The Facebook Intifada

"The pages calling for killing Jews have millions of members. In the past month, we've seen tens of thousands of posts, mainly on Facebook, calling for stabbing Jews and calling on Palestinians to become martyrs."
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Israeli lawyer

An image from the Facebook page, “Palestine Belongs to Palestinians!”

"All the rioters and rock-throwers we are seeing have smartphones, computers, websites and Facebook and Twitter accounts. But incitement comes in different forms. There is the kind that Abu Mazen [P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas] systematically engages in to rile up his population; and there is also the kind that is spread and fostered by peers and activists, who use social media as a tool to organize riots and encourage one another to become ‘martyrs’ for the cause."
"Each one of the killers had said he or she was prepared and even happy to die for the cause of murdering Jews. And they are buying into Abu Mazen’s lies about how the Temple Mount is being abused by Israel."
Palestinian affairs expert Khaled Abu Toameh

An image posted on Facebook under the "Knife Intifada" hashtag called on West Bank residents to continue killing Jews: "O son of the [West] Bank, rise up! Do not leave [the Jews] alone.". (photo credit:MEMRI)

"Palestinian users of the social networks Facebook and Twitter posted pictures from the scene of the settlement Itamar operation (i.e., terror attack murder of Naama and Eitam Henkin in front of their four children) south of Nablus, the most significant being the picture of the killed woman settler and her husband, alongside expressions of joy over the operation which they described as ‘heroic.’ [Palestinian] citizens expressed their joy over this event."
official P.A. daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida

Israeli Jews are being confronted by Israeli Palestinian citizens, by Palestinians from the West Bank, by young Arab men and women, some halfway through their teen years, along with older men and women, wielding knives, driving vehicles as homicide weapons into surprised citizens, police and soldiers. Sometimes the attackers are killed in the process of venting their violent rage, and they are then recognized by the Palestinian Authority as martyrs for responding to the call to "resist".

Fars News Agency    The Jewish serpent is being led by Satan.

The Palestinian Authority was recently thrilled and excited that Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has demanded an investigation into Israeli “extrajudicial killings” of Palestinians during the current wave of violence. This is the kind of balanced perception of the situation that Israel should by now be accustomed to out of Sweden and Norway who view Israel as the transgressor and the Palestinians as the victims, even those who dedicate themselves to slaughtering Jews.

The motivation for Palestinians to 'defend' themselves, their religion and their traditions from the evil plans of the Israelis has been engrained in them from childhood onward. Viewing Jews as enemies has been deliberately institutionalized by the Palestinian Authority; it remains the raison d'etre for the PLO and the Fatah movement, just as it is for Hamas. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have incited Palestinians to the belief that the Temple Mount which they call the Noble Sanctuary is in imminent peril.

United Arab Emirates paper, Al-Bayan: The caption reads “A joint vision of the production”

Convinced that a conspiracy exists where Jews are plotting to destroy the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque and to put in its place a reconstructed Temple of Solomon, where it originally sat, both the first and the second; even while the PA denies that there ever existed a monumental ancient temple in Jerusalem, and that Jews never had a historical foothold in the lands they feel are theirs alone, and should be returned whole to the Palestinians, relative late-comers to the geography who claim nonetheless that they are the rightful inheritors and that even Christ was a Palestinian.

Palestinians who have devoted themselves to martyrdom requiring that they kill Jewish Israelis, find kitchen knives suitable for the task at hand. "They don't have the concept of danger or the sense of caution that an adult has", states Najah al-Khatib, a Palestinian psychologist, of the recruitment of young people to acts of violence through social media. The social media phenomenon as the vector for new recruits to mount new atrocities was described by an Israeli security expert as an "octopus with tentacles but no head".

The official PA daily published this cartoon on Aug. 23 that depicts Israel as a demonized religious Jew holding a knife dripping with blood. Obama to Jew holding a knife dripping with blood: “Don’t be afraid. There are no pictures or articles about you.”

Facebook, for example is being used to promote this fundamentalist pathology of haphazard death-dealing. When a successful killing has taken place, enthusiastic supporters post recommendations that other young Palestinians view what has occurred as a reminder that they too have a similar obligation to "resist". Ironically in October an elderly American Israeli, Richard Lakin, was stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorists.

This man, formerly a school principal in the U.S., moved to Israel to teach English to mixed classes of Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. His Facebook page featured a photograph of Israeli and Arab children hugging one another, captioning it: "co-exist", for he believed in the process of a two-state solution and Palestinian rights. His family is one of the 20,000 plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that has been organized by Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.

Facebook, she says, does not permit pornography on its pages. It has developed algorithms which could be adapted to identify incitement to kill Jews, just as it zeros in on and deletes pornography. But another concerned individual, Jay Michaelson, has another potential solution; to enlist the aid of anti-terrorist, Arabic-literate users to track Facebook and denounce any hate propaganda they discover; crowdsourcing an anti-terrorism campaign.

Whatever, in point of fact, works. In point of fact, nothing has ever worked to stop racism, hatred, bigotry and the fulmination of violence against others. Anti-Semitism thrives in today's world, just as it did historically. The Muslim and Arab haters who have migrated to the West have brought with them their viral hatreds and sow their brand of propaganda wherever they settle, in Europe or North America. Electronic social media simply makes it easier.

The Qatari paper Ar-Raya    Note the stars of David on the filmmaker’s shirtsleeves. The caption reads: “The Killing of the US Ambassador in Libya.”