UPDATE Facebook Shuts Down Huge Israel Prayer Page After Radical Muslims Targeted It with Hate Speech
The Jerusalem Prayer Team (JPT), established in 2002, with more than 75 million followers has been shut down by Facebook. Mike Evans told CBN News the FB page has been the target of radical Islamists.
“There was an organized attempt by radical Islamic organizations to achieve this objective. They posted over a million comments on our site and then had the people contact Facebook saying that they never posted to the site. That was a complete scam and fraud. It was a very clever, deceptive plan by Islamic radicals.”
The attack came during the midst of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas and other Islamic groups in the Gaza Strip. Michael Evans Jr. had been leading thousands of people in prayer daily for Israel and about the current crisis in the Middle East.
The attacks came in two ways.
First was a direct campaign to take the page down. Many posts on Facebook and YouTube directed people on how to go in and report the JPT Facebook page to Facebook and how to pressure Facebook for allowing the JPT page to exist on their platform.
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The second attack came as a disinformation campaign that Facebook created the JPT Page during the current conflict and is forcing people to like it even when they don’t.
Dozens of videos with thousands of views as well as Twitter posts celebrated the fact that JPT Facebook page was taken down.
“The Jordanian hacker, Ahmed Sale, nicknamed ‘Bani Hashem Electronic Sagr’, has been able to close a Facebook page with 76 million likes to support the Zionist entity, called ‘Jerusalem Prayer Team’.#Congratulations to all viewers. ‘This Jerusalem prayer Team of Yahodi (Jewish) page has been disabled/removed successfully from Facebook," one post said.
The Youtube video asked the question, “Jerusalem Prayer Team Facebook Likes are Real or Fake?”
According to JPT, they have appealed to Facebook to restore their page. Facebook replied by saying the case was “Complete” and said, “These Pages were deleted by our system due to being not Policy Compliant. Sadly, we can’t review appeals at this time due to a shortage of reviewers caused by the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Since you are unable to access the Page, this means that appealing is no longer an option. There's no further action that we can take for these Pages. Please consider this decision final."
JPT is hopeful that this is just a canned reply and not an official verdict. The page still indicates that it is under review.
CBN News has also contacted Facebook about the situation and asked why the page was taken down.
Evans stated, “Facebook got caught with its pants down. Facebook has been accused of being biased towards conservative media sources. This is a prime example of bias on steroids. It's, in my opinion, cyber terrorism based upon racism. I've contacted Senator friends, such as Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, my dear friend, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, and dozens of other political leaders to assist me with this fraudulent scheme to damage our good work.”
Evans arrived in Israel this week to host a television event in Jerusalem at the Friends of Zion Museum media center.
The television special will include numerous appearances by special guests. Leaders include actors Jon Voight, actor Pat Boone, Pastor Robert Jeffress, Pastor Jack Graham, Franklin Graham, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Paula White-Cain, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and many more.
“The event that I'm hosting in Jerusalem will be released to the global media to counter the lies that are being told about the war. Israel is indeed winning the war, but Israel is also losing the media war through secular leftist media that is believing the lies of radical Islam.”
Evans traveled to the Gaza border to see for himself the conflict that has seen Hamas and other Islamic groups fire nearly 4,000 rockets into southern, central Israel and as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
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