How Jewish Advocates Turned Social Media Into a Powerful Platform for Fighting Antisemitism
variety.comMalina Saval Associate Editor, Features Social media influencer Lizzy Savetsky was two weeks into filming Season 14 of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New York” when a tidal wave of antisemitism forced her to quit the show.
She fielded death threats and a barrage of online harassment. “I had been having a lot of anxiety about putting my family — including my three young children — at risk and not having control over how my story would be portrayed,” says Savetsky. “I felt like I had a target on my back.
I also feared that my presence on the show would create more antisemitism instead of my goal, which was to be a light for the Jewish people.” Savetsy, “a proud Jew and Zionist” with 246,000 Instagram followers, now uses her social media platform to educate society about antisemitism, debunking baseless tropes about Jews and Israel and holding institutional establishments and pop culture icons accountable for seminating what has festered into a miasmic cesspool of unchecked, unfiltered and socially acceptable Jew hatred.
On Oct. 7, as Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist organization that has controlled Gaza since 2007, launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, killing thousands of Israelis, wounding thousands more and plunging Israel into all-out war, rabid online Jew hatred once again raised its thorny head.
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