Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO—Facebook, a highly powerful and electrifying force, the new cyber world-house, was ostensibly meant to bring people together. I write today to share the remorse of many millions who so regret—and condemn—its recent exploitation by radical Muslim elements to simply spread hatred and potential violence against innocent citizens of Israel.
Thankfully, Facebook has heard the protests and concerns of thousands upon thousands of Jews and others who expressed their outrage and disgust with the “Third Intifada” offensive that poisoned the web yet earned massive, thumbs-uo “Likes” for the several days of its miserable duration.
The Facebook web site pressed people to yet another level of anti-Semitic frenzy. It baldly exhorted a massive mob rush onto Israeli soil and into Israeli communities on May 15 with the expressed intent of malicious cruelty and murder is irrefutably vicious and wildly incoherent. Under pressure from individuals and groups such as the ADL, the management of Facebook saw fit to remove the original version of this screed and incitement though other manifestations of the hoped-for “Third Intifada” can still be found on the Internet.
Beyond the basic contemptuousness of this ugly and dangerous corruption of the world network, there were two glaring incongruities attendant to this madness. The first was the irony that Facebook and such social media sites have been critically valuable and expedient in linking countless brave young people of conviction—from Libya to Egypt to Bahrain to Syria—in the current and heady and historic people’s revolution sweeping the Arab world. How tragic that those citizens who care about women’s rights and civic reform and a new democracy in Yemen and Jordan are using the same media device to spread unity while the Palestinian community uses it to enrage, incite, and divide people.
The second is that many Jews in the United States and elsewhere—and a significant number of Israelis—do categorically support the establishment, at long last, of a sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel and the security-guaranteed end of the elongated and debilitating occupation by Israel of territory it was forced to capture in 1967. It is time to bring sanity and normalcy to the region, for the love of God.
But how can we have any kind of lucidity when a social web site is used to spread hatred?
*
Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be reached at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com