I never thought one day I would care if my name was public. I never imagined I would have almost 20K followers who are interested in reading my random thoughts, or essays. I certainly never thought I would one day be a topic of conversation for QAnon.
How did I get here?
One of the first things you notice when you join Twitter, is how little people care about you or what you have to say. I will never forget the first time a person told me: “why should I care about the opinion of an account with 10 followers”. Hey John, it’s me, Claire. The one with 10 followers.
The second thing you learn, is that with following, comes scrutiny. Your edgy anecdotes no longer only entertain you, they enrage others into an obsessive fury.
I joined Twitter right around the 2016 elections and so the hot topic was U.S. politics. Back then, the split was SJWs and the Anti crowds. As usual, I fell somewhere in the middle, managing to get a nice dose of hate from both.
I didn’t see the importance or significance of talking about myself as a Jewish woman. As far as I was concerned, I was just there to talk to others, and offer my perspective. Little did I know that my Jewish identity would call on the attention of the Alt Right. I did not shout it out, but I never denied it when asked, and somehow, even people like, white supremacist, Colin Robertson, knew before it was the main topic of conversation for my account.
As long as I was just another person on the left talking about my personal beliefs, I felt I belonged. I made friends, I was invited to chats, and I was largely embraced for fighting Alt Right characters, especially when my snark managed to “pwn the Nazis” as kids say.
As my Jewishness became more and more known, I had front and center seat when it came to toxic topics that dominated the internet, such as the Jewish Question. What I didn’t know then, was how my “friends” on the left felt about Israel. I initially chalked it up to ignorance, but quickly learned how deep and how pernicious it truly is. Not until I wrote: “Antizionism is antisemitism”.
That was it. That was the final nail on my lefty coffin.
As my interactions on twitter became more and more contentious, so was my fear for my own life. I couldn’t tell if death threats in the form of memes using my avatar on the body of a person hanging from a crane, or a gay man thrown off of roofs, was ‘just a meme’ or was there something else I should be worried about. I became more guarded. My Facebook which contain my personal information, including my family, co-workers, and friends, had to be deleted. My photos were making the rounds between small accounts, and retweeting that would only amplify their distribution. I wasn’t scared of showing my face. My banner was a picture of me, and I regularly posted videos and pics of myself on my timeline. But seeing photos that I did not post, gave me a good scare.
A young man sent me a picture of himself holding a gun, and a youtube video depicting a van crashing into a bus station, running over pedestrians. It was titled: This is what we do to you and yours. Luckily, these threats were severe enough to be removed and users permanently banned. This was going on for a good year or so. At times I wasn’t even sure who I’m dealing with politically. Is it nazis? Is it tankies? Is it just kids messing around?
Perhaps the fact that my name is unique and leads to my address worried me. Perhaps the fact that I’m the only caretaker for my daughter, after her father passed away, makes me worry for my income, and her safety and well being. Perhaps the fact that my daughter has been dealing with a disability, compels me to remain anonymous online, as a way to protect her from any harassment. After all, she’s a young Black Jewish woman who is vulnerable, and those are the people, my doxxer, Tasha Kaminsky, pretends to care for, as she stated in a public tweet calling on her followers to donate to a bounty to be given to anyone with information about my private identity.
Kaminsky was asked to remove her tweet and apologize after I contacted her husband, an aspiring politician, who had just lost his bid for Missouri AG, Elad Gross. I was hoping to resolve this quietly, and with no unnecessary public drama, by sending him a private message. Little did I know, that my attempt to not cause additional harm to her family, would be shouted out publicly, and I would end up being called a shande by Rabbi Andy Khan, who seems to have been heavily invested in my identity as well as joining in sporadic smearing and harassing campaigns by Tasha’s group of friends, who include: Max Sparber, a self proclaimed award winning journalist, Ilana Cruger-Zaken, an occasional writer (her Mondoweiss piece on antizionism was so popular, it ended up on the PLO website), Jimmy Rothchild, an If Not Now org Chicago leader, even everyone’s beloved Jewish activist, Tema Smith, saw it necessary to not only avoid condemnation of such heinous behavior, but dedicate a what a wonderful human Tasha is, right at that moment, knowing full well the events that unfolded.
