several Orthodox Jews outside their synagogue, are both believed to have been at least partly motivated by "ideologies that emphasize millennial-related violence."
Many hate sites, such as Stormfront and World Church of the Creator, include references to that same sort of ideology.
Experts fear that such sites, rather than leading to a major societal upheaval against the Jewish community, will lead to individuals or very small fringe groups attacking Jewish groups or individuals.
"The concern is much more for the individual who goes to the JCC in California - having gone to a (hate) Web site or being involved in (hate) organizations - and just takes a gun and does something crazy," Klarfeld says.
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