Two Facebook group pages, each of which had over a million followers, have been removed by Meta (formerly known as Facebook) following a report by Israel Hayom some two months ago about the nature of their content.
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In the past few months, watchdog groups Im Tirzu and Lach, Yerushalayim ("For You, Jerusalem") led a campaign seeking to shut down the pages, which were titled Kikar Jerusalem (Jerusalem Square) and Al Qastal. Both these pages claimed to "report" from east Jerusalem, but actually became pages that published messages supporting terrorists in prison in Israel and terrorists who were killed while attempting to carry out attacks.
The pages also advocated for the release of terrorist prisoners being held by Israel and for Israel to release the bodies of terrorists it is currently holding.
Meirav and Herzl Hajaj, members of the Choosing Life forum who lost their daughter Shir Hajaj to a car ramming attack in Jerusalem and who were part of the campaign to have a page that praised the terrorist responsible for the attack taken down, said, "Finally, Facebook understood that a page that praises murderous terrorists causes more Jews to be murdered. Finally they realized that our daughter's blood is not forfeit."
Matan Peleg, chairman of Im Tirzu, and Maor Tzemach, chairman of Lach, Yerushalayim, said, "This is an important day in the war on terrorism and incitement. We thank Facebook for the important decision."
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