In a newly released video called The Big Facebook Experiment, Israeli civil rights organization Shurat HaDin aims to expose the social media giant for, they allege, harbouring an anti-Israel bias.
The video shows the Israeli NGO launching two simultaneous Facebook pages on Dec. 29, one called “Stop Palestinians” and one called “Stop Israel.” The pages, besides their content, are otherwise identical in terms of inciting hatred online, with an equal amount of content posted.
On the anti-Israel page, an initial post reads, “The Zionist bite Palestine part after part [sic] and the world is silent. We’ll stop them any way we can.” On the anti-Palestinian page, a similarly inciteful post reads, “Greater land Israel should return soon from the hands of the Muslim enemy back to Jewish sovereignty! [sic] We’ll do it in any way we can.”
READ: What’s Facebook’s status on incitement against Israelis?
With each post, Shurat HaDin intensifies the level of hate speech and rhetoric, calling to “demolish the Zionist invader” on the anti-Israel page, and calling for revenge against the “Zionist enemy” on the anti-Palestinian page.
Finally, the NGO increases the incitement level by calling for “death to Israel” on the anti-Israel page, and “death to Palestine” on the other, accompanied by propaganda photos. Next, it simultaneously reports both pages for inciting violence.
However, only one was removed from Facebook.
According to Shurat HaDin, the page inciting against Palestinians was closed by Facebook for “containing credible threat of violence” which “violated” Facebook’s community standards. The page inciting violence against Israel, however, was not shut down. Shurat HaDin claims that Facebook sent it back a message saying the page was “not in violation of Facebook’s rules.”
The NGO’s “Stop Israel” page is reportedly still active on Facebook.
In October, Shurat HaDin made headlines when they filed a lawsuit against Facebook on behalf of 20,000 Israelis, demanding that they stop allowing incitement against Jews and Israelis.
“Facebook actively assists the inciters to find people who are interested in acting on their hateful messages by offering friend, group and event suggestions and targeting advertising based on people’s online ‘likes’ and internet browsing history,” the NGO said. “Calling on people to commit crimes is not constitutionally protected speech and endangers the lives of Jews and Israelis.”
