Original Portnoy song

A song criticizing the lodging marketplace Airbnb over its decision to ban properties in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria was suddenly removed from Facebook for no apparent reason, a Jerusalem-based music group claims.

Last Wednesday, the Portnoy Brothers uploaded a song to their Facebook page which called on fans to ditch Airbnb, after the company’s announcement last week that it was purging its listings of all properties located in Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

Originally from Manchester, the Portnoy brothers Sruli and Mendy have been performing as a duo in for a few years, and are currently located in the Jerusalem corridor, just west of the Israeli capital.

Under the headline “Delete Airbnb!”, the brothers released a video of the short song last Wednesday afternoon via their Facebook page.

On Thursday, however, the band discovered the video had been removed by Facebook, with no explanation.

“On Wednesday afternoon at 3pm we uploaded a short song we wrote, which was directed at Airbnb for their recent, blatantly anti-Semitic policies,” the band wrote in a Facebook post.

“We included a subtle, polite suggestion that they stay out of politics or people would boycott them, in the same way that they attempted to boycott Israel. It went viral.

“We had never seen anything like it. And then just like the kind of magic trick that leaves you feeling violated, Facebook removed our video (without any prior warning or justification). Vanished into thin air.

“We won’t be bullied and we want the truth to be heard loud and clear; so we went into the studio today to re-record a full length studio version of the song.”

The duo released an extended version of the song on Thursday which addressed Facebook’s decision to remove the original post.

Updated version after Facebook removed first song