I saw this story about Israel’s supposed efforts to recruit Arabs in Gaza for spy work via Facebook, and following the tried and true principle of “it takes one to know one,” began wondering what the “other side” is using Facebook for. Using the services of my old buddy Google Translate, I started checking various likely terms on Facebook (in Arabic) to see what I could come up with. And what do you know – on the very first Facebook page in Arabic I scrounged up is a tale of hatred, misunderstanding – and sheer stupidity!

The hatred in question is that of “the Arabs” (or at least 465 of them) for Jews. Not Israel, because Israel has nothing to do with this page, which is dedicated to trashing the URL shortener Bit.ly – for “celebrating” Chanukah!

Here’s the unbelievable story, via the Google translation of the home page of the Facebook group called “No Bit.ly” So what did Bit.ly due to get on the Arab boycott list? It seems that the Bit.ly people used a graphic that looks vaguely like a dreidel (sevivon), I suppose around Chanuka time. On the graphic can be seen more clearly the Hebrew letters hay and shin, which is indeed found on dreidels. Like this:

Here is, as Google translates it, what the Facebook fan page gives as its reason for existence:

Anas surprised the site shortcut links to add the famous Bit.ly the form of a strange character written on Abbarip symbolize the Jewish holiday that is named the “Chanukah” or “candlestick.” In response to this step, a group of young people create a page of solidarity on Facebook to boycott the site “bit.ly” and noted that this was due to “the herds of settlers attempted to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they set up flags and Jewish symbols on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem Jews are trying through breeding history H Muhom in Jerusalem, according to Al-Aqsa Foundation for the stop and heritage.

So I get that they don’t like Israel or “settlers,” but what do they have against Chanukah? Doesn’t this give the lie to the constant Arab claims that they are not anti-Jewish, but only anti-Zionist? In modern times, Chanuka is, at least in the West, the most “domesticated” of Jewish holidays, having been denuded of much of its meaning in order to fit in with “the spirit of the season.” I mean, even diehard leftists like Peter, Paul and Mary wrote a song about it,  stressing its “universal message!” No Zionism here, folks – just a Jewish holiday, and the boycott by these folks shows that it’s not just Israel they hate, but Jews as well.

Unfortunately for these jerks, their boycott of Bit.ly (which is located in New York City and has, according to its About page, a staff made up of Jews, Christians, and Muslims – not a “Zionist” Israeli in sight) drove them to come up with alternative URL shorteners, listed on the link area of the Facebook fan page. Well, checking out the alternatives they listed, I noticed that there is one that was developed – in Israel! Which one? That’s for me to know and for them to find out! Talk about shooting themselves in the foot – they boycotted a service that has absolutely nothing to do with Israel, because they hate Israel, and they end up helping Israel!!!

Interestingly, some Jews on Facebook have a problem with Bit.ly as well. The Avid Editor says in his/her blog (it’s also discussed at the Creeping Sharia blog) that using Bit.ly supports Jihad. Huh? Well, it seems that the .LY domain is the one used in Libya, “which is a Jihadi state.” By registering and using a .LY domain, part of the company’s domain name registration fee is going to fill the coffers of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, as it is popularly known. As Creeping Sharia says,

Bit.ly’s only doing a trivial amount of business with Libya – the domains sell for $75 per year from the registrar Libyan Spider Network – but its use of .LY domain is helping to popularize and legitimize the top-level domain for general use on the Internet.

What to do? Boycott Bit.ly, says AE, especially because Bit.ly is now the default URL shortener for Twitter. Using Bit.ly, AE says,

comes at the cost of your soul IMHO. It is supporting jihadist and the terrorist state Libya. So write to anyone that still uses this service and the people that make it a default on twitter clients.

I’m starting to feel for the Bit.ly folks. The Arabs don’t like Bit.ly, and neither do the Jews (what ever happened to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”)! Can we get some Christians, Hindus and Buddhists to weigh in here too?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.