January 25, 2013

(JTA) — A Spanish phrase about Jews set off “a whirlwind of anti-Semitic” messages on Twitter and became the second-most popular hashtag among Mexican users, according to a watchdog.

“The hashtag #EsdeJudios exposes the antisemitisim of Mexican Tweeter surfers,” said a statement by the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism.

The international organization said the phrase, which means “just like Jews,” was second-most popular in Mexico on Jan. 18.

The Forum documented Holocaust jokes on Twitter feeds from Mexico and elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. One of them, by a user identified as Erik Negrete Ozuna, said the difference between Jews and pizzas was that the latter don’t scream in the oven. 

“There appeared again the ovens, the soaps and the ashes,” the statement by the Forum read, “but there were also classical antisemitic labels: stingy usurers for example, and references to Israel as an occupying force.’

Nahui Ollin, another Twitter user, attached the hashtag #JustlikeJews to a tweet reading “making films about the evil Nazis and shooting down Palestinians to steal their land.”

On Friday, the hashtag’s frequency was between five and ten times an hour and some of the tweets condemned anti-Semitism or were pro-Jewish and pro-Israel.

Separately, a Jan. 24 French court order required the micro-blogging platform to divulge details about users who violate French law by spreading hate speech.

The Union of French Jewish Students filed the lawsuit after  anti-Semitic jokes and statements proliferated among French Twitter users under the hashtag #unbonjuif (“a good Jew”).

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