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ADL and NAACP boycott of Facebook is wrong

Just to clear the air: Hate speech is reprehensible. Social media have a down side. When boycotts are limited to speech they are legal and should remain so.

All that said, we regard the attempted boycott movement against Facebook launched by the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP as wrong and dangerous for Israel.

The ADL-NAACP boycotts Facebook because Facebook won’t monitor hate speech. Well, people boycott Israel because they find Israel equally offensive. A boycott cannot be right or wrong simply based on its target. One cannot vehemently condemn the BDS boycott of Israel, as the ADL does, yet boycott some other entity. That many advocates of BDS wish to engage in more than speech — wish to hurt Israel economically as a spur to get it to change its Palestinian policies — is hardly a justification for a boycott of Facebook, which also is designed to hurt it economically as a spur to get it to change its policies on hate speech.

To launch a boycott against Facebook is dangerous for Israel. Logically or not, a boycott launched by a major Jewish organization becomes lovely ammunition for the advocates of BDS — the Boycott, Sanction, Divest movement against Israel. In the public square, distinctions drawn between the two boycotts will come across as hairsplitting.

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