There is something very tasteless about Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg’s statement last week in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, perpetrated by Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik. The husband and wife opened fire at a Christmas party attended by Farook’s colleagues, killing 14 of them while wounding many others. Zuckerberg’s statement contained not one word of condemnation against the terrorist attack. It failed to mention the immense incitement taking place on social media, notably on Facebook, which encourages the kind of attack committed in San Bernardino. No, his statement was about ensuring that Facebook would be a “safe space” for Muslims.
“I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world,” Zuckerberg said. “After the Paris attacks and hate this week, I can only imagine the fear Muslims feel that they will be persecuted for the actions of others. As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn’t against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone. If you’re a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you.”
“Safe spaces” are a big thing for liberal Americans, practiced ad nauseam on American campuses with sinister results. It usually implies being coddled and spared from opinions other than your own, which in American liberal terms usually means opinions that are not on the left side of the middle. It almost always entails the curtailing of free speech.
Interestingly, Zuckerberg has made no similar statements in the wake of the stabbing, ramming and other terrorist attacks on Jews in Israel and across the globe, and he most notably has not made Facebook anywhere near a “safe environment” for Jews. On the contrary, Facebook is brimming with anti-Semitic hate speech, anti-Zionist diatribes and incitement to stab and kill Jews, yet the sanctimonious Zuckerberg, who invoked his own Jewish background in the above statement sees no reason to curb any of this hate mongering toward his own people.
Apart from the nauseating political correctness that oozes out of Zuckerberg’s statement, there is something else at play as well. Anyone who has spent more than a couple of hours on Facebook will have noticed that it resembles the most infantile teenage dream come true: The possibility for endless popularity. On Facebook, everyone is a perennial American high school or college student, angling for the most likes with endless selfies. So, if you were Facebook personified, i.e., Zuckerberg, wanting to be the most popular man on the entire planet, who would you go with -- 1 billion Muslims or a meager 12 million Jews who are extremely unpopular anyway?
On October 26, 2015, the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center filed an unprecedented lawsuit against Facebook on behalf of some 20,000 Israelis to stop allowing Palestinian terrorists to use the social network to incite violent attacks against them and Jews. The complaint seeks an injunction against Facebook requiring it to monitor incitement and to respond immediately to complaints about inciting content.
Shurat Hadin writes: “Facebook is much more than a neutral Internet platform or a mere ‘publisher’ of speech because its algorithms connect the terrorists to the inciters. Facebook actively assists the inciters to find people who are interested in acting on their hateful messages by offering friend, group and event suggestions and targeting advertising based on people’s online ‘likes’ and internet browsing history. Additionally, Facebook often refuses to take down the inciting pages, claiming that they do not violate its ‘community standards.’ Calling on people to commit crimes is not constitutionally protected speech and endangers the lives of Jews and Israelis.”
In a similar vein of hypocrisy, many were outraged by Donald Trump’s comments about keeping Muslims out of America last week. A press release from the Republican presidential candidate declared that he is “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
The press release went on to note that “according to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing ’25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad’ and 51% of those polled ‘agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.’ Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against nonbelievers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.”
Trump himself said: “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for president, we are going to Make America Great Again.”
It should be pointed out -- as many indeed did last week -- that the detractors of Trump’s statement above show no sensitivity to the fact that Jews are permanently and officially prohibited from entering 16 Muslim countries across the world. In fact, ironically, only last week a Jewish family was prohibited from entering Jordan on a tourist visit unless they removed all signs of being Jewish. Where was the outrage and the reaching for smelling salts among the politically correct, safe-space-ensconced liberals of the world? The news never even made the headlines outside of Israel and the Jewish world.
Similarly, none of the liberal bleeding hearts consider it the least bit problematic that the Palestinian Authority has declared that a future “Palestine” should be Judenrein. Today, if a Jew has the ill fortune of entering a place such as Ramallah, he is likely to be lynched, as was the case with the two Israeli reservists who were mercilessly killed in 2000 as a local crowd cheered the murderers on. None of those who condemn Trump are concerned with the fact that Gaza is Judenrein under the fascist regime of Hamas. In fact, the international community supports this policy actively by telling Israel that it must not build Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.
Jews are solidly excluded from “safe spaces” on social media, college campuses and in international discourse. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg got 1.5 million likes for his post and 230,000 shares.