Facebook removes pro-Israel page with 77 million followers

(Arutz Sheva) The “Jerusalem Prayer Team” Facebook page, which has 77 million followers, was blocked last week (Friday) without warning. Dr. Mike Evans, director of the page and head of the Friends of Zion Association, claims that Facebook fell for an “anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist conspiracy,” Channel 2 News reported.

The subject was brought to the attention of the Foreign Ministry this morning (Tuesday), during a tour of Sderot, where Evans met Asif Elkayam.

According to members of the Friends of Zion Association, Evans’ Facebook page was blocked without warning last weekend (Friday). Evans, who is currently in Israel with the aim of transmitting his live broadcasts to his followers around the world, claims that Facebook did not respond to inquiries on his behalf or from his staff. This is despite the fact that this is the largest page in the Christian world, and the 63rd largest in all of Facebook, according to the website SocialBlade.

The campaign against the page started last week. Anti-Israel activists claimed that Facebook made them follow the page without their consent, and began flooding it with serious anti-Semitic comments – which also include photos and quotes by Hitler. The comments may have caused Facebook’s mechanisms to block the page, but Dr. Evans and his team claim that the activists, who posted more than a million abusive comments, also reported it and led to its removal.

“Upon landing in Israel, I received the message that they had removed our page,” Evans explained in a conversation with NEXTER. “A Jordanian-based cyber-terrorist organization flooded our page with comments like ‘Jews are pigs,’ we’ve never seen anything like it in our lives. Facebook has never approached us, even though we’re under cyber attack and even though we tried desperately to contact them. In fact, Facebook protects radical Islam and works against pro-Israel evangelicals. They also removed my private page, I cannot post anything. It is as if communism and fascism have come together, only because Israel is defending itself,” he added.” America is a democracy, in the United States you are innocent until proven otherwise. What did we do? What was our crime?”

Dr. Evans said that he turned to senior politicians and diplomats, including Senators Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner and “dozens more” with the goal to getting the page back on track. The issue was also brought to the attention of the Minister.