Relatives of Palestinian terror victims sue Facebook for $1B

Lawsuit says Facebook "knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas" • "Facebook must be held accountable for its role in promoting the terrorist activities of Hamas," Shurat Hadin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner says.

Reuters, Yair Altman and Israel Hayom Staff

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  |  Photo credit: AP

A group of Israelis and Americans filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking $1 billion in damages from Facebook Inc. for allegedly facilitating deadly Palestinian terrorist attacks in which their loved ones were killed.

The plaintiffs, relatives of four Israeli-U.S. dual nationals and one visiting U.S. citizen who died in attacks in Israel between 2014 and 2016, accused Facebook of helping Hamas terrorists operate.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, argued that Facebook "knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas ... [facilitating] this terrorist group's ability to communicate, recruit members, plan and carry out attacks and strike fear in its enemies."

The social media giant did not respond directly to the lawsuit but said it stood by its regulations for preventing abusive content and a company representative in Israel said the company wanted "people to feel safe" when using Facebook.

"There is no place for content encouraging violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech on Facebook. We have a set of Community Standards ... and we urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate and take swift action."

The private lawsuit follows censure from Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan over what he deemed Facebook's reluctance to help track potential Palestinian terrorists and curb incitement to violence. In response, Facebook defended its regulations against online abuse.

Hamas formally claimed responsibility for one of the attacks cited in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs' Israeli lawyer, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, said they had expert assessments linking Hamas to the other attacks.

Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States. The lawsuit was brought under the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act that prohibits American businesses from providing any material support, including services, to designated terrorist groups and their leaders.

Darshan-Leitner, the director of Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center, filed a class action suit in October for an injunction against Facebook to stop carrying alleged Palestinian incitement. She said proceedings were still under way in that case.

Darshan-Leitner said, "Facebook must be held accountable for its role in promoting the terrorist activities of Hamas. ... [Hamas leader] Ismail Haniyeh is not allowed to open a U.S. bank account, shop on Amazon or use a U.S. mobile device. But somehow Facebook thinks it can provide social media services to Haniyeh and his terrorist friends.

"For too long, social media companies have been allowed to believe anti-terrorism laws don't apply to them, that they have unlimited immunity and can do whatever they want. We intend to put an end to this. Social media networks have become a vital component of international terrorism, like guns, bombs and money."

Anti-Semitic Facebook Page Still Up

An anti-Semitic Facebook page called Jewish Ritual Murder is still up and growing one year after Facebook drew intense criticism for claiming the page did not violate its community standards.

The page was originally flagged by CAMERA”s media analyst Dexter Van Zile, in February 2014. It depicts an assortment of conspiracy theories about Jews, including accusations that Jews use the blood of Christians for their religious rituals.

At the time, Van Zile lambasted Facebook for refusing to remove the page. However, he also expressed a small measure of optimism that the social media giant would come to its senses in a matter of time.

“Will the page eventually be removed? Probably. But why doesn’t Facebook delete this stuff when first apprised of its presence on their website?” Van Zile wrote last February. “Why should it take any more than one complaint for Facebook to do the right thing?”

As pressure increased, the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement calling on Facebook to remove the page. In August, Facebook informed those who complained thatthe page had been removed.

Within 24 hours, however, the page was up again, and Facebook announced that “We revised our decision,” and “found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.”

When the page was first restored, it had 662 members. The number is up to 799 today, with posts as recent as September 2014. Posts from the past year include links to download anti-Semitic literature.

Facebook, however, remains firm in its stance that the page falls with its community standards. As recently as this week, an HonestReporting reader filed a report against the group and received the following response:

According to HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker, the ongoing presence of anti-Semitism on Facebook demonstrates the need to keep pushing the site to take definitive action.

“Facebook needs to understand that they can’t allow anti-Semitism and still claim to pursue a “safe and welcoming environment,’” Plosker said. “Facebook cannot simply sweep the issue under the rug, even as the page grows and infects more people.”

