Facebook (illustration)
Facebook (illustration)Thinkstock

Anti-Semitism on social media has reached new heights, according to a Shem Olam Institute study released Tuesday.

The study, conducted by Buzzilla, measure social media activity for several months. 

Anti-Semitic rhetoric peaked during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, it revealed, but then continued to climb even higher - four times then before 2014 - following the terror war which began in September 2015. 

"From October 2015 to March 2016 there was a significant increase in the average number of conversations showing anti-Semitic expressions," it found. "For the purpose of the present research, anti-Semitism is defined as any deliberate verbal attack towards Jews and the Jewish people (including its history)."

Some 50% of anti-Semitic comments include statements such as "Hitler was right"; 22%, statements such as "I hate the Jews"; 11%, "Burn the Jews"; 11%, "I hate the Jewish people"; and 6%, "Bloody Jews." 

The Facebook page with the most anti-Semitic comments includes the pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor, which has 710,000 followers - followed by Americans Against Genocide in Gaza, Images of Palestine, Israel Lies and Deceits, and the International Solidarity Movement. 

The two most anti-Semitic posts stem from the Facebook page of Al Jazeera: a video claiming to show an IDF bombing a Gazan school, which had 1.2 million views, 33,000 shares, 20,000 "likes" and hundreds of comments; and a video claiming to be of Israeli police threatening to kill Palestinians, with 1.8 million views, 12,000 "likes", 34,000 shares, and nearly 2,000 comments. 

"The shocking depth of anti-Semitism on social networks must be a red flag for us, warning us of the hatred so many have against Jews from around the world," Rabbi Avraham Krieger, Shem Olam chairman, stated Tuesday. "I hope that the data provokes Israel to act with all the means at its disposal to reduce the dimensions of anti-Semitism in the social network and beyond."

The findings are similar to a study from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which discovered the same pattern in Britain: violent anti-Semitism reached a peak in summer 2014, then remained steady in light of the recent terror war.