A month after the launch of a Facebook group calling for a third Intifada, Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein sent a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday, demanding that the page calling a Palestinian uprising be shut down immediately.
The Facebook group was launched less than a month ago with the number of members growing dramatically, with nearly 250,000 people expressing support for launching a third Intifada on May 15, marked by Arabs as Nakba Day – a day where Palestinians mark the "catastrophe of Israel's establishment."
The founders of the Facebook group claim that they got the idea for the page from the recent uprisings throughout the Middle East that led to the ousting of the Tunisian and Egyptian leaders and the fall of their regimes.
There is no need to explain what the outrageous incitement on the page in question can cause – from harming innocent Jews and Israelis and through to an armed struggle against Israel, Minister Edelstein wrote in a letter to the founder of the popular social network.
Group's goal: Israel's downfall
In his letter, Edelstein stressed that he wasn't writing in his official capacity but as someone who shares the values of freedom of expression, and said he believed that there must be a discernable difference between freedom of expression and freedom to incite.
The founders of the group hope that a popular uprising like those that broke out in the Arab world would also bring about the downfall of the State of Israel, with the help of groups supporters in the Palestinian Authority and countries bordering on Israel.
Muslim boycott
The group's doctrines include a call for simultaneous protests on the Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian borders while Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza will launch attacks on Israeli settlements. Moreover, they ask for "the help of our brothers in Lebanon" who will assist by raining missiles down on Israel.
Since its launch, the Facebook group has received a great deal of coverage in the Palestinian and Arab media. Its founders, who remain anonymous, warned Facebook that shutting down their page would lead the Muslim world to boycott Facebook.
It seems that the threat did little to impress the site managers as one of the group's founders who calls himself "Son of Palestine" reported calls for violence.
Son of Palestine also accused Facebook's management team of forging the number of supporters the group has, claiming that the number is much higher than 250,000.
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