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Israel Calls on World Nations to Regulate Anti-Semitism in Social Media
(Jerusalem Post) Sam Sokol - Akiva Tor, director of the Israel Foreign Ministry's Department for Jewish Communities, speaking to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Monday, asked why platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are "tolerating" violent incitement. "How is it possible that the government of France and the European Union all feel that incitement in Arabic on social media in Europe calling for physical attacks on Jews is permitted and that there is no requirement from industry to do something about it?" Israel is working with European partners to push the technology sector to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism so its constituent companies can "take responsibility for what they host." While Facebook has said it will take down material that violates its terms of service following a complaint, Tor asked why the social-networking giant could not self-regulate and use the technology at its disposal to identify and take down offending content automatically. "If they know how to deliver a specific ad to your Facebook page, they know how to detect speech in Arabic calling to stab someone in the neck." Following the Foreign Ministry's Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism last year, it called for the scrubbing of Holocaust denial websites from the Internet and the omission of "hate websites and content" from web searches. Last October, 20,000 Israelis sued Facebook, alleging the social media platform is disregarding incitement and calls to murder Jews being posted by Palestinians. The plaintiffs argued that Facebook "has the ability to monitor and block postings by extremists and terrorists urging violence, just as it restricts pornography."