A year ago or so I exposed the identity of the founder of the Jewish Internet Defense Force (Wikipedia article). David Brotsky, aged 37, lives in Dallas, TX. He is a film production and location manager by day. His credits include some of the better known movies and commercials made in the past decade or so. Among his projects were Almost Famous, Sweet and Lowdown, Friday Night Lights, and The Cradle Will Rock. What’s interesting and strange about Brotsky is that while his professional career appears legitimate, almost nothing that he does in his shadowy borderline violent pro-Israel advocacy is.
By night, he’s David Appletree, a rabid gut-toting, hate mongering Jewish terrorist (or wannabe). Lately, he’s gone ever farther over the top than normal, calling for the formation of Jewish militias in all of the world’s (!) major cities and imposing vigilante justice on Israel’s enemies whoever and wherever they may be.
Here are some of his more incendiary recent tweets (first, second, third):
A lot of these trolls are making me think it will soon be time to take JIDF to the next level: armedmilitias.
#serious
@JIDF and when i say “organized,” i mean strong Jewish men and friends thereof who are armed and ready/able to fight.#vigilante#justice…a small group of organized JIDF supporters in each major city in the world could make people think twice.
Here he links to a video clip of the target-practice scene from Taxi Driver, in which Robert DeNiro points an unloaded gun at the camera and fires in preparation for mounting a political assassination:
Some Jew haters need to be taught some lessons…. http://youtu.be/zKbgw2aK_eU
#vigilante#justice#jews#torah#israel#tcot
Here he features a pistol with silencer with the caption: “Good day.”
Brotsky appears to have a romance as well with the Jewish Defense League and quotes admiringly, Meir Kahane’s infamous: “every Jew a .22.” We should keep in mind that while the JDL had a reputation of being on the farthest fringes of American Jewish discourse, Kahane’s views have largely been ratified in present-day Israel. Even a mandarin as supposedly mainstream as Jeffrey Goldberg admits to his own fling with Kahanism that lasted at least through his 20s, if not longer.
Not to mention that leaders of the JDL engaged in real crimes, including bombings and murder. Some Kahanists are still running free in the West Bank maiming and murdering Palestinians on a regular basis. I’d err on the side of being judicious in evaluating the mayhem of which he might be capable.
Those of you who believe in the rule of law may ask why the FBI isn’t giving this guy a home visit. Apparently, the G-men prefer cases in which the victim has lots of curves and is “very good friends” with important U.S. generals. Clearly advocating the creation of an armed militia and displaying weapons which presumably would be used to exterminate whatever anti-Israel trash has gotten Brotsky lathered up, would appear to be either a federal crime outright or one in the making.
The question arises whether Brotsky is merely a certifiable lunatic looking for attention by whatever means he can find it; or whether he represents a clear and present danger to his opponents or American Jewish political discourse. I’m writing this post because while it’s possible the former is the case, there’s too much of a possibility that the latter is true to ignore him.
One of Brotsky’s claims to fame (or infamy) is his “mastery” of the art of exploitation and manipulation of social media. He of course maintains JIDF Facebook and Twitter accounts, but he also appears to have created multiple sockpuppet accounts designed to support and echo his own views. Conversely, he creates fake accounts of supposed Arab or Muslim users and posts damaging anti-Semitic or anti-Israel material:
…We will be launching our largest operation on 4chan and other popular image boards, our objective is to create an image of Palestinians and Lebanese being virulently anti-American and anti-Western.
- Create threads against Israel and fill them with posts from violent Jihadist Palestinians, claim to want to immigrate into the West to do Jihad, later on in the threads post links to propaganda films like Pallywood.
- Exploit massive Lebanese immigration into Australia as a reason why the Australian people should support Israel.
- Post propaganda threads linking to Palestinian and Lebanese suicide bombers and other Muslim extremism, in these threads also reply as a Jew who has been affected by Jihadist violence, explain to the readers that Muslims are a threat to the West.
