Does this picture look like something that would end up in the middle of a worldwide, albeit small-scale, fight against antisemitic hate speech on a popular street photography Facebook page?
I took this picture of Jerusalemites shopping at the historic Machnei Yehudah market in the middle of Jerusalem, Israel. I posted it in a Facebook group that I have been a member of for many years, Street Photography Cartier-Bresson Inspired. The group is very popular, with over 350,000 members as of this writing in late March, 2025, and rightly so. Members post their street photos from all over the world, and it has always been a space to share outstanding candid photos of people of many different countries and cultures.
It's a great way to see the world at street level, and hate-filled reactions to the photos posted in the group are not just off-topic. They are against the rules.
But ever since October 7, 2023, after Hamas's pogrom against southern Israel and Israel's self-defense response, anyone who dared to post a photo taken in Israel would be inundated with posts saying "Free Palestine" or "Genocidal killers" or the modern take on the blood libel: "Israel Stop Murdering Babies".
Typically, after some time passed, the Admins would remove all comments and then close the comments section to the photo. As an admin of my own group, I understand—monitoring comments is a lot of work for a small group of admins, but simply turning off comments denies the creator the benefit of any actual meaningful feedback that so many other photos get.
Finally, a few days ago, I'd had enough. After yet another photo taken in Tel Aviv was posted and prompted dozens of hate-filled responses, I wrote the following rant in the comments:
"Is this the direction of this group now?
"There are so many great photos being posted here, and the comments are mostly related to the merits of the photo. But whenever someone posts a picture taken in Israel, this crap happens. Every time.
"Nobody can share photos taken in Israel without being subject to hate-filled posts? We can't simply comment on the merits of the photo, we have to wade through accusations against the Jewish State? "There are other pictures here taken in countries that have also been accused of human rights violations. Why is nobody posting similar reactions to those photos?"
I went on to gently castigate the admins for their slow response. Then I told the photographer it was a nice photo.
One of the admins responded: "Any time anyone sees hate in the comments, or even political statements that have nothing to do with the photo, report it to the admins. Most haters will be banned but a few will only be suspended temporarily. We admins rely on you guys to report inappropriate comments since we just don't have time to peruse every comment under every post."
Fair enough. I went through a few other posts and found and reported several offensive comments. One photographer declared, based on this, that he'd post a photo a week from Israel and report the comments. He got several likes before his comment was taken down. I decided to do the same. I don't want to overwhelm the admins, but this was out of control. Perhaps by posting these photos now, we can cause the antisemites to surface, the admins will remove them when they spew their hate, and street photos taken in Israel can be posted and treated like photos from any other country.
Fast-forward. This morning, I posted the above photo. I've gotten a few likes and one single-word post ("Palestine"), which I reported as an off-topic remark. It was removed. I saw several other photos from Israel on the group, and none of them had hate comments.
It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
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