I’m putting up a cute kitten to start this post so that Facebook won’t remove it (the first photo always shows on a Facebook link):

Yesterday I put up a post about a photo posted by a co-administrator of the website Global Secular Humanist Movement (GSHM). Below is the photo that Facebook removed (and notified me, who didn’t post it) because it “didn’t follow Facebook community standards”:

You can see the Facebook standards here, and they comprise these strictures, which apparently were the ones violated by the photo above (my emphasis in the text):

Hate Speech Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.

Yeah, right. Well, there are plenty of Facebook pages that attack others based on “religion and national origin”. Take a look at a few sites listed in yesterday’s comments by reader Golan. I’ve looked them up and put up at least one post on each page to show what Facebook does tolerate. The names of the sites and their links are in italics to the left:

I do hate ISRAEL:

Death to Israel:

Is this not something implying death to Jews? It’s a Star of David being blown away by a hand that sports an Iranian flag and is shaped like a gun. I believe the message refers to the good things Iran will do when it gets nuclear weapons. . .

Death to America and Israel:

Now tell me, apologists, is this not anti-Semitic? Look at those stereotypes! At the bottom: “The game is up Juden.” (“Juden” is German for “Jews.”)

death to Israel: we will kill you:

“May God burn them one by one”

Death to Israel (another one):

I hate Usa, Israel, India:

This is a closed group: you have to be approved to see the posts, but I suspect they’re pretty dire. All one can see is a list of members and this:

We Hate Israel:

Now are you going to tell me that the photo removed by Facebook, presumably for constituting “hate speech,” is worse than the ones I’ve just shown? Those cartoons promote hatred of both a nationality (Israel, USA, India) and of a religious group (Jews); both violate Facebook standards.

Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t favor Facebook censoring either the captioned photo about Islamic violence that appeared on GSHM site or the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic cartoons and photos on the various “I hate Israel” sites. I’m an advocate of any free speech that doesn’t incite immediate violence. But if you remove “hate photos” on one site, you must remove them on all sites. Further, the GSHM site does not “attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition,” while all of the other sites do—as entire sites, not just in isolated postings. Shouldn’t “hate sites” be removed in their entirety by Facebook if they’re truly enforcing their “community standards”?

What seems to the case here is a Facebook double standard: attacking Israelis and their friends (based on nationality) or Jews (based on their religion) is okay, but attacking Islam is not. This, of course, is characteristic of the double standard that unfortunately permeates much of the Western Left these days. But I’ve never seen such a blatantly two-faced, reprehensible instantiation of this double standard as we see on Facebook.

A final cute kitten to protect this post: