By Ariel Zorrowski
The Israel Network, a Facebook page similar to was unpublished today after Silberman made the post pictured below.
It is not uncommon for antisemites, of all religions, to band together and mass report a pro-Israel page or profile but that doesn’t mean that Facebook should automatically remove them. Or does it?
Uri Silberman, who runs the page posted this on today:
“Friends, I really need your help!
Facebook decided to un-publish my page, The Israel Network, for “violating the terms of Facebook Pages”. This means that the page is no longer visible, doesn’t show up in searches and can’t be reached by anyone. It has been effectively banned from Facebook. I did not receive any warnings, none of my posts have ever been deleted by Facebook, and I did not get a second chance.
The Israel Network facebook post
So what happened? Yesterday I posted this picture of Israeli soldiers helping out a lost Palestinian boy. After a very short while, I started to get comments from anti Israel people. As the time went by, I was receiving literally hundreds of comments by anti Israel people, who were writing vile and rabid anti Semitic comments, including blood libels about Israel raping and killing Palestinians randomly, that we harvest their organs, that they would continue where Hitler finished etc. I banned dozens upon dozens of them but they kept coming. Eventually, I managed to ban most of them and it quieted down.
Today, without warning, Facebook decided to unpublish the page. It’s most likely that this was a coordinated attack by anti Semites who mass reported the page in order to shut us up. The page certainly did not deserve to be banned, as we’re very careful not to make posts that can be considered extreme. Our efforts have failed.
I have contacted Facebook through the normal channels, but I don’t have much hope that it will help. I desperately need your help in letting Facebook know that their policy of shutting down a pro Israeli page for showing support for Israel is unacceptable. I have plenty of people with influence on my friends list, politicians, reporters, newspaper editors, influential Israel advocates, page owners and regular people who I know can make a difference. If you know someone who you think can help, please reach out to them.
I’ve given over two years of my life for this page, mostly anonymously, completely voluntarily and with lots of love for my country and people. The Israel Network had just reached 37,000 Likes, our posts were getting thousands of likes and shares, was reaching people at warp speed, over half a million people a week. People were noticing. But now it’s all gone, thanks to Facebook’s documented anti Semitic policies of discriminating against pro Israeli advocates, posts and pages.
Please help me in any way you can. Like this post and share with your friends, web pages, Facebook pages, Facebook employees and tag influential people who would be willing to help Israel. Thank you.”
More and more there are reports of pro-Israel images being removed but anti-Israel images are allowed to stay. This is not the first article published here about Facebook treating Jews unfairly. Other reports are found here, and here. The Israeli government proposed a bill this week that would make it against the law to promote terror on Facebook.
