Your email is not valid
Recipient's email is not valid
Submit Close

Your email has been sent.

Click here to send another

thescroll_header thescroll_tagline thescroll_tagline_RSS
The Scroll

Facebook Pulls Down ‘Third Intifada’ Page

Group calling for May uprising had recieved more than 300,000 ‘likes’

By Marc Tracy|March 29, 2011 1:00 PM|23comments
Print Email
The page.(Ynet)

Facebook appears to have pulled down a site calling for a “Third Palestinian Intifada” after the Israeli government, Anti-Defamation League, and others protested. I saw the page last night (and moronically neglected to take a screengrab), and, while it was written mostly in Arabic, it contained the date May 15, 2011, the rough date of Israeli independence which Palestinians call Nakba Day. By the time I clicked on the page, late last evening, well over 300,000 people had “liked” it. According to Ynet, the group behind the page was calling for simultaneous protests in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and attacks on Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, on May 15.

I also recall reading on the page the threat that, should Facebook take the page down, all Arabs would boycott Facebook. We’ll see!

Facebook Page Supporting Palestinian Intifada Pulled Down [CNN]
Related: Israel Tells Facebook: Remove Intifada Page [Ynet]
More In:
  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Please tell us that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are not now under the thumb of the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

    It can’t be so, right?

    Does Facebook intend to censor all pages that encourage revolutions in Arab nations?

    The worst mistake that Mark Zuckerberg could make is to create the impression that Facebook is under the editorial control of any government or political interest.

  • Adam

    Yes, how very right wing to not want to have the site associated with calls for violence…

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Pamela Geller is gloating over Mark Zuckerberg’s knuckling under to the Israeli government here:

    “Facebook Shuts Down Third Intifada Group”
    http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/03/facebook-shuts-down-third-intifada-group-.html

    Are the Pamela Gellers of the world now going to be granted the power to impose political censorship on Facebook?

    (Let me be clear: I am not myself calling for a new intifada or expressing support for this group. This is all about heavy-handed political censorship by narrow special interests and the destruction of the free-wheeling and open-minded Internet as we have known it.)

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Adam — the world has been celebrating the role of social media like Facebook and Twitter in inspiring and enabling the current wave of revolutions in the Arab world. I take it that you aren’t one of the celebrants?

    Should Facebook and Twitter have censored all the communications which encouraged and facilitated those revolutions? Or do you want to selectively censor the Internet to suit your narrow special agenda?

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Ok — I may revise my opinion on this issue. From Fox News:

    “The page, which had attracted more than 340,000 fans, called for Palestinians to take to the streets after Friday prayers on May 15 against Israel’s Jewish population. “Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews,” read the call, according to a report in Haaretz.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/29/facebook-removes-page-encouraging-upraising-israel/

    If this account proves to be true, one has to ask if Internet services have a good reason to censor calls to genocide against any group. A good argument can be made that they do.

    It would be helpful to study the full text of the page, and to look into who precisely posted it. The language as reported by Haaretz and Fox News strains credulity. If 340,000 people out there support these sentiments, that is scary.

  • Adam

    Sean,

    Thanks, you got at precisely what I was going to post in response (that the call for an intifada is substantially different than those who are currently using social media to revolt against their own oppressive governments).

    I will also add here that I shudder to think of Pamela Gellar even having an ounce of clout or influence on anyone anywhere in the world.

  • Jennifer Gruenhagen

    A call for the Third Intifada is not a call for Muslim freedom. It is a call to war with Israel. Even in times of peace we have Muslims murdering Israeli families in their sleep and Palestinian leaders slow to condemn the killings. And no sign of global Muslim outrage over the murders.

    If someone put a page up on Facebook calling for the murder of the US president should that come down? How about a page for child molestors? Should all pages remain on Facebook no matter how offensive? Or is it simply that all Muslim pages should remain?

    I certainly would support the removal of a page call for the death of all Palestinians.

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Adam — if that appalling sentence was in the text, Facebook had good reason to take down the page, in my opinion. And I say that as someone who is pretty close to being a free speech absolutist.

    For the time being, I withdraw any questions about Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to run Facebook with an even and fair hand. To date his track record in that department has been solid. He gets what a free-wheeling and diverse Internet culture is all about.

  • Dan Klein

    Holy Adult Conversation, Batman!

  • Dani ben Leb

    The fb page clearly supported violence. If a march on “Palestine” is not a call to war , what is? I followed many discussion threads on the page and they were full of jihadi violence and anti-semitism, and that was the English I could read. What was written in Arabic only others know.
    Had the KKK put up a site calling for a march on Alabama and the”liberation” of the South from all Blacks, the page would have been taken down in days.
    It is sad that it took so much press and many thousands of protest letters for FB to take down this trash.
    During the last intifada over 5000 people died in terrible violence. What was to LIKE about a third take I do not know?

