An anti-Israel group on Monday created and then deleted a post on X saying that Auschwitz was “allegedly” the site of genocide.
The post, from a group called Stop Zionist Hate, came in response to a photo of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and X owner Elon Musk visiting the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, where the Nazis murdered nearly a million Jews.
“Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro are in Auschwitz, a town that allegedly witnessed genocide in the 20th century,” the now-deleted post read. “@elonmusk, do you have any plans to visit Gaza to see the genocide happening right now?”
Stop Zionist Hate later replaced the post with another that had the same text but replaced “allegedly” with “reportedly.” After it deleted that post as well, it said it intended to riff on media coverage of war Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“Our point in using the word ‘allegedly’ was to show the double standards when it comes to discussing atrocities,” the account said in a post. “We don’t deny the atrocities of WW2. Zionists and the mainstream media use the word ‘allegedly’ when reporting on Palestinians being murdered, yet they don’t get labeled as anti-Palestinian or atrocity-deniers.”
The group bills itself as a counter to Stop Anti-Semitism, an organization that publicizes anti-Semitic incidents on social media. The month it was created, Stop Zionist Hate claimed it had, in five days, “gotten multiple Zionists fired and many more exposed.”
Its account appears to be relatively new. It calls itself the “leading non-partisan American based organization fighting zionism and zionist hate” in its X bio, which indicates it joined the platform in November. The bio features a link to its website, which the webpage says is “coming soon.” A late-December report from MSNBC said that white nationalists, rather than progressives, created the account to capitalize on anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian sentiment amid the war in Gaza.
At least one prominent pro-Palestinian advocate seems to have fallen for the account’s apparent progressive charade. Rutgers law professor and “social justice scholar” Sahar Aziz promoted the account on LinkedIn in November, telling people to follow the account “to learn more about how right-wing #Zionists harass, assault, dox, and censor advocates of #Palestinian human rights.”
Aziz did not respond to a request for comment.
Discourse around the war in Gaza has frequently featured anti-Semitic rhetoric. Such rhetoric was on display in November while the Oakland City Council considered amending a resolution calling for a ceasefire to specifically condemn Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. Multiple community speakers claimed the Israel Defense Forces killed many of the Jewish state’s own people during the attacks, while another said calling Hamas a terrorist organization was “ridiculous, racist, and plays into genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media.”
