Antifascist researchers The White Rose Society (Australia) recently published a series of tweets and video decisively debunking a viral “Gas the Jews” video circulated depicting a pro-Palestinian protest group outside the Sydney Opera House on October 9th, debunked also by Australian independent news website, Crikey, which sought the input of multiple audio experts in its thorough coverage.
The video was distributed on October 9th by professional inciters, the Australian Jewish Association, whose Twitter feed is a record of repeated demonization of pro-Palestinian protests. The video was picked up by mainstream media as fact. The AJA’s video, which started the panic rolling, contained inaccurate subtitles (the crowd were actually chanting “Where’s the Jews?”):
The AJA’s video was picked up and widely reported by mainstream media—as if it had actually happened—and ultimately resulted in New South Wales amending their hate crime laws. Here’s how quickly it became accepted fact on Sky News Australia:
Even the cameraman, whose footage the AJA had used, correctly identified the chant as “Where’s the Jews?” The Crikey journalist posted a video interview with him:
The White Rose Society explained how the video spread in a series of tweets:
The ‘Australian Jewish Association’ recently published a video which purported to show hundreds chanting ‘gas the Jews’ outside the Sydney Opera House. After Crikey raised serious doubts about whether this had really happened, the ‘AJA’ released a longer video of the chanting.
One thing their longer video proved was that they had misleadingly edited audio of a small group of people chanting over vision of a much larger crowd. The longer video also allows us to compare the ‘AJA’ video with video that has much clearer audio. At the end of the AJA’s extended clip, a protester can be heard calling on the small group to not use antisemitic language. This moment is also captured in other footage.
The Society published a dual-screen video, putting footage recorded close to the chanting protesters with clear audio, next to the video the AJA promoted and Sky News (Australia) broadcast. It’s absolutely clear at this point that the crowd is chanting “Where’s the Jews?”:
The Tzedek Collective, a Sydney-based leftist Jewish anti-Zionist organization, uncovered the Australian Jewish Association’s shady behaviour and weaseling about the harmful video (thread):
How easy is it to mislead with subtitles?
Crikey interviewed Phil Rose, a speech scientist and professional consultant and former chair of the ASSTA’s forensic speech science committee after providing the footage to him:
“If you put up a subtitle, you will predispose them to hear what you have written. You hear what you expect to hear.”
Coxy.official on TikTok posted this video, demonstrating how easy it is to mislead with subtitles. Sorry to ruin Carmina Burana: O Fortuna for y’all but needs must:
It’s utterly frustrating trying to speak out against Israel’s blatant ethnic cleansing of Gaza and obvious genocide of Gazans—20,000 of whom have been murdered by Israeli carpet bombing in Gaza since October 7th—when people have been ruthlessly weaponized by Israel’s relentless propaganda of conflation to the point where it makes sense to them to equate a traditional Palestinian scarf and national symbol of the Palestinian struggle with the Nazi swastika:
This insanity—part of an intentional propaganda campaign by Israel to delegitimize protest against its actions in Gaza—has even resulted in one American shooting three students wearing keffiyehs, as happened in Burlington, VT in November:
Enough is enough. People need to step back from the noise and pay attention to who is making it. The current climate in which Zionist groups are running around disseminating dramatic videos—either fake as in the case of AJA’s “Gas the Jews” Sydney video, or whose content mischaracterizes honest protest as Jew hatred—has created a global threat to all forms of truth, protest, and justice.