As a way to add validation to her claims, Kaminsky posted a rather vile threatening email a transperson received, insinuating I may be behind it. Max Sparber again claimed that must be me, she declined yet promised to still give her bounty to anyone with any information as for my identity. This was not unusual. This group of people have hurled smears, false accusations, and libel against me for over a year at this point. Kaminsky never issued a clear statement that the harassment was not my doing, Max Sparber just changed his twitter handle, perhaps in the hopes that it will disassociate him from this, and Ilana became especially obsessive, issuing ongoing taunting messages pertaining to my identity.
It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. The taunting tweets about me continued for months. Ongoing intimidation and veiled threats were showing up almost daily from this group, who just to be clear, are a group of grown adults aged 30–50, who excused their support of doxing a MENA Jewish woman online under a false premise.
They know it’s false. Their hate towards me began way further back than any imagined or real events they masked their true intentions under. Their curiosity as for my private life was a topic of conversation probably a year prior to the “event” that managed to get me labeled a bully and a transphobe. There are numerous tweets still floating accusing me of working for the Israeli government, being paid to tweet, having an army of sock accounts, actual bullying of my followers, accusing them of being me. Tema Smith went as far as proclaiming it’s likely I was behind an abusive account that was issuing rape threats to women back in 2019. This group blocked me long before “transphobe gate”, and never interacted with me, yet continue their smear campaigns, making up rules of engagement while breaking them themselves. If you add up the amount of times this group has harassed me, to the times I responded or criticized them, it’s apparent who the bully is. So it is clear as day that this group’s issue with me has zero to do with “bullying of young kids”.
As weeks passed, Kaminsky became more bold and assured of herself that it was up to her to serve repercussions for my “bad behavior”. Since her initial threat, I was contacted by a friend who got me in touch with cyber security experts to help me further protect myself and my daughter, as well as investigate the threat itself. It was quite a surprise for us to learn that Kaminsky had already been served a restraining order for adult abuse and stalking, the year prior. It was clear we are dealing with a person who wasn’t going to just let it go.
One of her more recent attempt to intimidate me, using the phrase “warning shot”, reached absurdity levels I’ve not seen before. She was now issuing threats on the basis of critical tweets towards If Not Now activists and cartoonist, Eli Valley. Again, all three adults, public figures, all notoriously hostile to the Jewish Zionist community at large. Where are those vulnerable kids she speaks of? Nowhere in sight.
Sparber, Cruger-Zaken, and Kaminsky have subtweeted about their knowledge of my identity on multiple occasions. You have to be a complete idiot to not understand these tactics of intimidation were aimed at me. The usual crowd of friends always there to lend their like as a form of a wink and a nudge.
And then it happened. I had a minor spat with Seth Rogen after he, practically repeated the same complaint I received from this crowd verbatim, chastised me about my anonymity. This one tweet triggered another wave of various haters justifying my doxxing under the false pretense of my unforgivable behavior online. One person, Russel Neiss, an engineer and a hacker, quoted my tweet regarding the dangers of doxxing, in a mocking fashion. I ignored, as I have endlessly. One of my followers did not. He asked Neiss directly if he condones my doxxing. As a response, Neiss posted a picture of my family. How random, right? Wrong!
Russel Neiss is an old friend of Tasha Kaminsky. They worked together for MaTovu and both reside in St. Louis. I was startled. As I was already working with security experts, one of their tasks was to figure out who I am simply from my twitter account. They were not able to do so, and certainly not find out who my family was. At that same time, one of my google accounts got hacked. I lost access to it and received a notification from google that a data breach took place. I also noticed that one of my LinkedIn searchers was Sefaria, Neiss’ current workplace.
I never spoke to Neiss. I did not know who he was. I certainly never harassed or bullied this man, yet he saw himself as judge, jury, and executioner of my doxing. There is no doubt in my mind that my private information is now spread in that sphere. It is one thing to be upset with me, to insert my family to this drama, is just beyond the pale.
My next conversation with cyber team was not reassuring whatsoever. As they have access to vast database of hacker forums, they were able to confirm that my personal info is not showing up with connection to the specific group of people who were making my life miserable at this point, but another group, QAnon, showed great interest in my twitter account. Their recommendation was to simply leave Twitter. That’s all one can do nowadays to protect themselves.
You see, I don’t fear Kaminsky showing up at my door. I’m not worried about being hated by a few Jewish people online who just cannot co-exist with my account. I am worried about actual hate groups who do target Jewish people online. Nazis, conspiracists, anarchists, etc. These are people who are at least, in some sick way, targeting you honestly for your beliefs and identity, and don’t pretend to be some Sesame Street heroes of children.