Jerusalem - Intifada In The Age Of Social Media: Facebook Page Offers Guide On Confronting Israel

Facebook Neglects ‘Community Standards’ for Anti-Semitic Page Facebook “does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech.” If so, Holocaust denial and praise for Hitler apparently can now be called harmless humor

Picture from Facebook page of 'Untold History' violates the social media network's standards but has not been removed Facebook is the world’s largest social media website, one with hundreds of millions of users in well over a hundred countries. Despite its size, however, Facebook is not an entirely public forum on which “anything goes.” Rather, it is a worldwide gathering place where certain forms of speech and certain kinds of images are not allowed. On its community standards page, the site lists a variety of types of speech that are not allowed, including threats of violence, pornography, and spam. Among those prohibited is “hate speech,” about which the policy is as follows: “Hate Speech: Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.” [Emphasis added.] This has nothing to do with censorship (which is a government activity, and cannot be engaged in by a private individual or organization), but with maintaining a civil space for the exchange of ideas. Granted, that isn’t always the case, but that’s why Facebook makes provision for hate speech to be reported. One can disagree with the policy, but it is clear what sorts of speech are being curtailed. I was recently pointed in the direction of a Facebook page entitled The Untold History, run by a group out of Sweden that calls itself the European Knights Project, a partner of the Institute for Historical Review. On its masthead, it proclaims in all-caps that it is a “HISTORICAL SITE NON-POLITICAL,” but this is a sham. It is, in fact, a Holocaust denial site that not only presents bogus and falsified history, but also traffics in the vilest sort of anti-Semitism. Presented primarily in the form of graphics with messages, Photoshopped pictures, and cartoons, the page offers all of the anti-Semitic greatest hits: Jews control America and want to control the world; the Holocaust never happened; Jews exploit the Holocaust myth for money; the Allies did far worse to the Germans, Japanese, and Japanese-Americans than the Nazis did to the Jews; Hitler was a great guy who was just standing up for Christian civilization; Communism is a Jewish tool; Israel is the source of all evil in the world; 9/11 was a Mossad job; etc. In one graphic, a “quote” fabricated by the American evangelist Texe Marrs is put in the mouth of Menachem Begin: “Our race is the ‘Master Race.’ We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects…. other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves.” Once I had examined “The Untold History” for myself, I reported it to Facebook, and expected it to be quickly removed. Instead, I received this response from administrators: “Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the page you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our community standard on hate speech.” Flabbergasted by this response, I began contacting my Facebook friends, and urging them to report “The Untold History” for violating site standards. Dozens have done so, and all have received the same response. For some reason that is impossible to fathom, the administrators of Facebook seem completely incapable of recognizing anti-Semitism when it is staring them in the face, or see how it constitutes a violation of terms of use that ban hate speech. In an effort to put pressure on Facebook to act, I have set up a page called Protest “The Untold History” and Other Anti-Semitic Pages. Oddly enough, this page seems to have a problem with disappearing posts. But you can still “like” it to send a message. I have also contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Anti-Defamation League to look into Facebook’s non-disapproval of hate speech directed at Jews. As the word gets out, hopefully the company will do some serious self-examination, and ask itself why it has such a difficult time seeing what is obvious to all but the most bigoted observer. This article was written for JNS by David Fischler, an Evangelical Presbyterian pastor and writer who blogs religious and moral issues.

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/facebook-neglects-community-standards-for-anti-semitic-page/2013/09/01/

Death To Israel Facebook Page

Major report released on anti-semitism in Facebook

The Online Hate Prevention Institute released a major new report into antisemitism on Facebook to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which is today.

There are some stunning examples in the report of truly vile anti-semitic imagery in Facebook. Many have been removed by Facebook but only when they saw an advanced version of this report or saw mention of the offending items in the media, but they had previously responded that it didn't violate their standards. Here is one example that was only deleted after publicity:

The report argues that Facebook is using a very narrow definition of anti-semitism, allowing many hateful cartoons and memes to be published there.

Facebook fails anti-Semitism test

The Online Hate Prevention Institute reports that Facebook is systematically rejecting claims of anti-Semitism on the social networking site no matter how strong the proof.

OHPI recently reported a number of antisemitic images to Facebook using the regular reporting facility available to all users. Every one of our reports was swiftly reviewed and swiftly rejected.

Facebook is making a serious effort to respond faster to complaints, but this is meaningless if the response is to invariably reject the complaints. There is also no appeal and we have no details of any internal review process – if there is one, Facebook is welcome to share details to reassure us.

