Nor were they engaged in a legitimate law enforcement activity.  They were planting listening devices to intercept the communications of Hamas officials, who are the duly designated leaders of Gaza.  Of course, Israel has determined that Hamas is a terrorist organization.  So it would justify such an operation as rooting out a criminal enterprise.  But Gazans see Hamas as their legitimate rulers.  Why has Facebook chosen to accept Israel’s definition and not Gazans’?

 

Next, are Israeli commandos operating undercover the same as police doing the same? No.  These operatives assumed the cover of a Gaza humanitarian relief organization, in violation of the Geneva Convention.  Their cover endangered the lives of every Palestinian whose identity they stole and every NGO worker in Gaza who would be suspected of collaborating with the Israeli enemy. Do undercover police officers routinely jeopardize the safety and lives of civilians as part of their operations?

In the course of the failed operation, the Sayeret Matkal unit killed 7 Palestinians, including a commander.  In response, Hamas fired 400 rockets  into southern Israel. This tit-for-tat came very close to commencing all-out war.  Does this sound like a normal law enforcement operation?

Further, how long after such an undercover operation do these Facebook “privacy protections” remain in place?  When do soldiers or police who’ve engaged in an undercover operation lose those privacy rights?  Do they retain them for a month, a year, forever?  Note that the Gaza operation ended weeks ago.  Apparently, Facebook believes the unit’s identity must be protected indefinitely.

If that’s the case, let’s examine the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabouh by a twenty-seven-person Mossad assassination squad.  They operated undercover, but were exposed by Dubai’s CCTV internal surveillance system.  Dubai police disseminated pictures (see displayed image) of most of the Israeli operatives, which were subsequently published everywhere on the internet, including Facebook.  By its own logic, these images should have been suppressed.  But they weren’t.  Why? Because to do so would have made Facebook look like fools.  A million horses had fled the barn. How would they get them all back inside?  Would you lock the barn door after they left?

The only difference in this case is the two entities which released the images: in one case Dubai police and in the second, Hamas.  Facebook and most of the world recognized that an Israeli murder in Dubai was an illegitimate act and the authors of it deserved to be outed.  But Facebook refuses to grant Gaza similar status.  Israeli soldiers who engage in similar acts somehow deserve immunity for them. Why?

For those of us following the tortured process of watching Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg defend hiring a GOP opposition research outfit to sling anti-Semitic charges against George Soros, the logic above will appear familiar.  These are petty, small-minded people who can’t be bothered to use their brains to think about the difference between reality and their rules.