Facebook takes down largest pro-Israel page after Islamic attack

Founder of The Jerusalem Prayer Team (JPT) furious that Facebook took down a pro-Israel page with more than 75 million followers instead of going after the radical Islamist attackers.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The largest pro-Israel Facebook page was shut down by the social media giant after it was targeted with anti-Semitic vitriol by radical Islamists, CBN reported Wednesday.

Established in 2002 by well-known pro-Israel activist Mike Evans, The Jerusalem Prayer Team (JPT) had more than 75 million followers when it was the victim of a massive anti-Semitic attack by Islamists whose posts on the page led to Facebook shutting it down.

“There was an organized attempt by radical Islamic organizations to achieve this objective. They posted over a million comments on our site, and then had the people contact Facebook saying that they never posted to the site. That was a complete scam and fraud. It was a very clever, deceptive plan by Islamic radicals,” Evans told CBN.

“The Jerusalem Prayer Team (is) the largest pro-Israel Facebook site in the world, the largest religious site in the world and one of the top 30 Facebook sites in the world that was shut down because of an Islamic cyber-terror assault on our site,” Evans later told Channel 12 news.

Evans said the posts called Jews “dogs and pigs and saying Hitler should murder them.”

The cyberattack on the Facebook page came during the rocket attacks from Gaza by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Evans said he had been leading thousands of people in prayer daily for Israel and informing them about the current crisis in the Middle East.

The two-pronged attack started with posts on Facebook and YouTube telling anti-Israel activists how to report the JPT Facebook page to Facebook and demand it be taken down. In the second stage, a disinformation campaign claimed that Facebook created the JPT Page during the current conflict and is forcing people to like it even when they don’t.

Anti-Israel fans posted videos and tweeted comments celebrating after the JPT Facebook page was taken down.

“The Jordanian hacker, Ahmed Sale … has been able to close a Facebook page with 76 million likes to support the Zionist entity, called ‘Jerusalem Prayer Team’. #Congratulations to all viewers. ‘This Jerusalem prayer Team of Yahodi (Jewish) page has been disabled/removed successfully from Facebook,” one post said.

Evans said he was fighting back and working to get Facebook to reinstate the page.

“We’re holding a Facebook site event for the world tomorrow (Thursday),” said Evans. “Facebook shut us down, not the devils that did it.”

“But thank God for the State of Israel, because the Minister of Foreign Affairs will be calling Facebook himself and defending us, so pray and thank you and God bless you,” Evans said.

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