In the wake of the tragedy in Mumbai, I’ve thrust myself once again into the world of Crown Heights and Chabad. While doing so, I’ve been paying extra attention to my daily Google Alerts for “Lubavitch, Brooklyn.” Most of the news stories I’ve received have been very informative and helpful, as I try to cover one of the biggest tragedies in the past few years. But one link was particularly disturbing, and I couldn’t fathom why this would come up as one of the top results in a Google search of these terms.

Please take a look: http://top-secret-at.blogspot.com/2008/11/nariman-house-hostages-or-attackers.html

This blog, entitled “The Axis of Evil” and allegedly crafted by “Semitics against Zionism” uses quotes from Adolf Hitler, the Bible and the CIA to strengthen their agenda of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and even goes so far as to blame the Jews for 9/11. In their post yesterday, the writers twist the news to suggest that the Holtzbergs and other Jewish hostages were actually the perpetrators of the terrorism that went on at the Nariman House in Mumbai. 

Hopefully, any educated person will disregard blogs such as these as ludicrous when they show up in their daily search results. Then again, look at all the Holocaust deniers today and all those who stood by as Hitler began his mass annihilations in 1939. As Jews and as Zionists, we are never safe from our enemies, who, unfortunately, are not few and far between.

A search result like this one is not really Google’s fault – I mean, the search is automated by some computerized algorithm that I could never hope to understand. Yet I think their staff needs to work harder, to quickly categorize posts like these in their Offensive Search Results section, where Google claims to place results that it finds disturbing.

We shouldn’t be censoring free speech and that certainly includes the Internet. But when it comes to terrorism and dangerous hate messages, I think our search engines need to be just a little more careful.