The petition, put up by the organization Campaign Against Antisemitism, calls on the public to petition against Corbyn's antisemitic statements and to remove him from office.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFBritain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn acknowledges his audience prior to giving his keynote speech at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Britain, September 27, 2017.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Change.org, a for-profit company that makes money by selling advertised petitions, has flagged a .The petition, put up by the organization Campaign Against Antisemitism, calls on the public to petition against Corbyn's antisemitic statements and to remove him from office.Campaign Against Antisemitism is a United Kingdom non-governmental organization established in 2014 by members of the Anglo-Jewish community. It focuses on exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.Change.org placed a pink banner across the Corbyn petition page warning users that, “We have received flags from our users that the facts in this petition may be contested. You should consider researching this issue before signing or sharing.”Campaign Against Antisemitism told The Jerusalem Post in a statement that, "We have tried and Change.org won't remove it. Loads of Corbyn supporters complained to them and they added this." But the organization pointed out that there are many antisemitic petitions on Change.org that continue to spread without any flags. For example, the campaign "To Get the Charity Commission to Deregister the Zionist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism." The organization said, "Change.org won't put a banner on those."This is not the first time that Change.org has flagged a petition against antisemitism. A similar incident occurred earlier this year when the organization Stop Antisemitism posted a petition against US Congresswomen , pointing out their connection to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and calling on their removal from public office.CAIR was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Department of Justice has described as a covert organization established to support Hamas. Stop Antisemitism, similar to Campaign Against Antisemitism, is a grassroots organization founded by individuals interested in “waking up the American people” and “eradicating the hatred that seeks to ruin our American way of life,” said co-founder Liora Rez. The organization has run other petitions on Change.org before this one.The warning banner featured at the top of the Omar and Tlaib petition has disabled access to the petition via Change.org user searches, blocked comments, and removed the ability for Change.org users to contribute to the petition sponsors after the petition is signed, among other actions.
The anti-Corbyn petition can still be found in user searches.Other petitions against Omar, Tilaib and Corbyn do remain on the Change.org site without flags. Stop Antisemitism has been unable to get information as to why their petition specifically was flagged. The Zachor Legal Institute has written a letter to Change.org on the organization's behalf threatening legal action if the crowd-sourcing platform does not respond to its request for information about why it has chosen to flag and disable some components of the petition against Omar and Tlaib.A.J. Walton, a spokesperson for Change.org, previously told the Post that when a petition is flagged by users, “we review its content to see if it violates our stated policies and to determine whether or not the petition should be removed.“Since the petition itself does not violate our terms, we have not removed it entirely,” he said. “However, we have taken steps to ensure users know we are aware of their concerns by including the banner at the top of the petition, disabled the comments feature, particularly in light of the many that violate our community guidelines, and limited the petition’s discovery on our platform.”Maayan Hoffman contributed to this report.