The example above is an old one I had among my photographs. Below are three that OHPI recently sent to Facebook for review.


Read the whole thing.

Fatah opens Facebook page, praises terrorists

Fatah just started their official Facebook page.

In one posting they slam Avigdor Lieberman for saying that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas supports terrorism.

A couple of hours earlier, they posted about Mahmoud Siam, who they say killed four Israelis in Gaza in 2002, using this photo:

There are plenty of other photos glorifying terror:

But don't call them supporters of terror. That's incitement. 

Facebook Removes Hezbollah Pages

Facebook has BANNED Hezbollah and its Al-Manar television station from using Facebook as a platform for spreading terrorism and hate.

Hezbollah has a Sophisticated Internet Presence

.

Steven Stalinsky is the Executive Director The Middle East Media Research Institute. He notes “The Lebanese-based Shi’ite terrorist organization Hizbullah was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on October 11, 2005 by the U.S. State Department. It was previously designated an FTO in 1999, but the designation was rescinded in 2001, after it denounced the 9/11 attacks.”

Stalinsky describes Hizbullah’s presence across the web as Sophisticated, He describes its websites as “The Gateway To Its Pages On U.S. Social Media Platforms – Which Allows It To Spread Its Online Jihad.”

Click Like to say ‘THANK YOU’ to Facebook for removing Hezbollah’s pages.

Fatah's brand new Facebook page glorifies terrorists

The 'moderates' from the Fatah terror organization opened a Facebook page on February 1. I'm sure you'll all be shocked - just shocked - to hear that the Fatah Facebook page glorifies terrorists.

Fatah has chosen to use its official Facebook page to glorify terrorists.

Fatah's page currently displays a poster with the pictures of 8 terrorists who carried out a terror attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in 1975, that was posted by the Fatah administrator.

8 Israeli civilians and 3 soldiers were killed in the attack.

Text on poster:

"The Tel Aviv operation, March 6, 1975
The Palestinian passage to the homeland"

The text under each terrorist's picture reads:

"The heroic Shahid (Martyr)"
followed by the terrorist's name.

[http://on.fb.me/x9WUbu

Accessed Feb. 6, 2012]

The opening of Fatah's official Facebook page was reported in the official PA daily:

"Fatah launches its official Facebook page...
http://www.facebook.com/fateh.1.1.1965 "

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 1, 2012

Tell it to Dennis Ross and the other 'peace processors' who think it's possible to make peace with people who glorify the murderers of our civilians.

Facebook and the Third Intifada When a Gesture for Peace is an Invitation for War by: Rabbi YY Jacobson

Swept up by the momentum of the recent Facebook-powered revolutions in the Arab world, a newly formed, super-viral Palestinian group on Facebook openly advocates another Intifada (terror war) against the citizens of Israel.

The "Third Palestinian Intifada," calls for a million supporters to join forces in a violent uprising against Israel on May 15, 2011, or Nakba Day, the date on which Arabs mourn the establishment of Israel. Previous intifadas (1987 and 2000) resulted in the murders of thousands of innocent victims through suicide bombings, rocket attacks, roadside shootings and numerous acts of terror.

The facebook page, entitled Third Palestinian Intifada, has more than 350,000 fans. Facebook has refused to remove the page. Will a Jewish young man, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, actually assist the bloodshed of his own people?

Supporters of Israel are deeply worried. On Friday night, March 12, a young Israeli family in Itamar was butchered to death. Last Wednesday, a bombing in Jerusalem killed a woman and wounded dozens. Rocket attacks from Gaza are increasing by the day. Are these barbaric acts heralding the launch of a third Intifada?

Over the last two years Israel has acquiesced to the incessant demands of the Palestinian Authority and the Obama administration that it freeze construction of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in order to promote peace. It also removed scores of roadblocks allowing Palestinians free entry into Israel cities and towns. The economy in the West Bank has been prospering. Why, then, the sudden fury against Israel?

The answer is painful. Without even a single exception, every time Israel ceded territory or made security compromises to its neighbors, that territory became an infrastructure of terror, from which Arabs were sent to murder innocent Israeli civilians.

In the summer of 2005, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza, which it obtained in the 1967 war. Not even on an inch of land remained under Israeli occupation. The then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believed that with not a single Jew left in Gaza and with the Israeli occupation over, the Arabs living there would now be driven to create a functioning state, and security would increase for both sides.

