ISRAEL: Facebook face-off

As fellow blogger Borzou Daragahi has already noted, Facebook is huge in Lebanon. The social networking site has already become a major force in Lebanese politics and society.

Now Facebook has been drawn into the black hole-like gravitational pull of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian members in the West Bank were recently outraged to discover their hometown in their Facebook biographies had been changed from Palestine to Israel. After a brief outcry, the change was reversed. But now Israeli residents in settlements throughout the West Bank are outraged that THEIR hometown has been changed from Israel to Palestine.

The conflict spills over into Facebook’s groups section as well. The “Palestine is a country!” group has over 1,900 members while “It’s not ‘Palestine’ It’s ‘Israel!” has more than 13,000.

Controversy sprung up again last week when a Facebook group honoring Alaa Abu Dheim, the Palestinian gunman who killed eight religious students in Jerusalem on March  6. That group currently has 79 members, while a pair of groups urging that the Abu Dheim group be deleted have 272.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Image: Palestinians don't have a state, but they do have a Facebook page, with nearly 35,000 members.

Comments

[ammar]

no one here knows the real history ... palestine for arab and britin take it from arab and gives it to isreal as a gift for jews becuase one of the rich jews busniess man helped britin in the second war world so britin gives jews palestine in 1948 and becuase of that arab tryed to get thier land back in 1967 and becuase isreal was helped from the whole world they lose all palestine in 1967 , the whole world was with isreal because they hate islam and arab so they want to fight them not becuase this land was for jews before ... and thanks

[Scopus]

The Jewish Chronicle in the UK carried a related story last Friday...
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s19&SecId=19&AId=58739&ATypeId=1

Facebook groups at war over Israel

Is this a battle of ideas, identity or geography?

[raj]

Read a great piece by Pierre about Facebook erasing Palestine. "Once again, the American social networking website has decided to tell its users that Palestine is not a real country, and that its Palestinian users do not come from there." the article is can be found here http://www.allvoices.com/userevents/180604-palestine-erases

[MazalUK]

Its time we rid ourselves of the arab occupiers of the Land of Israel.