Did you know?
DeviantArt is owned by Wix, an Israeli company with offices in Tel Aviv.
Wix & The Conflict Since October 7th
Wix fired Courtney Carey, a Wix employee from Dublin who made LinkedIn posts criticizing the Israeli government.
"Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem all conclude Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid due to its racist policies against the Palestinian people. The Israeli state has cut off food, water and electricity to over 2 million people trapped in the Gaza Strip. Indiscriminate bombing from the IDF has killed almost 3000 people one third of whom are children. Civilian infrastructure has been devastated; Israeli forces have targeted homes, offices, hospitals, schools and universities, as well as medics and journalists. The UN has reported that at least 12 medical workers have been killed and 24 medical facilities impacted, the Gaza Strip’s health system is on the brink of collapse. The root cause of this violence is a Zionist ideology which promotes an exclusivist state which denies Palestinian identity it is also an expansionary ideology, promoting illegal settlements on Palestinian land. Do not be fooled by establishment propaganda. You can oppose Zionism as a political ideology while standing firm against anti-Semitism which is also a form of racism.”
- Courtney Carey, in the LinkedIn post which lost her her job.
DeviantArt and the Conflict
- DeviantArt displayed a button on the DeviantArt homepage urging users to #StandWithIsrael.
- DeviantArt staff have issued a statement urging DeviantArt users to "stand with Israel". The statement, which can be accessed on DeviantArt's website, does not acknowledge that the Israeli government's response to the Hamas attacks is a war crime.
Thoughts from DeviantArt users, via Reddit:
I'm sickened by the amount of pro-israel propaganda on the front page. It says "Peace for Israel" but to me it says "Peace for Israel Only". Hamas has done horrible things, but that doesn't give the IDF a free pass to repay damage to innocent Palestinians a thousand-fold.
I left DeviantArt over this, and I was on there for 11 years. I may not have been a hugely well-known artist but it was a large part of my life. When they posted their Peace for Israel post I was infuriated [...] They hardly mentioned anything about Palestinians, they didn't call for a ceasefire, they didn't call for humanitarian aide to be let into Gaza, they didn't mention how Gaza and the Palestinians didn't have food, water, fuel, electricity, and now are limited on medical supplies.