 

Alas, the exact opposite occurred. Hamas swept into Gaza and turned it into a terrorist infrastructure, with a clear objective: to destroy Israel. The result was increased rocket attacks from unoccupied Gaza targeting Israeli civilians on a daily basis.

 

One decade earlier, the Oslo peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority persuaded Israel to cede territories in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank of Jordan), obtained from Jordan in the 1967 war, to the Palestinian Authority. What was the result? Those very territories have become bastions of terror from where young Arab men and women were sent to blow up and murder as many civilians as possible. Endless rivers of blood and tears began flowing in the buses, streets, café’s, and schools of Israel.

 

At Camp David, in 2000, Yasser Arafat was offered a Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem, along with 100% of Gaza and 98% of the West Bank. Arafat's response was a terror campaign that claimed the lives of thousands of his own people, in addition to thousands of dead and maimed Jews.

 

For years Israel said to its Arab neighbors, "Let us live together." Their consistent reply was: “Rather than live together, we will die together.” In 1947, the UN in its famous partition plan, offered the Arabs a state alongside a Jewish one. Israel accepted the offer; the Arabs rejected it.

After the Six Day War, Israel offered the return of the territories in exchange for peace and the Arab league issued its three famous No’s: No to peace, no to negotiation, and no to recognition. Why did the Arabs not, for their own benefit, accept the path of coexistence?

 

The painful answer is that the Arab objective is not to establish the twenty-second Arab state, but to destroy the only Jewish state. Arab leaders have always craved a Palestinian state that, in their oft-repeated phrase, would "extend from the river to the sea," i.e., from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—all of Israel. It is not about Arab desire for more land that drives the continuous strife; it is the feeling that if Israel exists, their existence is somehow worthless.

 

The Arab war against Israel is no more a territorial conflict than was Al Qaeda's strike against America, and it can no more be resolved by giving away territory than anti-Americanism could be appeased by yielding New Jersey to Osama bin Laden.

 

What has changed from 2005 to 2011 that should convince Israel that this time around it would be any different? Has the education curriculum in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza been altered to start teaching children about the importance of peace and co-existence? Have the Imams during their weekly sermons in the Mosques changed their jargon exclaiming that Israel is not the face of the devil? Have Arab communities stopped naming streets and quarters after suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians?

 

Sadly, nothing of this has occurred. No one in the international community even demands it as a prerequisite for peace negotiations. While Israeli schools teach that peace is our greatest ideal, in every single Arab school without exception Israel is portrayed as the enemy of G-d which must be obliterated. With these realities unaltered, giving away more territories, removing roadblocks, ceasing construction of Jewish homes, would bring more war not peace.

 

Two weeks ago, on March 13, the municipality in Ramallah, under the Palestinian Authority, named a new town square. It was named for the female leader of a 1978 bus hijacking in which 35 Israelis were murdered, including 13 children. Dalal al-Mughrabi, a member of the then-underground Fatah movement, led the hijacking of the bus on Israel's Haifa-Tel Aviv highway.

 

"We stand here in praise of our martyrs and in loyalty to all of the martyrs of the national movement," Fatah member Sabri Seidam said at the unveiling of a plaque showing Mughrabi cradling a rifle against a backdrop map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The square was festooned with Palestinian flags.

 

The naming ceremony was conducted two days after five Israelis were stabbed to death in their home in Itamar, the victims including an infant and a four year old. What does this teach Palestinian youth about murdering Jewish babies?

For decades, the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized. Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in school, in the mosques, on radio and TV, even in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred, and lionize “martyrdom.’’

The toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture has been massively documented. What children are taught in Palestinian classrooms, Hillary Clinton said in 2007, is “to see martyrdom and armed struggle and the murder of innocent people as ideals to strive for…This propaganda is dangerous.’’

Last year Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the Netanyahu position at the time against freezing the construction "very unfortunate" and said he hoped the U.S. "will be able to convince the Israeli government to give peace a chance by halting settlement construction in east Jerusalem and elsewhere."

 

“Give peace a chance?” Israel has stretched out its neck time and time again in order to give peace a chance and it has received in return thousands of orphans.

