One more exciting use for Facebook: Soliciting hostage-taking *UPDATE*

posted at 12:28 pm on October 26, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
[ Israel ]   

Saudi cleric Awad al-Qarni is known for faithfully reflecting the views of the Western left about the sins and deficiencies of the West (e.g., “Neo-cons” are Nazis, America was built on conscript labor, etc).  But even the Western left wouldn’t go here with him:  al-Qarni has posted on Facebook the promise of a $100,000 reward for any Palestinian who will take an Israeli soldier hostage.

The Facebook post, added to his Wall Monday morning, was still up as of 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT) on Wednesday, 26 October.  It has 2,536 “likes” as this goes to blog “press.”

Awad al-Qarni solicitation to take hostages for profit

MEMRI has a direct translation of the solicitation:

Al-Qarni wrote: “Media reports have circulated the news that the Zionist settlers are paying large sums of money to anyone who [can] kill the released Palestinian prisoners, and in response to those criminals, I announce to the world that I [hereby] commit to pay a reward and a prize in the amount of $100,000 to any Palestinian who imprisons [i.e. takes as a hostage] an Israeli soldier inside Palestine, for the purpose of prisoner exchange.”

No trace of evidence regarding the allegation against Israeli settlers can be found.  (Side note:  recent allusions to Israeli settler “violence” are refuted by this report from CAMERA – which relies in part, incidentally, on the statistics compiled by B’Tselem, a left-leaning pro-Palestinian advocacy group.  H/t:  Israel Matzav.)

But al-Qarni’s solicitation is there in black and white.  If you would like to report this abuse of Facebook policy, you can start here.   In the meantime, long life to social-media uprisings.

*UPDATE*  I’m happy to report that the al-Qarni solicitation appears to have been removed from Facebook.  Meanwhile, I have been advised by a Hebrew-fluent associate that a settler family did, in fact, post a reward for the killing of two terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit deal.  This may have been what al-Qarni was talking about.  Needless to say, this action is neither of the following:  something that can be condoned, or something that justifies al-Qarni in offering his reward.

Rock on, social media.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

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