Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel will travel to the United States next week, where he will meet with senior officials and professionals to discuss, among other things, the efforts to regulate global social media companies operating in Israel, including Facebook, Israel Hayom learned Monday from sources involved in the matter. 

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Facebook has long been criticized for failing to properly remove harmful content posted on its platform, such as hate speech and misinformation. 

Most recently, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the media giant "was aware that its Instagram app can cause some teen users harm" and a former manager alleged in a testimony that Facebook fueled the Capitol riot.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen told members of the US Congress that whenever there was a conflict between the public good and what benefited the company, Facebook would choose its own interests.

In Israel, Hendel currently leads efforts to impose restrictions on the media giant and compel it to reveal its censorship policies. Similar restrictions might also apply to other global tech companies, such as Google and Microsoft. 

The communications minister also seeks to make them liable for incitement and libel posted on their platforms. Currently, none of the companies are legally liable for false or harmful content published on their sites.

The unprecedented move could cause a rift between Facebook and Israel. The social media company might even go as far as ban Israeli news agencies from posting content on its site, as it did in Australia in response to proposed legislation that would require platforms to pay publishers if news content was posted on their sites.

Nevertheless, since Facebook is a publicly-traded company whose value might be dramatically affected as a result of the ban, the social media giant will most likely not take such measures.

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Three IDF veterans who fought in Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip in 2014 and the Ad Kan advocacy group have filed a joint lawsuit against the NGO Breaking the Silence.

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The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accused Breaking the Silence of disseminating false "testimonies" about alleged human rights abuses and IDF actions during the campaign in Israel and internationally.

The three veterans are seeking 1.2 million shekels ($364,000) in damages. The lawsuit, filed by attorney Michael Dvorin and attorney Tzur Falk, legal counsel for Ad Kan, describes the testimonies in question as "each being more mendacious and malicious than the previous one," calling them blood libels published maliciously to sully the good names of the soldiers, the IDF, and the state of Israel.

Dvorin, whom Ad Kan hired to represent the plaintiffs, said that the suit was "one of the most important and justified defamation lawsuits filed in recent years. For years, the Breaking the Silence organization and its senior officials have been busy slandering IDF soldiers and turning them into 'war criminals' for things they did not do.

"This organization doesn't stop with defaming our soldiers in Israel, but does so in every corner of the globe," Dvorin said.

The suit comes on the heels of another suit recently filed against Breaking the Silence by a group of Armored Corps soldiers over testimonies about them. The testimonies in question also involved alleged incidents during Operation Protective Edge.

Breaking the Silence issued a response to the lawsuit: "This is another ridiculous legal proceeding that doesn't have a chance from the group of moles Ad Kan, whose sole purpose is to try and slip items into the media to threaten soldiers so they don't dare talk about the reality they experienced in the territories.

"The bottom line of this ridiculous lawsuit deals with the shooting death of an elderly Palestinian man who was not armed or dangerous, and not even the plaintiffs are trying to challenge that. Moreover, the lawsuit strengthens the importance of our work, and it is completely clear that this difficult story would never have come to light if it hadn't been for the soldiers' courage to break their silence.

"We are happy about the renewed discussion about the difficult, important testimonies from soldiers that we have published from the fighting in Gaza in the summer of 2014, even if the goal here is once again to goad us. We stand behind the testimonies and the brave witnesses who choose to expose the difficult reality in which they took part and are determined to continue to work without despair, until the occupation is ended," the organization said.

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The article in Tylko Polska ("Only Poland"), a low-circulation, nationally distributed far-right weekly, describes how to recognize Jews based on their last names, personality traits and facial features.

Jewish women, it says, "lack the delicacy, modesty and sense of shame that are innate to Polish women."

It goes on: "Because the whole world belongs to them … they are supposed to exist in every country, take power over nations and lead to the creation of one worldwide Jewish state."

Pictures of the paper on sale at a newspaper kiosk in parliament, in a country where more than 3 million of a population of 3.2 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, were widely shared on social media.

Parliament said it would request the publication be withdrawn from sale, but Jewish groups demanded stronger action.

"The lack of clear condemnation of the incident on the part of key Polish politicians, such as the speaker of the Sejm [parliament], is disturbing," said Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of the American Jewish Committee for Central Europe.

Some politicians, however, did react.

"It's an absolute scandal that, in the Polish parliament, such pitiful papers that look as if they are taken from Nazi publications, are sold," said Michał Kamiński, a member of parliament for the left-wing opposition Polish Peasants Party.

Krzysztof Brejza, a member for the center-right opposition Civic Platform, said the publication was a symptom of intolerance promoted by the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party led by former Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński.

"The promotion of hatred in society serves Jarosław Kaczyński. It is disgusting that in the temple of democracy, in the Polish parliament, such materials are displayed," Brejza said.

A spokesperson for PiS was not immediately available for comment.

The Polish government has bristled at suggestions of anti-Semitism in the past.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled a trip to Jerusalem last month after Israel's foreign minister said many Poles "suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk" and had collaborated with Nazis in the Holocaust.

Israel also opposed a controversial law passed last year that made it a criminal offense to use phrases such as "Polish death camps" to refer to the Nazi-run concentration camps on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór, where millions of Jews were killed.

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