- Start threads claiming to be Lebanese-Americans or Palestinian-Englanders, portray yourselves as extremely anti-Israel, later on in these threads claim to be a Jew disgusted by the behavior of the Lebanese/Palestinian man.
A review of some of his 60,000 Twitter followers indicates that a significant portion are either Twitter spam or possibly even secured through a Twitter grey market. The fact that the JIDF website is ranked at 1.1-million in popularity indicates both that he doesn’t spend much time on it, and that he’s possibly vastly inflating his Twitter followers and Facebook Friends. He’s also hacked into the social media accounts of legitimate users and engaged in acts of plagiarism. In this interview (with the woman who later made this accusation), he makes a revealing admission:
David: My only regret is trusting people.
This is one of the most untrustworthy people on the internet, who violates the trust and rules of social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. Yet he sees himself as the victim of the bad acts of others. That might remind you of a particular country we often discuss here.
Appletree’s Facebook (personal) page was removed because he was not using his real name, a violation of the company’s rules. Now, he’s created a Fan page for David Appletree, who is a figment of Brotsky’s imagination and a victim of his self-regard.
The JIDF founder at one time (until they had a falling out) made common cause with another hasbara fraudster, David Lange (aka Aussie Dave). They each created hoax users and posted inflammatory anti-Israel comments in Facebook accounts and then pointed to those comments in attacking the groups to which they posted them.
Another mystery is how and why Twitter decided to “verify” Brotsky’s JIDF account. Clearly the fact that he has a large number of followers played a role. But verification is the ultimate seal of approval Twitter offers its most popular celebrity users. By offering Brotsky this, it in effect also ratified the content of his account:
Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities on Twitter. The verified badge helps users discover high-quality sources of information and trust that a legitimate source is authoring the account’s Tweets.
Twitter proactively verifies accounts on an ongoing basis to make it easier for users to find who they’re looking for. We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, advertising, business, and other key interest areas. We verify business partners from time to time and individuals at high risk of impersonation.
I’ll let you be the judge of whether Brotsky is a “high-quality source of information and trust.”
NOTE: There is another David Brotsky (David M. Brotsky) who lives in New York (not Texas) and runs a Jewish outdoor events company. He has no association with the subject of this blog post. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by confusion between the two individuals. The David Brotsky I’ve referenced here claims he has nothing to do with the JIDF and denies that he is the David Brotsky in question.
I think you are reading too much into what Twitter means when it verifies an account. I agree that it’s become a de facto mark of quality/approval/excellence, but that’s really not what it’s intended as. It’s meant to be exactly what it says it is: Verification. The mark means nothing other than that @JIDF actually represents the JIDF. It’s a ‘legitimate’ source of ‘high-quality’ information about the JIDF, which is faint praise indeed.
I don’t know when he got this verified mark, but I’d guess it was relatively long ago, before the mark took on the meaning it has today. Twitter certainly wouldn’t give it to an account of that stature today. But they have no justification for taking it away.
Thank you, Richard. I’d seen the screenshot of the JIDF twitter feed posted on Facebook and paid a visit to the JIDF Twitter homepage. I felt that were it not for the fact that Jews were tweeting back and forth with JIDF, I could have just as easily been viewing an account belonging to Stormfront.org. Ditto when I visited the JIDF website. One thing I wanted to have access to, but didn’t, was the JIDF list of “dangerous websites” – those sites who are deemed “anti-Israel” and/or “anti-Semitic” and are provided to JIDF by its “volunteers,” who troll the internet in search of the enemy and use DropBox to provide this info to their JIDF master.
This whole thing looks so utterly crazy. The rabid Islamophobia, the talk of arming themselves, I seriously wonder if the SPLC is at least watching them, if not the FBI.
The guy clearly incites your murder (and many others, for that matter).
Now it’s just waiting to see who acts first, the FBI or your local Loughner.
