Facebook prankster punks minister
Communications czar Gilad Erdan wakes to find a fake account in his name, calls on ‘troll’ that created it to ‘get a life’
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On Tuesday morning, Communications Minister Gilad Erdan awoke to find a phony Facebook page in his name, that contained an inflammatory status update. The offending (Hebrew) page has since been removed, but not before garnering over 1,000 “likes” (compared to the 10,000 his real page has).
The status that had so many surfers all fired up (both for and against) discussed how “Jews always get confused and think that Israel is another European or American country… They don’t understand why we need the Rabbinate in order to get married, why we have to support the ultra-Orthodox, why buses don’t operate on Shabbat, why we don’t have same-sex marriages…”
The status author then answers his own questions. “For centuries our grandparents lived in Jewish ghettos of Jews and did not mingle with gentiles in order to preserve their Judaism… When we established the Jewish state, it was decided the state would be a Jewish one, where Jews will not have to worry about who they will marry or what they will eat.”
The phony minister closed out his status by saying “anyone who wants to pass laws that exist in Germany, should simply move to Germany! This is Israel!”
On his official (Hebrew) Facebook page, the real minister referred to the experience as “strange, a little Kafka-esque.” He blasted the “troll” who felt the need to express such “strange positions,” and he complained that several attempts to complain to Facebook went unanswered.
Erdan (the real one) acknowledged part of the beauty of Facebook is that it “has no domains and unlimited similar names — which is nice,” but then he rhetorically asked, “Shouldn’t somebody in the Zuckerberg kingdom manage a more effective system against the phenomenon of trolls?”
The status written by Erdan’s anonymous alter-ego received 230 “likes” before it was removed and generated a great deal of discussion, not all of it supportive. One of the 160 comments read, “This racist anti-democratic thinking of yours is close to that of the Germans that disgust you so much. I suggest that you move to Germany.”
The real Erdan’s response status, while not inspiring as much discussion as its fake counterpart, did receive more “likes” (272 as of this writing). In it, the minister wrote “My name is Gilad Erdan and this is my real Facebook page. I hope that whoever fabricates a different page in my name will get a life.”
The Times of Israel Community.