26 | SEPTEMBER 16 • 2021
OUR COMMUNITY
A
cross Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram,
antisemitism is no
stranger to American Jews.
Jonah Liss, 18, a recent grad-
uate of International Academy
in Bloomfield
Township, while
scrolling through
Twitter, unfortu-
nately saw messages
such as “I wish
Hitler was still
alive,
” “Kill the
Jews” and other hate directed
at Jews. He then felt it was his
duty to research the instances of
antisemitism on Twitter.
Liss examined the issue
methodically, using an artificial
intelligence (AI) program he
developed — and gathered data
through Twitter’s application
programming interface API.
API allowed Liss to scrape
data using keywords over a
specified time period. He could
then take the data and apply it
to his AI program, which can
analyze aspects of text with
human-like precision.
One of the applications is for
“sentiment analysis,
” which is
primarily used for identifying
the opinions expressed in a piece
of text. Opinions are sorted by
positive, negative or neutral lan-
guage and can be very useful for
recognizing hate speech.
During the May battle
between Israel and Hamas, Liss
spent several days researching
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“
As someone with a diverse
group of friends, I think it’s a
very complicated issue,
” he said.
“Something that I found very
disturbing in my research was
the absurd amount of antisemit-
ic language on Twitter.
”
Liss pulled 100,000 tweets
containing the words Israel,
Israeli government, IDF, Jew,
Jewish people and Judaism to
see the relationship in rhetoric
between the two groups. “What
I found, unfortunately but
expectedly, is that as negative
language increased regarding
Israel, antisemitic language also
increased in general,
” he said.
Liss found in May that neg-
ative and very negative tweets
about Israel outnumbered
positive and very positive ones
by about 23,000 to 21,000, and
negative tweets about Jews out-
numbered the positive by about
26,000 to 17,000.
Liss used tweets in April as
a control group since the battle
between Israel and Gaza unfold-
ed in May. During the conflict,
he documented an increase in
negative tweets and hate about
both the Israeli government and
Jews in general.
Liss is a member of Temple
Israel and belonged to BBYO
Michigan Region. In the fall,
he will attend the University
of Michigan where he plans to
continue his work in the social
entrepreneurship world.
Using technology to help
fix what is wrong in the world
is Liss’ forte and he has been
involved in other technology
projects.
He is off to a fast start in the
tech world. In 2020, he devel-
oped Meduimize, a software
making it easier for people to
shelter at home due to the pan-
demic to receive groceries and
other essential errands.
BRIAN GOLDSMITH SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Tech-savvy teen uses artifi
cial
intelligence to document antisemitic
hate speech on Twitter.
Terrible Tweets
Jonah Liss
Jewish Senior Life held its annu-
al Senior Dream Cruise on the
JSL campus in West Bloomfield
on Thursday, Aug. 19.
With a mixture of the pan-
demic and a rain date pushing
the event back a day, the event
had 35 classic cruisers, fewer
than usual.
But that didn’t stop the fun
by any means, as seniors from
across the JSL campus joined
in awe, replicating the experi-
ence Metro Detroiters see on
Woodward each year.
“We had to pick and choose
what we did this year for safety
precautions, but we always want
to make it a really special expe-
rience for our residents and the
cruisers,
” JSL
’s Leslie Katz said.
“We’ve been doing this for so
many years, and it’s just some-
thing we look forward to.
”
Through COVID and other
obstacles, being able to put on
an event such as this means a
lot to Katz, knowing it’s a team
effort.
“Regardless of what the obsta-
cles are, we’ll make sure we can
provide meaningful experienc-
es,
” Katz said. “That’s what we
do and that’s who we are. We’ll
figure out ways to do it in safe
and special ways.
”
JSL Senior
Dream Cruise
DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER
faces&places
Seniors on the JSL Campus
enjoy their own Dream Cruise.