On July 27th 2008 someone hacked hacked into a Facebook group called, "Israel" Is Not A Country!. Delist It From Facebook As A Country!" Responsibility was claimed by the Jewish Internet Defense Force.(JIDF) The JIDF posted the following statement on the group page:

"This group was one of the most vile, antisemitic, pro-terrorist sites on the internet. Moreover, it was the most active hate group of all, heartily promoting hatred, murder, and genocide while proliferating abominable propaganda paralleled only by the fables of Goebbels. While such content clearly violates Facebook's own Terms of Use and Code of Conduct, provisions that users agree to abide when they register on the site, Facebook refused to take action. Despite thousands of user complaints over the course of eighteen months, Facebook allowed this group and its ubiquitous antisemitic lies to flourish. Facebook's own negligence and abdication of responsibility gave us no option but to take matters in our own hands.

We wish to be clear - we have no issues with legitimate political discourse so long as it is contextual, comparative and truthful. However, when it comes to encouraging the murder of Jews and purposefully disseminating misinformation to demonize Jews and to delegitimize Israel, there is a moral obligation to remove the platform of such repugnant hate-mongers. Unfortunately, we do not need to search too far back into history to realize that such evils have a real cost in terms of human lives."

In addition to posting the above statement, the JIDF began deleting the names of all Forty Eight Thousand members of the group. As of last check, there were just over Twenty Thousand names still left on the list. The JIDF would not elaborate on how they have been able to accomplish this on an on-going basis. There apparently has been no response from Facebook to date.

In order to get some insight into the activities and motives of the JIDF with regards to Anti-Semitic and other types of hate speech in the social networking arena, I contacted the group responsible for the hack. A representative of the group agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity. He related that he has received multiple death threats arising out of his activities in the JIDF.

What is the origin of of the JIDF?

The JIDF started as a grassroots effort at the beginning in 2000. Many of us were in NYC during 9/11, so that had a major impact as well. It began as a mass email campaign. It eventually morphed onto Myspace during the war with Hezbollah in 2006 and protesting the disengagement from Gush Katif/Gaza. Shortly thereafter, we evolved with the technology onto Facebook. Originally it started as just to share news and information about Israel and Jewish issues with a bit of commentary here and there. As we used Facebook, we noticed many of the issues began literally to stare us in the face. Anti-semitic and pro-Jihadist groups were springing up everywhere.

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