I’ve been going back and forth in my mind about opening up about what it feels like to be a target of harassment and doxing campaign. My initial instincts are always to put on a brave face, expose those who do malice, but don’t let them know you’re hurting. Don’t show your fear. Never let them see the pain. But the pain is real and it’s awful.
What you need to understand is that from the moment Tasha Kaminsky offered a bounty on my head, I began making arrangements for the worst case scenario. I had many hours of heart to heart with my family who would be impacted. I confined in very few friends who I trusted to follow up on the online chatter, and document any perceived threat. I spent inordinate amount of time and resources scrubbing my personal information from the Internet.
Many may not know, but this is uniquely a U.S. thing. There are perhaps two dozen websites who serve as database to “find people”. This is not legal or available in any other nation. They collect private information such as address, phone numbers, emails, employment, marriage and death certificates, and any and all images and social media presence. If your name is John Smith, you’re probably fine. But if you have a unique name, like me, you’re found within a click, and so is my daughter, her grandmother, and her father.
From the moment I realized I was officially doxed and members of the Jewish community are spreading my information far and wide, and things are escalating exponentially, to a point my work is posted, and my address is next, I went ahead and sent my daughter away to friends. I contacted my little “team” as I like to call them, and monitored any chatter that may seem threatening. All while pretending to hold my sanity and well being together.
I had no sleep for three straight days. Everything was cloudy and confusing. Anxiety began to form as this physical pain, gripping my insides to a point, even eating was painful. But I had to keep it together. I’m a mother and a grown woman who’s been through and have seen worse. I just knew I had to deal with whatever faith brings.
So to watch Jewish self-proclaimed leaders of the community such as Tema Smith, Alex Zeldin, Carli Pildis, and Ruti Regan, not only deny the grave harm of doxing by publishing someone’s name, but also provide some sort of whitewashing and an excuse for this, was enraging, painful, and deeply damaging, not just to me, but to our entire online community.
You see, many who have deep disagreements with me, have come out denouncing this act. They understood fully that there are red lines when we interact with each other online, and that nothing would please our real enemies than to watch us tear each other down, but do the work for them, by providing our personal information.
Since then, I still contemplate the value of it all. Is it all worth it? How have we reached a place where Jewish women online no longer feel safe, and personal vendetta and sense of revenge, moves Jewish people to harass, intimidate, stalk, and dox us?
Fuck men who dox women on behalf of other women. And fuck women who use men to abuse other women on behalf of their twisted desire for vengeance.
What I do know is that regardless of my online presence, there are still incredible people of all backgrounds who will continue to fight the good fight against antisemitism and bigotry. There is no win to be had for those who wish to vilify us. Just moving on to the next target who dares to speak their mind.
Addendum:
On August 9th, 2021, known antisemitic personality Anna Rajagopal, who have promoted PFLP terrorists, called for a violent intifada, and justified massacring Israeli Jews of all backgrounds, used the dox information and not only posted my legal name, but have taken a personal photo of me, unauthorized, and posted that as well, triggering a second wave of doxing, smears, and lies with no basis or proof by other vile accounts such as Ilana Cruger-Zaken, Andy Ratto, Em Cohen, Izzy, Isabella, Ariel Scariot, and cheered on by the usual crowd of Jimmy Rothschild of INN, Theo S. (Jewish_Activist), and Koshersemite.
There is a sense of irony with the crowd who fears modern day fascist and nazis, and claim they are by far the greatest danger to Jews, utilizing fascist tactics of doxing and intimidation against MENA Jewish women, raising a Black Jewish girl on her own.
At this point they are well aware how unique my name is. They know they themselves were able to locate my address and phone number. They have yet to produce any evidence of my great evil and oppression, yet putting the lives of two Jewish individuals at risk, is not an issue, if their egos are bruised for their lack of success defending their vile ideology, based on their own rejection of Jewish identity and love for their peoplehood.
In the 5 years I’ve spent on Twitter, I’ve done more to fight antisemitism than any of these personalities, while these people provide Jewish bodies to our enemies, on a silver platter. My presence on Twitter will not defeat antisemitism, but I can guarantee you, my presence off Twitter will not free Palestine. My name will continue to live in their minds and on their lips for a long time because that’s how small and insignificant their lives are, driven by ego and nothing to lose. A life that is empty and loveless outside of their social media presence. Rejected by their own community, driven by a sense of revenge, and the idea of justice that is so warped, it centers their own ego, when their focus should be their people.