Doesn’t this character realise that the reputation for thuggish behavior that the IDF has acquired over time will, by the kind of stuff he comes up with, attach itself to more and more Jews in the diaspora and that these images will reinforce each other? This will all contribute of course to the ultimate demise of the kind of Israel he favors, Lieberman-Israel.
Mary you are right – the putrid mentality one finds evidenced for instance on the Masada2000 s.h.i.t list of “self-hating Jews” is indeed not different from that on far-right Nazi-sites, only their targets are different.
Btw, if one can control one’s vomiting reflex by skipping the comments one happily can find the names of many interesting authors there – including that of Richard of course. Richard I noticed that you thought that it were these hoods who had threatened you with “genital mutilation” – but they denied that saying that this would be letting you off too lightly. What a scumbags.
I never mentioned to Richard, but that’s how I found his blog. Years ago I was a regular user of digg.com and habitually battled these JIDF types. One day one of them mentioned Richard in the most derogatory terms. Curious, I googled him and found Tikun Olam. I’ve been reading and commenting for several years now.
I’ve not looked at the Masada2000 site in a couple of years. But I can pretty much guess who’s on it.
Battling JIDF types online…wow, you’re a braver person than I, Gunga Din (sorry for old film reference). But glad it resulted in you finding the blog!
Comments referring to genital mutilation & other forms of physical torture are a dime a dozen, I’m afraid. I don’t know if they’re written by one person or a group. Of course they use proxy servers so even if I ban them they find their way back. They come so regularly I don’t even read them anymore. Just throw ’em in the spam comment folder. Imagine the type of person who insists on writing such comments yr after yr even though they aren’t even read (& certainly not published). I should have a resident website psychologist/psychiatrist.
As soon as those goons started squawking about how rotten you are and how you’re trying to destroy Israel, I knew they actually were afraid of you. Fear and loathing always go together in the minds of cowards. Instead of making intelligent, factually based arguments to support their arguments, they resort to, well, you know. Digg.com was an educational tool for me, and I spent 9 months with those haters learning about the big online hasbara project. I began to understand how thoroughly propagandized these people were – they actually believe that tripe they spew. I learned also that they are taught from childhood to hate the Palestinians and that the only way they thought Israel will survive is by either killing them, driving the rest of them off or subjugating them so totally that they become little more than mindless slaves. Of course, torture was always OK as an interrogation tactic, and if a Palestinian child died in Gaza because they couldn’t cross the border for medical help, well, that was Hamas’ fault, not Israels. At the end of 9 months of listening to their sickening nonsense, I told them all to go to hell and never returned to digg.com.
I worry that someday one of these crackpots will do a Breivik in the US. If the Americans don’t start getting serious about Islamophobia, it’ll happen.
Hasn’t the USa / FBI turned the other eye to armed Cuban vigilantes who are preparing to retake their homeland island? this is of course different, but the USA does have a record for looking the other way where politics gets involved.
The USA certainly has a record for looking the other way where Israel is involved.
Can you imagine if this guy was Muslim? He’d be in solitary confinement in some military brig, never again to see the light of day. Technically, talk of forming a militia is supposedly protected speech (as far as I know), but not in the War on Terror.
David Appletree has also a linkedin profile.. interesting indeed.
“… we offer advertising and consulting services to clients who are interested in reaching our massive Jewish pro-Israel network network (sic) of advocates, or we help them to grow their own effort, so please let me know if you’re interested in learning more. We go above and beyond for our clients and provide value that is unmatched anywhere else.”
@laila: He provides “value.” Hah.
● RE: “This [David Brotsky] is one of the most untrustworthy people on the internet, who violates the trust and rules of social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. Yet he sees himself as the victim of the bad acts of others.” ~ R.S.
