Standing Against Jew-Hatred Online
1. Preventing Genocide
1.1 HostJane aims to be a safe-space for freelancers of all racial backgrounds including Jewish people. Our company is committed to acting ethically and with integrity to ensure that user Services offered on our platform avoid complicity in human rights violations.
On July 6, 1942, a young Jewish girl named Anne Frank had to go into hiding in Amsterdam to escape extreme anti-Jewish racist hatred that had been implemented into law to marginalize, exclude and discriminate against Jewish people.
Jewish children were stopped from going to school, socializing with non-Jewish children, using public transport and all public amenities including walking on the pavement and sitting on park benches, eating out in restaurants, and forced to register with the state and humiliatingly wear Yellow stars to mark them out for their race. They were brutally stopped from reaching their full intellectual potential.
Tragically in Anne's case, that carefully-devised process of antisemitic violence took her life. She was murdered by racists in a concentration camp when she was 15 years old. HostJane, as a provider of internet services, sees that online antisemitism however "casual" or "low-level" has real world consequences.
HostJane believes that only by taking conscious, pro-active steps to push back against rising Jew-hatred in the community will we stop history from repeating itself.
Learn more about Anne Frank's secret annex where Anne and her family hid from extreme racism: https://www.annefrank.org/en/
1.2 Since May 26, 2016, the United States agreed to adopt a non-legally binding "working definition" on Antisemitism, formulated by the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Budapest.
1.3 HostJane believes technology companies that host user-generated content have a special responsibility as corporate citizens to fight anti-Jewish racist abuse online. In our assessment, we believe this starts by integrating the letter and the spirit of both the IHRA working definition of Antisemitism and the IHRA working definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion into existing anti-discrimination and anti-cyberbullying efforts to protect Jewish users.
1.4 Our staff are trained to review purchased / resold servers, marketplace listings, messages, postings, forum and all other user-generated content for violations of the IHRA working definition and suspend or remove material that we deem to be a violation of the IHRA definitions.
1.5 Learn more about how the IHRA promotes Holocaust education: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/
1.6 Learn more about Auschwitz-Birkenau and "the final solution" mass genocide, that is the end result when anti-Jewish racist hatred remains unchallenged in lesser stages: http://auschwitz.org/en/
Working Definiton of Antisemitism
2. Protecting Jewish Users
2.1 The Working Definition: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
2.2 To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples may serve as illustrations:
Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust
Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of antisemitic materials in some countries).
2.3 Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether they are people or property – such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries – are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or linked to Jews.
2.4 Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.
2.5 HostJane will endeavor to keep this page updated in line with the IHRA definition of Antisemitism therein: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism
Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion
3. Rooting Out Extremism
3.1 Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust/Shoah did not take place.
3.2 Holocaust denial may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.
3.3 Holocaust denial in its various forms is an expression of antisemitism. The attempt to deny the genocide of the Jews is an effort to exonerate National Socialism and antisemitism from guilt or responsibility in the genocide of the Jewish people. Forms of Holocaust denial also include blaming the Jews for either exaggerating or creating the Shoah for political or financial gain as if the Shoah itself was the result of a conspiracy plotted by the Jews. In this, the goal is to make the Jews culpable and antisemitism once again legitimate.
3.4 The goals of Holocaust denial often are the rehabilitation of an explicit antisemitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the very type of event it denies.
3.5 Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany;
Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources;
Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide;
Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”;
Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.
3.6 HostJane will endeavor to keep this page updated in line with the IHRA definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion therein: https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-holocaust-denial-and-distortion