Posts online asking for “#PrayForPalestine”. pray for peace. Appeal to “liberate Gaza”
Over the past 10 days, a website called anti-israel-employees.com published more than 17,000 posts, which one of the people behind the site said was mainly taken from LinkedIn. The site, which claimed to be a “global live feed of potentially supportive sentiments for terrorism among company employees”, listed thousands of people and grouped them based on their workplaces, based on their views on the Israel–Hamas conflict. There was a clear attempt to shame him for having emotions. ,
The website, which was taken offline for a day before being moved to a new web address, revealed the names of employees of major international corporations including Amazon, Mastercard and Ernst & Young and shared their profile photos, LinkedIn pages and posts .
Hedge fund manager Itai Liptz said he was one of the people behind the original site, saying its goal was to “publicly expose people who support Hamas”.
“We wanted to document it and create a record,” he said. “If I work at this company, but I see my friends on LinkedIn celebrating and praising Hamas, I don’t feel safe.” I am doing it.”
But the site also highlighted posts from people who did not explicitly show support for Hamas, according to posts seen by The New York Times. Some people used hashtags such as “#GazaUnderAttack” or tried to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The site asked users to submit posts they believed should be highlighted, and also included a numerical “hate score” for companies.
The site, which was created 10 days ago, comes amid a widening debate over online expression during a deadly international conflict. Similar lists have been created to monitor college students who speak out in support of Palestinians, while Instagram and Facebook’s parent company Meta, Said In the three days following the Hamas attack on October 7, it removed approximately 800,000 pieces of Hebrew and Arabic language content for violating its rules.
Some of the people highlighted on the site have already deleted their LinkedIn posts or their LinkedIn profiles. Mr Liptz, who said he did not expect the site to become so popular after spreading through WhatsApp groups, called it a mistake to latch onto all pro-Palestinian sentiment so far.
“If someone says ‘Free Palestine’ that’s totally fine and we shouldn’t be putting that on our website,” he said on Saturday. “We just want to make sure the filters are there because they have the right to say so.”
However, the site was back online on Sunday at a new Web address and is still displaying the posts and names of people whom Mr. Liptz said would be removed. Now located on an Israel-specific domain, the site is being overseen by Guy Ofir, a lawyer in Israel, who said the team moved it to a new address after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from LinkedIn Is.
A LinkedIn spokesperson said the company determined that the site had used automated programs to remove content from the platform, known as scraping, in violation of its rules. Mr. Liptz denied that his site extracted LinkedIn information through scraping, while Mr. Ofir said he believed LinkedIn was trying to violate his right to free speech.
“We are not going to take down the website,” he said. “We are here ready to fight them.”
The site has been the subject of discussion on Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta and LinkedIn, where employees have expressed concerns about its dangerous impact on online speech.
“People are deleting pro-Palestinian LinkedIn posts and adding them to the database of ‘terrorist supporters,'” one employee wrote in a note on an internal Meta message board last Wednesday, which was seen by The Times.
Other Meta employees were in disbelief that expressing support for Palestine was tantamount to supporting terrorism.
“The lack of understanding,” the META employee wrote, “goes beyond insensitivity and cruelty.”