 

If some day the Arabs are serious about creating a democratic Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem, co-existing peacefully with Israel, why are Jews not allowed to live and build homes there? What type of free democracy would it be if Jews would be banned from there? Arabs are allowed to live in all parts of Israel, but Jews are forbidden to live in parts of Palestine?

 

How can leaders of free democracies advocate the creation of a new Palestinian State which does not allow a single Jew to live in its midst? Why can’t Jews build homes in a free Palestinian State? Unless, of course, this Palestinian State has at its core agenda the extermination of Israel.

 

At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill quipped, “You can always rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives.” Israel, which has far fewer alternatives than the U.S., has long ago exhausted them all. How much more innocent blood needs to be spilled before we abandon the failed maps of the past? How many more children have to be blown up by suicide bombers before we pursue the only real course for peace? How many more throats have to be slashed in order to sober us up?

Facebook Sued For $1 Billion Over ‘3rd Intifada’ Page

Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg are being sued for more than $1 billion over a controversial page on the social networking site that called for violence against Jews.

The suit was filed by American attorney and activist Larry Klayman in the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday. He’s also the founder of the conservative public interest group Judicial Watch.

In the lawsuit, which was obtained by blog TechCrunch, Klayman describes himself as “an American citizen of Jewish origin” who is “active in all matters concerning the security of Israel and its people.”

He alleges that Facebook did not take down a page that called for a “Third Palestinian Intifada” soon enough and willfully kept it up in order to “further their revues and the net worth of the company.”
The page accrued more than 300,000 “likes” for its proposed May 15 uprising.
The page was removed by the company on March 29, several days after a number of people complained including Israeli Public Diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein and the Anti-Defamation League.
A Facebook spokesman told AFP that the claims were “without merit.”
“We will fight it vigorously,” the spokesman said.
Facebook said the page was initially kept up because it “began as a call for peaceful protest,” but then became more violent.
“While Facebook has accomplished a lot of good, it can, as in this instance, be used for nefarious and evil purposes,” Klayman said in statement on his website.
“Defendants Zuckerberg’s and Facebook’s callous and greedy actions in not taking down the page, but willfully allowing it to stay up for many days, has caused huge damage, for which they must be held accountable, so as to prevent this from ever happening again. They must be not only enjoined but also hit in their purse, which is where they understand matters best.”

What is an Intifada?

Third Intifada? Terrorism Facebook?

Hating Israel on Facebook

Facebook's Intifada page

A Facebook page was created calling for a 3rd Intifada on Israel

A Facebook page was created calling for a 3rd Intifada on Israel

They are calling for the Arab world to take over Israel. The number of people clicking on the "Like" button is increasing every hour  

(yesterday they had 125,000 likes, this morning now over 288,000+).  

We MUST have Facebook take action and remove this page.

It is on very good authority, from those within the Israeli intelligence community, that this Facebook initiative is helping set the tone for a third Intifada, just as Facebook launched the Egypt uprising and other revolts throughout the arab world.  Please consider doing your part by following the link below....we must act now...

Please click on the link below  

(or copy and paste)  

and scroll down the left side of the page where you will see  

(under where it shows how many people like it)  

a "Report Page" link.  

Select that option and choose "Contains hate speech" or "incites violence."

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/Palestinian.Intifada

If you don't have a Facebook account, you should still forward this to others.

Thank you !

Facebook: The Online Recruiting Office for Jihad

Report: Jihadi groups are increasingly turning to Facebook in order to hook recruits

While the world remains engrossed in debates triggered by Wikileaks, a new threat from cyberspace is emerging. Social networking sites have now become a potential space for recruiting extremists. An excellent primer by Iftekharul Bashar, a senior terror analyst:

On January 4th, the Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab Province Salman Taseer was killed by one of his body guards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri confessed to the murder because of Taseer’s vocal opposition to the country’s blasphemy law.

Within a few hours of this assassination, a Facebook page for the alleged killer was created. The page gathered nearly 2000 fans in an hour and hundreds of people wrote messages, praising the killer.

Although the page was removed shortly afterwards, this incident represents an emerging scenario where social networking in cyberspace could become a tool of radicalisation at a much faster pace, and with less control than through conventional websites.

It has been quite some time since the world came to know that a large number of extremists are tech-savvy. They know how to use the cyberspace for pursuing their goals. Social networking sites are now a potential space for recruiting urban jihadists.

