Israeli minister to Apple’s Jobs: ‘Take down Third Intifada Palestine app’
A pro-Palestine application available on the iTunes store has become a particular cause for concern for an Israeli minister.
The official, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein wrote a letter to Apple Inc. asking the corporation to remove an application that supports a future Palestinian uprising, saying that it passed on information about protests, some violent, planned against Israel.
The app in question is named “ThirdIntifada” — a reference to a future Palestinian uprising Israel.
In a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Mr. Edelstein wrote: “I am convinced that you are aware of this type of application’s ability to unite many toward an objective that could be disastrous.”
“ThirdIntifada” offers users a stream of news stories and editorials in Arabic, announces upcoming protests, and includes links to nationalistic Palestinian videos and songs, according to Reuters.
Mr. Edelstein said that he has also complained to social networking site, Facebook, three months ago for a page that had similar content to the app, also calling for an uprising against Israel in occupied Palestine.
He believes that the page was opened by the same developers of the “ThirdIntifada” app and said that the page was removed after he complained to Facebook.
In May, United States attorney Larry Klayman sued Facebook and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for more than $1 billion over the “Third Palestinian Intifada” page, claiming the site had failed to remove the page quickly enough, Reuters reports.
Meanwhile Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon spoke out and said the creation of the Apple application and the Facebook page outlines a new pattern in attempts to provoke attacks.
“Companies like this that have a global reach also have a responsibility, and they are aware of this responsibility, and I am sure that Apple will act in the same way [as Facebook],” Mr. Ayalon told Israel’s Army Radio.
(Eman El-Shenawi, a writer at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at: eman.elshenawi@mbc.net.)
via Israeli minister to Apple’s Jobs: ‘Take down Third Intifada Palestine app’.