● FROM WIKIPEDIA:
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
● ALSO SEE: “The Paranoid Style of Anti-Islamism”, By Jack Ross, Institute for Policy Studies, 8/02/11
(excerpt)
ARTICLE – http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/the_paranoid_style_of_anti_islamism
P.S. ALSO FROM WIKIPEDIA [Narcissism]:
I think you are on the right track here. I am aware of a shadowy presence of Jews identifying with Zionism and often presenting themselves — to women more often than not — as Mossad agents or other unidentifiable agents of Israeli. I have stumbled across several instances of such poseurs, men smitten with gun trading and gun culture, talking the talk and walking the walk. These narcissists find a thrill in the romance of power and violence and Israel is just a prop for their egos. But, it is an international phenomenon, I think, of Jews posing as underground tough guys, ala Israel. One German woman visiting here in California explained to me at length about her “Mossad” beau back in Berlin, which was undoubtedly either his lie or hers, and I think it was his. Another international gun trading gun toting Jew, one of a whole family of these people in LA, offered to get an Uzi for my father, a college prof in California. I am not talking about kids playing at things, but full grown adults posing as tough Jews, often for effect. Apparently, Dad was also smitten with the same wicked romance and was even proud of another Jewish gangster friend. RIP, Dad was just a little unhinged and did not go public with his screwiness like David Brotsky. Without Israel and Zionism, these guys would have found other poses and illusions in life and would still be today talking among themselves about violence in some other sick context, perhaps one not connected with Jewishness. But this kind of twisted identity, its nefarious shadowy international character (caricature?), is just more fallout from the violence of tribalism and Zionism.
P.P.S. AND SEE: “Is There a Way Beyond Israeli Madness?” [Will the Chosen People and the Exceptional People Go Down Together?] ~ by John Grant, Counterpunch, 8/31/12
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/31/is-there-a-way-beyond-israeli-madness/795200
JIDF should be classified by hate group by watchdog organizations such as Southern Poverty Law Center.
Ahh…a good, old-fashioned character assassination.
I’m not assassinating his character. He’s done that himself. As for assassination, I’d rather assassinate character than a human being, which is what Brotsky dreams of. But nice to see you’re defending this piece of sick humanity. Tells us a good bit about your own views & predilections.
joel are you a jidf hasbarat?
Thanks for the write up on this virulent individual. I only discovered JIDF this past Saturday after coming by those tweets which set many ablaze on Twitter. Apparently Mr Brotsky doesn’t know the definition of ‘terrorism’, and thinks it only applies to those of a certain faith and creed. The deep irony and stupidity of many of his statements – which he obviously fails to realize – are quite so unbelievable that I’ve noted that some think this is a troll group. Reacting to every criticism or concern with accusatory statements of: “You’re anti-semitic and an Islamic terrorist supporter!” will absolutely not earn any legitimacy or support from neutral observers like me – and I know enough fellow Jews that are face-palming.. Sadly, after looking further into the JIDF history and actions of associated accounts – it’s real and this is a man that is quite unhinged to say the least.
Sorry to read that you’ve personally had to deal with this individual’s abuse.
Best
Bratsky sees to be nut job.
His JDIF website is underwhelming.
He doesn’t understand social media. For example, Brotsky/Appletree wanted to “infiltrate” 4chan, a picture message board, not realizing that a) most of the people involved are part of the under 35 cohort and b) they know how to spot fakes and sockpuppets. If Appletree tried to post gory photos of dead Palestinians (as a fake Palestinian), the reaction would be “cool story, bro” (translation: we don’t care) and moving on. There is no traction to be gained trying to false-flag hasbara 4chan; he would be found out probably sooner than later, and banned. The only place he can go and not be laughed at is Free Republic or one of the other American rightist message boards, mainly because he would not be unique; they have scads of wannabe-military keyboard commandos. In fact, Twitter is the perfect place for him to exist because the message limitations keep things at a very shallow, bumpersticker slogan level. However, because he might incite violence I think it would be best if somebody told Twitter he has been sockpuppeting their site.
