Photos By : Haim Zach / GPO
Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu has had a Facebook post deleted by the social media giant. The post, which asked for information on people in Israel over the age of 60 who have not yet been vaccinated for the Coronavirus, was removed because it was deemed inappropriate by Facebook.
So now Benjamin Netanyahu joins his good friend Donald Trump in the infamous and very small club of world leaders who have been censored by a social media giant. Former President Trump was famously suspended by Facebook and banned permanently by Twitter just a week before he left office. This was because Trump continued to use their platforms to make his baseless claim of cheating and ballot stuffing in last years American presidential elections.
This new censorship of Benjamin Netanyahu is sure to receive the same level of hostility in the reactions to it by his supporters in Israel as was made by Donald Trump’s supporters in America when he was removed from Twitter.
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Benjamin Netanyahu’s post was made in Hebrew and read, “If you have friends or family 60 years of age or older who have not yet been vaccinated you can write to me (in the responses to the post) the their names and telephone number and I (Netanyahu) will call them to try and convince them to be vaccinated.”
Facebook explained that it removed this post because it violated the company’s privacy policies which do not allow content sharing or requesting medical information from people.
Israel’s Likud Party tried to explain what seems to have been a major gaffe on the part of its leader. Its stated that, “The goal was to encourage Israelis over the age of 60 to get vaccinated in order to save their lives after Prime Minister Netanyahu brought vaccines to every Israeli citizen.”
Benjamin Netanyahu Facebook Post
The Israeli Prime Minister may have simply made a mistake and not realized the implications of his post. To many, though, it does seem like when a government tries to collect information on its citizens who are not doing what it wants. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political opponents will surely use this in the upcoming Israeli elections as ammunition against him. They will say that he really does wish to collect people’s private information like a dictator would or, at the very least, that this shows how he is clueless and out of touch.
