The social media giant blocked Aish Hatorah posts educating people about anti-Semitism and the resurgence of Hitler’s notorious ‘Mein Kampf’ online.
The popular worldwide Jewish education institution Aish Hatorah reports that Instagram has blocked several of its postings that were trying to educate the public about anti-Semitism.
Aish Hatorah runs Aish.com, one of the world’s largest Judaism websites. Chief editor
Rabbi Nechemiah Coopersmith said that with the alarming uptick in anti-Semitism in North America, they have made it a priority to create social media content not only to educate the world about Jew-hatred, but also to advise what to do about it.
“But Instagram didn’t like what we’re doing and censored us,” Coopersmith said Monday, explaining that the social media platform that is owned by Facebook objected to a series of slides that highlight the current availability of Hitler’s infamous book Mein Kampf on the Amazon website and some of the history behind the book.
The images posted on the Aish Hatorah Instagram account all had graphics that described Hitler’s insidious political manifesto that was the manual for the Holocaust and helped spark World War II including an image showing that Mein Kampf can still be bought online in America.
“We shared the facts. The fact that anti-Semitic literature is readily available for sale around the world, including on Amazon. We told the truth,” Aish posted on its Facebook page.
Coopersmith said that Instagram considered the posts “insidious, hateful or offensive.”
“Apparently it’s OK to post vicious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content, but not factual content that educates people about Hitler’s anti-Semitic manifesto,” said Coopersmith, who was astounded that Instagram thinks it is “offensive to offer viewers the ability to learn about hate” in the four-part online seminar on Aish.com that the posts were advertising.
“At a time Jews in Manhattan and LA are physically attacked, when shuls in Arizona, Illinois, New York, Nevada and Florida are being vandalized, we have a responsibility to stand up and fight back,” said Coopersmith.
“We have a responsibility to educate the masses about the meaning of being Jewish. It’s an outrage that Instagram is stymieing us, flagging our account and downgrading our status, torpedoing our critical organic growth,” he said.
(United with Israel).