Choice tweets du jour:
JIDF @JIDF
Unfortunately, mainstream Jewish/Israel organizations have been hijacked by extreme leftists who want to give our Land to Islamic terrorists
JIDF @JIDF
there’s too much trash in the world. not enough people taking it out.
JIDF @JIDF
They hate Jews and Israel because they’re simply Jew haters. They obsess over & lie about our effort, b/c it is good (and they are evil).
It’s really easy to let yourself be disgusted by the “comments” from JIDF/pro-israel trolls online, but they have no ability to do anything in the real world because the vast majority of people in the last 10 years have realized how indefensible the israeli side is and it doesn’t take much to realize that it’s inherently always been indefensible.
Let these guys comment on youtube videos; parroting the infantile lines that the PR men say, let them comment obscenities on Rachel Corrie videos, watch as one person makes two accounts and has a conversation with himself about how crazy muslims are…
The kind of crap they do is transparent and it’s just an attempt to feign “popular opinion” for their cause… and it’s provable that they’re faking the “opinion”, you should write up a brief guide on how to spot israel trolls actually, that’d be useful: tell poeple to click their usernames, see how old the account is, whether they’re copy pasting the same message on similar videos etc
The trolls aren’t hard to spot – as Richard says, he gets them in regular shipments and they rotate in and out of his blog. They’re actually just an annoyance on most social media because they don’t have an audience receptive to their nonsense, but they do their share of damage when commenting on newspaper and magazine websites. Their strategy is to insert nonsensical factoids into their comments, in the hopes that an uninformed reader will accept their misinformation as fact. They peddle warm and fuzzy stories about IDF soldiers rescuing Palestinian children from destroyed buildings (without mentioning that they themselves destroyed the building first). They tell horror stories about Hamas and suicide bombers. They persuaded the world that Gilad Shalit was “kidnapped” and was not in fact a prisoner of war. And they remind the readers that all Israel is doing, despite the horrible statistics of civilian deaths in Gaza, is defending itself.
i’m no supporter of the JIDF but cannot believe you posted such lies and unverified claims. i thought everyone knew the JIDF had a beef with DB and put his name out there to try to harass him and get others to do the same. not sure where you got that picture of DB, but that’s not him, either. What is your source for that picture, exactly? i remember the exchange from about 6 years ago. i may even have copies of it. DB is not even involved with Jewish or Israel activism and is not in Dallas, either. Last I saw, he’s in LA. You really shouldn’t believe everything you read on Encyclopedia Dramatica or Electronic Intifada. You are doing your readers a disservice with this, as you’re making it appear that the JIDF is a lot less formidable than they actually are. I have seen correspondence between the JIDF and senior Israeli govt officials. The stuff with DB was over many years ago.
another thing, just because a random site claims something is true, it doesn’t mean it is true. that 4chan stuff is a total forgery and you’re republishing it as the truth.
The post from “Avi” is typical Brotsky/JIDF nonsense. Avi is either Brotsky himself or one of his toadies spreading deliberate misinformation.
David Brotsky DOESN’T just attack Jews on the left or right. He does not discriminate. He attacks every single Jew on the planet, whether we are pro Israel or not. It’s time for all of us Jews to come together and stand up to this bully who defames all of us with slander and lies. Whether you like it or not, Jews on the left and right, this is a battle for both of us to join together. It’s not about attacking Israel, it’s about preserving the integrity of the Jewish people as a whole. Who is with me? He hacks into people’s computers, attacks constantly and viciously on social media, harassing all of us at all times of the day. DM’g our twitter followers and harassing them for following us. It has to end. If any of you have been harassed by him, there is a class action lawsuit forming against him. Please email IsraelMarketing@gmail.com to tell your story and add your name as a plaintiff.
This is defamatory and blatant misinformation about me. If you believe all this nonsense to be true (where/what/who are your sources, btw?), why didn’t you at least attempt to contact me to discuss? You never did because you do not care about the truth whatsoever. I have tried to contact you multiple times to discuss this ridiculous piece about me, but you have never responded.