Election committee orders Facebook to explain why it blocked far-right candidate

Social network suspended URWP’s Itamar Ben Gvir for sharing ad deemed to violate community standards

By Jacob Magid

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and ToI Staff 4 April 2019, 2:39 pm Edit

The Central Elections Committee on Thursday demanded that Facebook explain its decision to block the page of Itamar Ben Gvir, a candidate from the extremist Otzma Yehudit party running on the Union of Right-Wing Parties slate.

The committee’s head, Hanan Melcer, gave the social network until 5 p.m. to issue a response regarding the move, which went into effect Wednesday afternoon.

The post that led to Ben Gvir’s barring until after the April 9 elections for “violating community standards” was an Otzma Yehudit ad featuring its top candidates with the slogan saying there can be “1,000 dead terrorists, [but] not a single hair will fall from an IDF soldier.”

Ben Gvir, an activist attorney known for representing Jewish terror suspects, petitioned the Central Elections Committee demanding that it order Facebook to immediately lift the ban.

In the petition, the URWP candidate equated the social network’s conduct with the “foreign government intervention that has been so feared in Israel.”

“It is inconceivable that the owners of the social network can decide a week before the elections to block the freedom of speech of candidates for no legal reason,” he wrote.

פייסבוק חסמה את העמוד של איתמר בן גביר עד הבחירות והמודעה הזו היא הסיבה. בן גביר- הדיקטטורה של פייסבוק עולה שלב pic.twitter.com/hSYXO65XNy

— דפנה ליאל (@DaphnaLiel) April 3, 2019

Ben Gvir said Thursday he would sue Facebook for 250,000 NIS ($70,000), in addition to the petition from the Central Elections Committee.

If the ban on his page was not immediately lifted, he said he would file a damages claim for 3 million NIS ($836,000), the Ynet news site reported.

“There is no doubt that Facebook’s behavior caused and causes personal damage, and it should be added that our party invested large sums in Facebook. We see the Facebook page as a central means of advertising. Blocking the profile destroys the campaign,” Ben Gvir wrote to the company.

In the meantime, the URWP announced that it would publish the statements of Otzma Yehudit’s lone remaining representative on its own Facebook page.

Central Elections Committee chair, Supreme Court Judge Hanan Melcer (L) meets with Facebook’s director of the elections, Katie Harbeth, February 3, 2019. (Courtesy)

Ben Gvir is in the number seven slot on the URWP, an amalgam of the Jewish Home, National Union and Otzma Yehudit parties. He moved up one spot last month when the Supreme Court barred Otzma Yehudit chairman Michael Ben Ari from running over his incitement to racism. Ben Gvir had petitioned to move up two spots and replace Ben Ari at No. 5 on the URWP list, but the High Court of Justice ruled last week that the current election law does not allow for parties to alter their slates after the filing deadline.

With the party projected in recent polls to receive five to seven seats, the URWP might find itself without a single Otzma Yehudit candidate in the Knesset after the intense criticism it received for agreeing to fold the far-right party in, due to pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

However, the joint slate’s No. 2, Bezalel Smotrich, said in a recording leaked Tuesday that Netanyahu will help ensure the URWP gets enough ministerial posts so that the Ben Gvir gets into parliament.