Social media giant bans popular professor after he criticizes a pro-Hitler tweet from a Pakistani movie star expressing support for the Palestinians.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
A well-known Jewish Canadian professor is fed up with Facebook, after the social media juggernaut banned him for criticizing a tweet with a quote attributed to Hitler justifying his genocidal obsession with the Jews, Israel National News reported Thursday.
“This is where we are at with Facebook. It is becoming intolerable. Imagine that a Jewish person cannot criticize a Pakistani actress who has endorsed the actions of Adolf Hitler. It is beyond Orwellian. It is a refutation of sense making, reason, and common decency,” tweeted Professor Gad Saad of Concordia University in Montreal.
On May 11, Veena Malik, a well-known a Pakistani celebrity, tweeted: “‘I would have killed all the Jews of the world … but I kept some to show the world why I killed them,’ Adolph Hitler.”
That post, which was part of a series of pro-Palestinian comments on the Israel-Gaza conflict, has been retweeted over 700 times, quoted over 2,600 times and liked over 2,500 times, the report said.
But after Saad posted on Facebook a photo of his retweet of Malik’s Twitter post with the caption “I see this every day. Every day,” Facebook banned the post and blocked Saad’s account.
“Even though Facebook has banned me on several prior occasions (for sharing posts CRITICIZING hatred and bigotry), and they’ve recognized their error on occasion, they still hold those false strikes against me. In other words, you are never absolved if you are innocent. Unreal,” Saad said.
“I’m a Lebanese Jew who escaped religious persecution in the Middle East. I fight against all bigotry, but I know firsthand about Jew-hatred having lived in the Middle East,” Saad added.
Saad said he got a standard form e-mail from Facebook saying: “You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked.”
What infuriates Saad even more is that it’s not the first time he’s been banned. Last month somebody sent him hate-mail calling him a “dirty Jew.” When Saad posted it on Facebook as an example of the anti-Semitism he is forced to deal with almost daily, Facebook banned him.
“I was the victim of of genocidal hate. I shared that manifestation of genocidal hate,” Saad said in a video on his popular YouTube channel “The Saad Truth.”
But instead of going after the person who called Saad a “dirty Jew,” “Facebook punished me for hate speech,” Saad said.
Adding insult to injury, somebody set up two accounts on Instagram using Saad’s name and picture. Saad said he contacted Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, saying “I do not have an account on your platform and yet there is someone impersonating me. Please delete the profile.”