  • JJ

    “The worst mistake that Mark Zuckerberg could make is to create the impression that Facebook is under the editorial control of any government or political interest.”

    Seriously? Does anyone remember that Obama met recently with Zuckerberg and other internet bigwigs in San Francisco? Many conservative pages have been taken down recently.

  • http://republicaninthearts.blogspot.com Incognito

    Well, it’s back.. under a different name..

    http://www.facebook.com/third.palestinian.intifada

  • fred lapides

    Neo Socialist Party in Germany (Nazi) posts to FaceBook to attack and kill all Jews in Europe…300 thousand people liked it. FaceBook says it is ok and that no censorship will be used if that group wants to spread its message, because that is freedom of expression

  • Barbara

    To Incognito: I just visited that site -it has over1600 “likes.” I reported it as a page that incites action against a religious group. Don’t know if that will do anything, but I suggest people report it.

  • educated

    It is still there, and I just reported as well.
    Again: This is not a freedom of speech issue–it is an issue of pure hatred and incitement of violence!

    PLEASE:
    educate yourselves educate one another!

  • sarah

    incitement to racial hatred has some of the same type of obnoxious views that were published in the 1930′s Germany: we all know what ignoring them led to so bravo all those who objected to the site.This is not by any means the same as the sites put up in Egypt Tunisia etc they did not call for murder to one group of people!

  • http://www.kissamezuzah@blogspot.com Susan

    There is a huge difference between calling for a revolution in one’s own country by fighting your own country’s government, vs. the Intifada website that called for the destruction of another country, and the killing of an entire religious group, including civilians. Facebook was right to take it down.

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    A thought: the American Founding Fathers used pamphlets (the Internet of the time) to incite violent revolution against an entire nation and people: the British. And they acted on their incitement. Would they be able to post on Facebook today? (I am still not defending the right of the original intifada group to post a genocide-inciting page on Facebook. That sh*t simply will not fly.)

  • http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/ Charles

    When a Facebook page calls for the destruction of a nation (Israel) and the murder of innocent people (Jews), then censorship is not at issue. The issue is whether Facebook should promote a call to arms by a known terrorist group. How would you feel if it was your call and the page incited the murder of thousands of innocent people? Would you want to live with that for the rest of your life?

  • Yaakov Hillel

    out of 1.5 billion muslims and 3.5 million Muslims in Judea Samaria and Gaza,I do not believe many Israeli Arabs have a hand in this being they are still suffering from the last time they made trouble, losing most of the Jewish market for all the services they sold and harder to get hired by Jews.I think the situation is pretty good. It is reasonable to consider that most the signatories were from outside the land of Israel borders,maybe many from Gaza who are both close and disconnected from Israel. then the situation is not all that bad leaving much less than 100,000 in judea and Samria. It should not be too dificult a job for the Iraeli Army and Police to deal with.

  • http://www.kissamezuzah@blogspot.com Susan

    Sean -

    The American Founding Fathers wanted (and got) independence from England. They did not want to destroy the country of England, nor did they incite violence against English civilians.

  • http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride Sean McBride

    Susan,

    How about the agitation to overthrow the former apartheid white regime in South Africa — in cases like that should Internet services like Facebook and Twitter shut down or keep open the accounts of the agitators and revolutionaries? What are your standards and rationale?

    Many pro-Israel militants like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and David Horowitz are agitating relentlessly to stir up violent hatred against Islam and all Muslims. Should their Facebook and Twitter accounts be shut down? If not, why not?

  • Jed Brandt

    Let me call, right here, for a third intifada.

    Acting in the name of all Jews, Israel is an ethno-state that defines itself (without declared borders) as a state that does not represent the people of the land — only those with the correct grandmother.

    That is not a good plan. Secular democracy from the river to the sea. De-militarization, including an immediate inventory and dismantlement of Israel’s nuclear stockpiles (and the latent holocaust they represent).

    Let the third intifada know no borders. Let the third intifada stand for the dignity of all peoples and “cast off” the occupiers, the racists, any who reject the democratic principles of secularism and democracy.

    The Lieberman path that is Israel’s end game promises horrors. Let a third intifada create new facts on the ground.

Thank You!

Thank you for subscribing to the Tablet Magazine Daily Digest.
Please tell us about you.

Facebook Pulls Down ‘Third Intifada’ Page

Group calling for May uprising had recieved more than 300,000 ‘likes’