Facebook on Monday announced its decision to ban Myanmar’s army chief and other top military officials following a UN investigation which recommended their prosecution for genocide for a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
The news was applauded by all peace-loving people across the world. Many believed that it will curtail the excesses of the extremist Buddhist monks and the Myanmar government, especially over spreading anti-Muslim propaganda.
The United Nations needs to speed up its prosecution efforts and refer the culprits responsible for the pogroms committed against the defenceless Muslim minority in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
While the ban was commended, netizens believe that Facebook’s Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg should also ban key officials of the State of Israel over all the atrocities it has committed against Palestinians.
Since March 30, 2018, no fewer than 166 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip have been killed by Israeli forces during mass peaceful protests, known collectively as the Great March of Return.
Thousands have sustained varying degrees of injuries, as they demand for their right to return to the homes and land their families were expelled from by Zionist Israel 70 years ago.
In June, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a non-binding resolution condemning Israel for using “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate” force against Palestinian protesters in Gaza.
Netanyahu, “a war criminal”
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was likened to Myanmar’s defacto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi by pundits, who believed that Netanyahu deserved Aung’s treatment for praising Israeli troops over the killings of peaceful Palestinian protesters.
The blood of innocent Palestinian children, male and female, is on Netanyahu’s hands.
Several human rights activists in Europe have called for the Israeli Prime Minister to be held for war crimes for his roles in the 2014 Gaza offensive, which saw 1462 civilians killed.
When Netanyahu wanted to visit the United Kingdom in 2016, more than 105,000 Britons signed an online petition calling for him to be arrested on arrival for war crimes charges.
Similarly, the former Dutch Prime Minister, Dries Van Agt called him a war criminal who should be tried in the International Criminal Court.
He said, on Netanyahu’s announcement of his intention to visit the Netherlands in 2016: “There’s a war criminal coming to this country…So why should we receive someone who continues with such things? We could have sent him straight away to the International Criminal Court – that would have been better.”
Late last month, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also berated Israeli forces’ use of live ammunition to intimidate Palestinian journalists from doing their jobs.
Following the arrest of four Palestinian journalists working for Al-Quds Television in the West Bank, IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “The Israeli government must stop its campaign of intimidation against Palestinian journalists”.
Will Israel get Myanmar’s treatment?
There are strong indications that Facebook has no plan to ban the State of Israel, Muslim News has authoritatively confirmed.
Unlike the ban meted on the Myanmar government, the Facebook founder, being one of the most influential Jews in the world, will rather throw his unflinching support behind the State of Israel. Mr Zuckerberg will rather look away as Zionist Israel continues its clampdown on Palestinians with the use of lethal weapons and illegal settlement expansion in the besieged enclave.
There have been series of accusations from Palestinian activists and journalists suggesting that the social media giant is silencing them from narrating their sufferings to the world on the instructions of the Israeli government, which has long indicted Mr Zuckerberg for not doing enough to combat anti-Israeli incitement.
In March, Al Jazeera reported that dozens of Palestinian journalists staged a demonstration outside the UN office in Gaza City to protest Facebook’s practice of blocking Palestinian Facebook accounts.
They accused Facebook of complicity with Israel as they launched the #FBFightsPalestine hashtag during a peaceful demonstration outside the UN office in Gaza City.
“Facebook blocked roughly 200 Palestinian accounts last year – and 100 more since the start of 2018 – on phony pretexts”, said Salama Maarouf, spokesman for the Journalists Support Committee, a Palestinian NGO, while insisting that the popular social media platform is “a major violator of freedom of opinion and expression”.
He asserted that some 20 per cent of Israeli Facebook accounts “openly incite violence against Palestinians” without facing any threat of closure.
Hate speech, derogatory statements, and calls for violence against Palestinians are posted on Israeli social media every 71 seconds, according to a report published early this year by 7amleh (pronounced Hamleh), the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media.
Nadim Nashif, 7amleh’s executive director, said that the group’s research “exposes Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating the double standards of the Israeli government of silencing and shutting down Palestinian content whilst allowing for the spread of Israeli incitement.”
“Furthermore,” Nashif concluded, “the Israeli government fails to hold any Israeli accountable for online violence, while at the same time, it jails hundreds of Palestinians based on this unfounded claim of incitement.”
– By Rasheed Abubakar, with Agency Report
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