Palo Alto, Calif. — Facebook shut down a “Third Palestinian Intifada” page and similar groups, prompted by complaints from Jewish groups that the content had crossed the line from free speech to violent incitement.
The campaign has raised questions about whether Facebook should be used to facilitate some popular uprisings but not others, and even whether Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lost touch with his family’s Jewish roots.
Inspired by the successful use of social media to fuel popular protests in Egypt and elsewhere, the intifada fan page had amassed more than 300,000 “likes” from users for its proposed May 15 uprising before disappearing March 29.
Facebook, which has more than 500 million users worldwide, prohibits content that is “hateful, threatening or pornographic; incites violence or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”
The intifada page was permitted as long as the creators maintained a theme of peaceful protest and deleted violent postings. But as the controversy grew, with Israeli officials and Jewish groups urging Facebook to take down the pages, the content deteriorated.
The first Palestinian intifada began in 1987; the second uprising began in 2000. The proposed third intifada date is May 15, which Palestinians mourn as Nakba Day, or Catastrophe Day, marking the day after the 1948 establishment of Israel, when hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes.
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