Facebook pulls anti-Semitic post

FACEBOOK has removed a racist post that stated the “Jewish dream will burn in hell fire for living eternity”, and that claimed “God damned you Jews to hell”, after being alerted to the comments by The AJN.

According to the poster: Jews have no country, they are nothing but “a bunch of gypsies”, and that “Zionist pigs are going to cop it real soon.”

The comments were made next to a flyer for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) rally against Israel that is targeting chocolate store Max Brenner in Parramatta this Saturday afternoon.

The flyer, which says that the Israeli military commits daily war crimes and breaches human rights by participating in torture and genocide against Palestinians, has remained on the site.

“We take our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities very seriously and react quickly to remove reported content that violates our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

“Specifically, we’re sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech, and actionable threats of violence.

“The goal of these policies is to strike a very delicate balance between giving people the freedom to express themselves and maintaining a safe and trusted environment.”

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff commended Facebook for removing the appalling comments from its site, but said that Facebook needs to be continually vigilant to ensure that comments which incite racial hatred against any group are not given a platform.

“It is unacceptable that this occurs as frequently as it does and we believe Facebook can and should do more in this regard,” Alhadeff said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s research officer Julie Nathan said that anti-Israel groups and their online pages increasingly attract anti-Jewish comments.

“The Palestine Action Group event page recently attracted such comments, including one comment looking forward to a coming genocide against the Jews, while another comment is denying that the Holocaust occurred,” Nathan said.

“The first comment has been removed, the second comment remains up after more than a week.

“All too often such comments remain online until a complaint is made.”

Nathan said those behind anti-Israel pages need to consider two questions: “Firstly, why are they not monitoring and deleting racist content against Jews? Secondly, what is it about the images and rhetoric they are promoting which attracts such hateful and genocidal anti-Jewish racist comments?”

JOSHUA LEVI

A screen shot of the Facebook page.