Most of us aren’t entrenched too deeply in the Jewish community. So there’s a good chance that you might not have heard this story that started to gain steam and traction this past August. Still, as it pertains to racism and White women tears, there’s a chance that you may be interested.
I learned of this story today when someone tweeted this about Jewish writer and prominent voice Ariel Sobel.
She shared this tweet in response to J’accuse, is a Jewish watchdog organization dedicated to combatting antisemitism and anti-Zionism, who was praising Sobel for a recent piece she’d published on the platform.
The author of the tweet wanted the internet to know that despite her elevation in certain spaces, there was reason to believe that Sobel didn’t deserve the platform. So here’s the Rachel Dolezal-esque story, according to Hey Alma.com, and some updates, listed in the Twitter thread.
Back in August, Sobel was accused of making a fake Twitter account, featuring the face of a Black woman named Evonne Schwartz. “Evonne” used the account to spew anti-semetic rhetoric specifically directed at Sobel.
But it wasn’t long before people started to notice some similarities between Sobel and Evonne.
Evonne’s account popped up in August of 2019. Next to her name is the Star of David and a fire emoji symbol. On this account, Evonne shared that she’s pro-Palestine, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, and awaiting Rihanna’s album.
Shortly after she joined the platform, she started using her tweets to go after Sobel.
Several days after this, “Evonne” was on a rampage, tweeting and retweeting negative things about Sobel. Eventually, on August 16, “Evonne” took her criticism to another level by actually wishing harm to Sobel.
She said this in response to Nylah Burton, a Jewish woman of color, who had been critical of Sobel and claimed she is racist.
When Sobel saw “Evonne’s” tweet to Nylah, she responded saying, “She’s [Nylah] completely silent as someone calls for my rape in the replies of her mocking me.”
But that’s not true, Burton responded to “Evonne,” chastising her for suggesting something so heinous, even in response to Sobel’s racism.
Later that same day, the site JewishWorker.org, shared screenshots between Evonne’s account and Sobel’s showing the similarity in language.
It seemed that Sobel forgot which account she was tweeting from.
The next day, the organization, If Not Now.org, which “Evonne” claimed to be a member tweeted that no one by that name “Evonne Schwartz” belonged to their membership.
Eventually, Jewish worker shared that the last digits of the Twitter account associated with Evonne Schwartz and the one assigned to Ariel Sobel were the same.
Jewish Worker shared that after an intensive search, they discovered that there was only one Evonne Schwartz in the entire United States. And she was a White woman living in New Jersey. A reverse Google search determined that the profile picture on Evonne’s account returned zero results. Jewish Worker concluded that it was AI generated.
After all of these discoveries were released, Sobel deleted her Twitter account. Evonne Schwartz’s remains. Through her PR representative, Sobel denied claims of creating the account to send threats to herself but has offered no other information.
Interestingly enough, while some believed that Sobel was responsible for Evonne’s account, others thought she had been set up.
But in the aftermath, Black, Jewish women have spoken out about the particularly disgusting nature of accusing a Black Jewish woman of antisemitism.
Rebecca Pierce said,
Pierce also noted that the use of the name Schwartz, which is of Yiddish origin and means Black. It is often used as a racial slur when directed toward Black people.
Sobel’s name came up today because despite some pretty damning evidence connecting her to this fake account, she hasn’t suffered. She disappeared from Twitter for a couple of months but then reemerged and simply acted as if nothing had happened. There were those who didn’t believe she did it and then others who defended her actions and several organizations of continued to offer her places to share her ideas.