March 14, 2008 | 5:15 am

Facebook moves West Bank settlers into ‘Palestine’

Posted by Adam Wills

First someone at Hasbro caved to pro-Palestinian groups and removed Israel from Jerusalem on the Monopoly voting site. Now Facebook—run by Mark Zuckerberg—is no longer allowing its users who are also residents of Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel, Betar Illit and other settlements over the Green Line to list their country as anything other than “Palestine,” according to The Jerusalem Post.

The move to seemingly impose geopolitical borders on users comes as the network is under fire for increasingly controversial sentiments being circulated throughout its site.

Various groups on the site call for the destruction of Israel, and last week, a group was created celebrating the “martyrdom” of the terrorist who perpetrated the shooting attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. That group is still in existence on Facebook.

Another group, called “Facebook-stop discriminating Yesha!” has been established in protest of the site’s apparent territorial decisions. The group’s description cites the fact that “It’s no longer possible to list any yishuv in Yesha as your hometown,” and calls on Facebook to stop the alleged discrimination.

One group member, Neriel Maarek, posted a comment on the group’s page, citing a response she received from Facebook after writing to them to complain. The response, which could not be verified by The Jerusalem Post, reads, “Thanks for expressing your concerns to us. We understand that Facebook’s geographical classifications are not satisfactory to all of our users. We are currently working on new ways to address this issue, and we hope you will bear with us as we work towards a solution that will be acceptable to everyone involved.”

Efrat resident David Curwin, a member of the “Yesha” group, told the Post that his community suddenly wasn’t listed on Facebook at all. He e-mailed the Web site to complain and received a response similar to Maarek’s: “Facebook’s geographical data is currently drawn from the UN. We understand, however, that the UN’s geographical classifications are not satisfactory to all of our users,” etc.

“I don’t think Facebook was aware of the political ramifications in limiting choices for hometowns,” Curwin told the Post. “I think they wanted to list as many countries as possible for marketing purposes, and consulted the UN. I do believe that the UN has a political bias, but I don’t think the average person thinks of the UN as biased. Here, we are more aware of that.”

1 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati YahooMyWeb