Effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is starting to be felt by third parties, namely Facebook. The social media giant's Israel headquarters was vandalized for its supposed failure to remove anti-Semitic posts and pages within its network, Arutz Sheva reported.
Growing anger and resentment from Israelis over Facebook inaction over inflammatory posts against them prompted Rotem Gaz to deface the Tel Aviv office of Facebook. Graffiti "BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS" and "STOP_FB_TERROR" were spray-painted on the walls.
Gaz said that "we decided to do this because you can't write anything on Facebook's Wall, so we transferred the protest to the company's physical wall, outside the network." He also said that, "Facebook does not remove pages of incitement which call to murder Israelis" and "they don't like to take down these pages because the more bells and whistles there are, the more time people spend on the site which is worth money to them.
Facebook is also getting flak from Israel itself. A class-action suit was filed against Facebook by the Israel Law Center (Shurat Hadin) for their refusal to remove posts that directly promote the destruction of the powerful US ally in the Middle East. Hashtags which read "The Intifada Has Started," "The Third Intifada," "The Jerusalem Intifada," "The Knife Intifada," "Poison the Knife before You Stab," and "Slaughtering the Jews" were being spread in the region to encourage attacks, The Next Web noted.
When reached for comment, Facebook released this statement, "We want people to feel safe when using Facebook. There is no place for content encouraging violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech on Facebook. As a community of nearly 1.5 billion people, we have a set of Community Standards to help people understand what is allowed on Facebook, and we urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate and take swift action."
There were reports, however, that Facebook posts from the Israel side have started to get flagged and removed altogether. The real question seems to about Facebook's intentions for editorializing posts referring to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Is Facebook mediating between the conflict?
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