Facebook is continuing to host a page promoting false claims of Jewish ritual murder despite repeated pleas by the Community Security Trust to have it removed.
The “truthaboutjews” page is regularly updated for more than 1,100 followers. It includes English translations of discredited Russian accounts of brutal child deaths at the hand of Jews, as well as bizarre claims the Kabbalah movement openly mocks Christian victims of fake infant killings.
CST has confirmed to the JC that it contacted Facebook on several occasions to request that the page be taken down for hosting openly antisemitic material liable to provoke hatred of Jews.
In August 2014 the page was removed for “breach of standards”, only to reappear the following day.
A CST spokesman said: “We had extensive discussions with Facebook in February and March 2014 on their hosting of the disgusting ritual murder page. We have raised it many times since, including last month, but Facebook refuse to shift.
“We have wasted a great deal of valuable time and effort with Facebook on this page and have been contacted about it many times by distressed members of the public. This remains CST’s acid test of Facebook and antisemitism.”
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, summoned Google, Twitter and Facebook bosses to a meeting over online extremism this week, hinting that a new counter-terrorism strategy could incorporate proposals to enforce the speedier removal of hate videos.
Ms Rudd wrote in the Telegraph: “Each attack confirms again the role the internet is playing in serving as a conduit, inciting and inspiring violence, and spreading extremist ideology of all kinds.”
In the wake of the Westminster terror attack, Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary, joined the condemnation of web companies which run advertisements alongside extremist videos. He said: “They need to stop making money out of prurient violent material.”
