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Israel Sports Win Prompts Anti-Semitic Tweets

Nearly 18,000 Twitter insults posted after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Euroleague win

by
Hannah Dreyfus
May 20, 2014
Maccabi Tel Aviv players celebrate in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on May 19, 2014, following their victory over Real Madrid in the Euroleague 2014 Final Four basketball match in Milan, Italy. (JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)
Maccabi Tel Aviv players celebrate in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on May 19, 2014, following their victory over Real Madrid in the Euroleague 2014 Final Four basketball match in Milan, Italy. (JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s unexpected victory over Read Madrid in the championship of the Euroleague Final Four basketball tournament this weekend was met with revelry in Israel—and vitriol online. A deluge of anti-Semitic comments hit the Twittersphere in response to the team’s win in Milan, the New York Times reports, with a whopping 18,000 tweets posted to the social networking site believed to be from Real Madrid fans angry about their team’s loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Jewish organizations in Spain have requested a formal investigation into the comments and have filed a compliant against five Twitter users whose full names are associated with their accounts.

According to the Jerusalem Post, many of the comments mined Nazi and Hitler imagery.

Now I understand hitler [sic] and his hate for the Jews…,” one angry Twitter user said.



“They should all be killed in an oven,” read another post.

Euroleague Basketball issued a statement condemning the online outpouring, stating that they will “collaborate with the relevant authorities in any way possible in order to eliminate such discriminatory behaviour.”

Hannah Dreyfus is an editorial intern at Tablet.