Survivors of the October 7 Supernova music festival massacre are facing a wave of online abuse from bots, which are suspected to be part of a coordinated campaign by Iran, according to a report by Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA).
According to the report, thousands of bot accounts targeted survivors of the Nova music festival, where 364 people were murdered by Hamas and dozens taken hostage.
According to the FOA report, social media platforms are failing to act against the bot-posted content, described as a "sustained and multi-layered digital campaign" that hurls abusive comments and shares videos about the survivors.
These posts often call for the survivors' deaths and question the validity of their experiences on October 7 and its aftermath in an attempt to create false narratives and justify the events of that day, building on conspiracy theories surrounding the massacre.
In their report, the FOA narrowed down the source of the online abuse campaign to the Iranian regime.
IRGC has a history of leveraging cyber warfare against Islamic regime's enemies
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has a history of leveraging sophisticated cyber campaigns to attack critical infrastructure and vulnerable individuals, gather intelligence, and impact public opinion through propaganda.
State-sponsored hackers have been known to target organizations and individuals in Israel, the UK, and the US, among other places. From data harvesting to terror recruitment, Tehran has in recent years utilized cyber warfare at varied levels of success.
Propaganda peddled by Iranian bots has slowly made its way into a greater, real-world zeitgeist. Conspiracies revolving around the use of "crisis actors" on October 7, false-flag narratives, outright denialism, and the suggestion that the IDF fired on its own citizens to justify a ground invasion of Gaza have made the rounds.
The FOA pointed out sites like X/Twitter and TikTok as major nodes of harassment toward survivors, as well as general antisemitic memes and videos that "spread hate messages or mock the suffering of civilians."
Nova survivors targeted by hate speech, denialism
The report highlighted posts labeling Noa Argamani, a hostage who was held by Hamas for 245 days in Gaza following the October 7 massacre, "a terrorist" and a "whore," among other things. The same can be said for former hostage Romi Gonen, who has experienced a barrage of hateful posts, according to FOA researchers.
Omri Sassi, a survivor of the Nova massacre, told the Daily Telegraph in an interview that his trauma has been exacerbated by his and other survivors' encounters with misinformation, denial, and hate speech, to which he responded by staging a London exhibition about the Nova music festival - his attempt to bring truth to those who would deny what happened to the victims of Hamas terrorism.
The content "explicitly violates terms of service, including calls for violence," said the FOA. Despite this, posts routinely remain active, untouched by the platforms that host the hate speech. "Survivors are being harmed twice."
Tomer Aldubi, the founder of FOA, told the Telegraph, “While we are successfully removing extremist content through close cooperation with social media platforms, antisemitism and extreme hatred against Jews, Zionists, and Israelis have spread internationally at a dizzying pace since October 7. We must not give up or be silent.”