10 | FEBRUARY 3 • 2022 

column

How the Texas Hostage Crisis Showed 
Social Media at its Best and Worst
I

t was the best of Twitter. 
It was the worst of 
Twitter.
During the long agonizing 
hours of the evening of Jan. 
15, during 
which a 
rabbi and three 
congregants 
were held 
against their 
will at a Dallas-
area synagogue, 
social media 
performed perhaps as its 
creators and optimists 
always thought it would. It 
was a community of caring, 
with users posting prayers, 
sharing their distress and 
comforting one another. 
They sent messages of 
hope to the Jews trapped in 
the building and words of 
gratitude to the responders 
gathered outside.
Actual vigils — or 
should I say, actual virtual 
vigils — were quickly 
organized, allowing people 
to tune in and turn to 
one another to pray and 
commiserate. Twitter 
became a tool for creating 
community at a speed that 
could scarcely be imagined 
in an analog world. 
Jewish officialdom — 
defense groups, synagogue 
organizations, Israeli 
diplomats — assured 
the world that they were 
“monitoring” the situation, 
a benign word meaning “we 
are anxious and scared and 
feeling as helpless as the rest 
of you.”
As Shabbat ended and 

more and more Jews who 
had been enjoying a quiet 
Shabbat joined the vigil, the 
conversation grew, and the 
topics expanded. 
 For many, the crisis at 
Congregation Beth Israel in 
Colleyville was playing out 
as a slow-motion repeat 
of the 2018 Pittsburgh 
massacre, when people tuned 
in after another Shabbat 
and learned of the deaths of 
11 Jews at the Tree of Life 
synagogue. Many lamented 
that U.S. synagogues need 
to be constantly on alert for 
attacks like these. New York 
comedian Alex Edelman 
tweeted, “People genuinely 
don’t seem to understand 
that this could happen at any 
synagogue in America.”
The locations of other 
recent deadly attacks on 
Jews were repeated like an 
incantation: Pittsburgh, 
Poway, Monsey, Jersey 
City ...
And, inevitably, this being 
Twitter, the conversations 
began to shift, taken over 

by the angry rhetoric of 
a polarized era. I’m not 
talking here about the 
white supremacists who 
celebrated the crisis, or 
the Muslim activists who 
appeared to support the 
hostage-taking because the 
hostage-taker demanded the 
release of an accused Muslim 
terrorist. I’m talking about 
the Jewish conversation.
Jewish users began to 
demand that Muslim groups 
denounce and distance 
themselves from the crime. 
And when they did — when 
the Muslim-American 
organization CAIR said 
the hostage-taking was “an 
unacceptable act of evil” — 
many held them and their 
spokespeople responsible 
for years of incitement 
against Israel and the Zionist 
synagogues that support it. 
 Others turned their ire on 
the media, claiming without 
evidence that the standoff 
would have gotten more 
attention if the victims were 
Black and the perpetrator 

were white. (CNN, the 
only cable channel running 
nonstop coverage, broke off 
to air a previously scheduled 
documentary on The Movies: 
The 2000s.)
Even as the lives of four 
people hung in the balance, 
Jews and Muslims sniped. 
When some users fretted 
about an Islamophobic 
backlash, they were attacked 
for “centering” Muslims 
during a Jewish tragedy.
The comments got ugly 
and uglier. Some Jews 
attacked the synagogue’s 
rabbi, Charlie Cytron-
Walker, for his liberal 
politics. Or asked why he 
invited a stranger into the 
synagogue in the first place.
(At the same, people 
eagerly shared the news that 
Cytron-Walker was known 
locally for his outreach to 
the Muslim community and 
overall menschiness.)
CNN quickly turned 
back to the hostage crisis 
when a loud bang was heard 
from the direction of the 
synagogue and reported 
some 30 minutes later that 
all the hostages were safe and 
the suspect dead.
With the immediate 
crisis resolved, the online 
conversation shifted 
yet again, this time to a 
comment by the head of 
the FBI Dallas Field Office, 
Matthew Desarno, who 
said that the hostage-taker 
was “singularly focused on 
one issue and it was not 
specifically related to the 
Jewish community.” Jewish 

Andrew 
Silow-Carroll
JTA.org

“Twitter isn’t real life, but it is a close simulacrum of how Jews talk to 
and about one another.” 

JTA ILLUSTRATION BY MOLLIE SUSS

PURELY COMMENTARY

