The Anti-Defamation Commission has expressed its alarm at news that Australians are using popular social media platforms to claim that the Corona virus is a Jewish plot, conceived by Israel in order to kill non-Jews. In one example, a user on Facebook group Protect Australia which has more than 32,000 members, claimed that Israel created and released COVID19 and warned against taking the vaccine that the country is working on.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“While we are in 2020, the old blood libel of medieval times that accused Jews of spreading the Black Death plague, has now been reconfigured to fit this modern global pandemic. It is alarming that antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming and scapegoating Jews and Israel for the Corona virus are circulating on Australian sites and on social media pages such as Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and Reddit. We have received several reports that information channels are clotted with falsehoods claiming that Israel and a cabal of Jews invented the disease as a plot to control the world, cause the deaths of non-Jews, and are planning to sell the vaccine so as to profit off the crisis. We call on people to immediately report such instances to platform administrators and to challenge those individuals or groups that are promoting these tainted rumours and dangerous lies.”