“Kill A Jew Day”: Wiesenthal Center Identifies Spike In Virulent Anti-Jewish Facebook Pages

Center says social network hub removing anti-Semiticthreats, “as fast as we identifythem”

Simon Wiesenthal Center researchers have uncovered over two dozen FACEBOOK sites with titles like “Kill a JewYear” and “Kill a Jew Day” during the past week alone. “Some have been posted from the United States, others from theUnited Kingdom,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of the Jewish Human Rights NGO’s Digital Terrorism andHate project. He indicated that the Wiesenthal Center had received numerous complaints about these recent threatening postings and others like them on FACEBOOK (examples areincluded below). “FACEBOOK officials have been very cooperative in removing these calls for anti- Jewish violence, but the hate continues to sprout at an alarming rate. We know theyare committed to thwarting online bigotry, but if such a trend continues, we will urge FACEBOOK and other social networking hubs to track and preempt online bigots more aggressively,”Cooper added.

Wiesenthal Center officials said they were particularly disturbed by theseFACEBOOK postings as they were inspired by a national “Kick a Ginger Day” last November 20th, which actually resulted in numerous assaults against redheads.

The Wiesenthal Center’s 2010 annual report on digital terrorism and hate identifies over 12,500 problematic websites, newsgroups and social media postings that promote terrorism, racism,anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and Islamophobia. “With the world’s embrace of Social networking it is not surprising that haters and those promoting terrorism increasingly focustheir efforts online to denigrate their enemies as well as recruit and fundraise for their causes. That is why the Wiesenthal Center has been urging more vigilance by key Internet providersduring a series of briefings and meetings with officials at FACEBOOK, Yahoo, Google and YouTube,” Rabbi Cooper concluded.

For more information contact Rabbi Cooper (currently in Jerusalem ) Israel cell +524-316-448 or US cell1-310-210-9750 1-310-210-9750

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizationswith over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the LatinAmerican Parliament (Parlatino).

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, join the Center onFacebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthalfor news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.

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