Twitter a forum for hate tweets?

Following a basketball game in Spain last weekend, in which Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv team beat Spain’s Real Madrid, Twitter became awash in antiSemitic tweets, reports CNET.

The racist and violent content of the tweets prompted several Jewish groups in Spain to file a complaint on Tuesday asking the country’s prosecutors to investigate the tweets and their authors, according to the Associated Press.

In all, the Jewish groups say about 18,000 anti- Semitic tweets were posted to the site. Many of the tweets used degrading hashtags and included statements that referred to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, according to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

While many of the tweets were anonymous, the Jewish groups say they have identified five people who allegedly posted racist tweets. In the complaint, the groups asked that these five people specifically be investigated, according to the Associated Press.

“I am a firm defender of freedom of expression, but there must be a limit,” Jai Anguita, president of one of the Jewish groups Bet Shalom, told El Pais. “We could say that these comments come from the high spirits after a [ sporting] defeat, that they are almost jokes... But history has shown us where these jokes can lead.”

“There are comments that are genuinely too much,” Anguita added.