Facebook bans Benjamin Netanyahu’s son over anti-Muslim ‘hate speech’ – By Emily Jacobs (nypost.com) / Dec 18 2018
Yair Netanyahu, the eldest son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was suspended from Facebook on Sunday for 24 hours after writing a series of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian posts.
The first post deleted by the social media giant came earlier this month, reading in Hebrew: “There will not be peace here until: 1. All the Jews leave the land of Israel. 2. All the Muslims leave the land of Israel. I prefer the second option.”
In another post, Yair Netanyahu wrote, “Do you know where there are no attacks, in Iceland and Japan. That’s because there are no Muslims (sic) populations.”
After two Israeli soldiers were killed by a Palestinian gunman as a result of escalating violence in the West Bank, the 27-year-old reportedly wrote in a now-removed post that he hoped their deaths would be “avenged,” adding, “There will never be peace with the monsters in human form known since 1964 as ‘Palestinians.’”
After discovering his post had been taken down, Yair Netanyahu wrote in a second, since-removed post that Facebook was “trying to shut our mouths in the only place where we have the right to express our opinions.”
Yair Netanyahu took to Twitter Sunday to slam the social media giant, tweeting: “The thought police of the radical progressives at Facebook have reached me as well!” along with a screenshot of a deleted post.
In a statement to The Post, a rep for Facebook said it never removes posts for criticizing its platform, but Netanyahu’s posts violated it community standards regardless.
“Facebook does not allow hate speech on the platform and will continue to enforce its policy. In addition, we want to emphasize that we never remove posts for criticizing the company and the claim that we are censoring criticism of the company on the platform is plainly untrue.”
“Yair Netanyahu posted several posts which included hate speech — this clearly violates our community standards,” the company said. “Due to that, this content was removed from our platform as we would do for anyone posting similar content about any protected characteristic.
“Following this, Yair Netanyahu decided to share a screenshot of a removed post and called people to share it — which is the same as writing the hate speech all over again,” it added.
This is not his first brush with social media controversy.
Back in May, he wrote “F–k Turkey” in a post on his Instagram account, responding to a diplomatic spat between Israel and the nation. Netanyahu replaced the letter “c” in the vulgarity with the crescent and star from Turkey’s flag, according to the Times of Israel.
Last year, he posted a meme that mocked some of his father’s most notable critics. The meme, which featured liberal Jewish financier George Soros, was decried by many Jewish groups — including the Anti-Defamation League — as anti-Semitic.
https://nypost.com/2018/12/18/facebook-bans-benjamin-netanyahus-son-over-anti-muslim-hate-speech/
