Arab in Gaza uses Facebook (file)
Arab in Gaza uses Facebook (file)Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90

"The terrorists who carried out this morning's attack in Eli had Facebook pages full of anti-Israel incitement." So said this morning Yigal Dalmoni, the Deputy Head of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.

"I call on Facebook to wake up and put an end to this," Dalmoni said.

Just yesterday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan visited HaYovel neighborhood in Eli where this morning's attack took place. Dalmoni quoted Erdan as citing a very telling experiment which was recently held, in which two new Facebook pages were opened: One with anti-Semitic content calling for the murder of Jews, and one that incites against Islam. The latter page was taken down by Facebook within a day, "while the other one might still be there, for all we know," Dalmoni said.

The page was in fact eventually removed after Facebook faced a major public outcry.

Shilo Adler, a resident of HaYovel and Yesha Council Director-General, said, "I told Minister Erdan yesterday that it is impossible to go on this way, simply containing the attacks. I said that we couldn't even know what would happen tomorrow morning – without realizing that in fact, we would wake up this morning to a near-tragedy and an amazing miracle."

Dalmoni told the Kipah website that Facebook does not even have a relevant representative in Israel "who can take charge when a problem arises. If there was someone like that, maybe we could turn to him and have him take down pages with videos teaching Arabs how to murder Jews. Instead, we have to call someone in Ireland – and even then, they don't always do the job."

"People call this a 'wave of terrorism,'" Dalmoni said, "but I call it a 'media intifada.' The media and the social networks in the Palestinian Authority post content that incites to the murder of Jews, and some even teach directly how to do it. Others say that Jews should be killed, and others praise those who do it. Most of these sites are in the official PA media."

"If there is a real desire to fight this," he continued, "these pages must be blocked, and the TV stations in the PA must be closed as well, so that youths will not be motivated to take a knife and murder Jews. Let the IDF go into these places and take care of it."