A Social Network for Jihad?
In recent years, Islamist extremists have been increasingly active in the social networking sites. These social websites create and foster online communities organised around shared affinities and affiliations that connect people based on interests and relationships. In most cases, social networking sites are openly accessible to any participant on the site. The social networks have a paradoxical role and influence in today’s world. They provide a new freedom of expression which we cannot deny. Social networks play a useful role when there is a clampdown by the authorities on traditional means of news dissemination; for example in Iran and Myanmar they have played a vital role for the democratic movements. But there is a high potential of its misuse.

How ideological extremism is spreading through the social networks is indeed an enigma. It can be claimed that cyber radicalisation is a safer, faster and high yielding strategy for the globalised extremists. Although the social networking groups seem to be loosely knit and often seem to lack a concerted ideological pattern, one thing is common: they all use extremist interpretation of Islam in their rhetoric for attracting the Muslim youth.
Involvement in violence, it is often argued, needs to be preceded by a prolonged process of ‘socialisation’ in which perceptions of self-interest diminish and the value of group loyalties and personal ties increases. And social networks like Facebook provide an ample opportunity to socialise in the extremist circles.

The cyberspace today is as important as the real world to counter and pre-empt the threat of terrorism and ideological extremism. Terrorists and their supporters have already been using the Internet to disseminate propaganda, raise funds, procure supplies, plan and prepare operations. Both governments and their partners in the private sector should collaborate to deny terrorist and extremist organisations from harnessing this new medium. The newest face of terrorist and extremist exploitation of the Internet is the use, misuse and abuse of the social networking sites like Facebook. Unless governments and their partners act responsibly, terrorists and extremists will exploit the Facebook to divide rather than unite ethnic and religious communities.

The Power of Facebook
In terms of the number of active users social networking sites have tremendous influence. Facebook alone has 500 million (as of July 2010) active users globally. In Asia, it is fast becoming one of the region’s leading social networks. Currently it has 59.6 million users in the region. With 24 million users in April 2010, Indonesia has become the country with the second largest number of Facebook users. Pakistan, the country which has just recently experienced the Facebook phenomenon, has 1,803,860 Facebook users.

With 43 languages and 60 more in the pipeline Facebook is becoming the biggest social network in the world. There are also other popular social networking sites (like Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace) which have become a tool of cyber radicalisation. Online social networks seem to have been preferred by the new radicals who want to create a new culture of jihad while taking the full advantage of information technology. The target group is the young Asian Muslims and their counterparts in the diaspora community in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Facing the New Challenge
Pakistan’s example is a wakeup call to the world to not underestimate the threat of rapid radicalisation through social networking sites. Monitoring and evaluation of potential threats on these sites is extremely difficult. The reasons include the vast size; linguistically and culturally diverse user base; and lack of verification of user supplied biographical information on the social networking sites. An in-depth research on social networking might be useful for demystifying the sociology of radicalisation within the Asian Muslim communities as well as their diaspora in the West. Such research initiatives will play a valuable role in developing our understanding of the Facebook Jihad so that it can be addressed with foresight and in an enlightened manner.

Iftekharul Bashar is a Senior Analyst at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. Prior to joining RSIS, he was a Research Associate with the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA).

A simple search of Facebook using the Arabic for Jihad (الجهاد), reveals a hornets nest of hardcore Islamists, terror groups and their camp followers.

As the Jihadis seemingly enjoy free reign to use the tools of the West against the rest of us, it isn’t only YouTube that’s facilitating the Intifada against you.

The Islamists are not the only ones that are culpable by any means, however.

The lax oversight, laissez-faire liberalism, corporate avarice and sheer laziness of the tech giants is also contributing in a major way toward making social networking and media sharing sites hubs of terror activity and support.

YouTube and Facebook: the online recruiting office for Jihad.

We hate israel is on Facebook Sign up for Facebook to connect with We hate israel.

Please help keep anti-Israel hate sites off of Facebook.   Please go to this site to REPORT it. It’s on the lower left: “Report a page”– just below the pictures of people OF SOME OF THE 319,000+ who like this.  We need to work together to get this awful site pulled from Facebook:  
http://www.facebook.com/WeHateIsrael