Jews Boast of Maximum Success in Endeavor to Silence the Speech of the People

Jewish Chronicle

December 23, 2013

In the fight against online antisemitism, Jardena Lande is an unsung heroine.

While David Cameron and other world leaders try to convince sites such as Facebook to do more to block users spreading hatred, Ms Lande and her colleagues at the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) have already enjoyed notable success.

As director of the group, Swiss-born Ms Lande co-ordinates the efforts of around 600 parliamentarians in 60 countries. She has also kick-started the process of helping Silicon Valley executives force racist abuse off the internet.

“The internet is the biggest challenge,” she said.

The UK has been at the forefront of the fight against antisemitism along with Canada and Germany.

“It’s explosive and a never-ending piece of work. You put out one fire and another 10 start up somewhere else.

“But the companies have started to realise that fighting hatred is good for business.”

The ICCA created an Internet Hate Task Force three years ago, the first of its kind to unite parliamentarians, governments, NGOs, lawyers, academics and — most importantly — the global super-sites themselves.

Ms Lande, 31, travelled to Facebook’s headquarters in California to begin negotiations.

She said: “For the first time, the industry figures sat in a room and talked to each other about it.

“There is now a permanent working group meeting three or four times a year with our MPs and representatives from Facebook, Google, YouTube, PayPal, Amazon and others.

“The volume of complaints the companies get make it very hard to handle. Governments have threatened to legislate against them, people have threatened to take them to court; we don’t do that. We work with them and improve the way hate on the internet is confronted in a more productive way.”

The challenge of negotiating each country’s legal system is substantial, Ms Lande said.

“In the United States, you could write a lot more online before you cross into illegality than you could in Germany, where they have Holocaust denial laws that you don’t even have here in Britain.

“It’s important that the companies have noticed that now they have headquarters in Europe as well, that they are bound by European law. It’s new to them and they needed guidance.”

Read More