Anti-Semitic agitators broke into a Holocaust Remembrance Day Zoom meeting hosted by the Israeli embassy in Berlin, posting pictures of Hitler before getting cut off.
By Yakir Benzion
Pro-Nazi agitators broke into a video conference hosted by Israel’s embassy in Germany and managed to shout anti-Semitic slogans and post pictures of Hitler before being cut off so the event could continue, the Israeli ambassador to Germany said Tuesday.
Ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff said the embassy in Berlin hosted the Zoom conference marking the annual remembrance day when the event was suddenly interrupted.
“During a Zoom meeting on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day by the Embassy of Israel in Berlin that hosted survivor Zvi Herschel, anti-Israel activists disrupted his talk posting pictures of Hitler and shouting anti-Semitic slogans. The event had to be suspended,” Issacharoff tweeted.
“After a short break the event was reconvened without the activists and conducted in an appropriate and respectful way,” Issacharoff said.
“To dishonor the memory of the Holocaust and the dignity of the survivor is beyond shame and disgrace and shows the blatant anti-Semitic nature of the activists.”
Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis and social distancing requirements, Zoom has become critical in keeping social connections alive, enabling people to host video chats with multiple participants.
Due to the corona pandemic, the Zikaron BaSalon organization (Hebrew for “Memory in the Living Room”) has been using Zoom to organize parlor meetings around the world with Holocaust survivors and their families. Instead of hosting Holocaust survivors in their living rooms, over a million people were expected to carry on the tradition of sharing personal Holocaust stories through online video conferencing.
But online trolls have taken to disrupting Zoom meetings of Jewish groups with offensive imagery and text, an act that’s been termed “Zoombombing” by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL released a guide for Jewish organizations on how to manage Zoombombing. First, the ADL recommends taking preventative measures like disabling screen sharing, disabling file transfers, and muting all participants.
Once the meeting is underway and all participants are present, the host should lock the meeting so nobody else can join. And if a troll manages to get through, the ADL suggests immediately removing the disruptive user and disabling their ability to rejoin the meeting.