Facebook might censor criticism of Zionists. That’s dangerous
JVL Introduction
Rabbi Alissa Wise is deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace writes about the latests ploy of the Israeli government.
Under pressure from it Facebook is asking stakeholders if they consider that criticism of Zionism falls within the category of hate speech as set by Facebook’s community standards.
In particular, reports Rabbi Wise, Facebook is weighing up whether “Zionist” should be considered a proxy for “Jew” or “Israeli”.
In this article she outlines the dangers that such a move – in effect making ”Zionism” a protected characteristic – would pose for supporters of Palestinian rights and indeed for Jews.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Thu 11 Feb 2021. Read the original here.
Facebook might censor criticism of Zionists. That’s dangerous
By making ‘Zionists’ a de facto protected category, Facebook would shield the Israeli government from accountability and harm efforts to dismantle antisemitism
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On Antisemitism is a great book, a great collection of short, intelligent and personal essays.
Where is the link to respond to Facebook????????????????????
Facebook have got this so wrong. The majority of Zionists are not Jewish, but Christian, and a great many of them are not Israelis either.
Deeply troubling and part of a pattern which has seen Mark Zuckeberg’s Facebook acting capriciously, by unilaterally shutting down pages on the basis of no evidence or refusing to say what evidence they have, whilst making great virtue of their “community standards” and “Oversight Board”. Zuckerberg himself recently said that he would rather that a lot of political content was not on the platform With respect to their latest attack on freedom of speech, by even considering the conflation of a racist political doctrine with a cultural/religious identity at Israel’s behest, it is not without significance that Emi Palmor former General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice was elected to Facebook’s “Oversight Board” in October last year.
This is unforgiveable, intolerable and just plain WRONG. Economical with the truth and blatant snidey attempt to suppress the human right to examine and to critique oppressive policies imposed by the Government of Israel.
sounds like McCarthyism on steroids