Facebook: Ma'ale Adumim, Israel or Ma'ale Adumim, Palestine

Last night I read on JPost a very upsetting article called " Ma'aleh Adumim, Palestine" where according to the article, Facebook no longer allowed those residents living in Yesha (Yehudah and Shomron or otherwise known as the West Bank) to declare their residence as part of Israel. The article states, "The move to seemingly impose geopolitical borders on users comes as the network is under fire for increasingly controversial sentiments being circulated throughout its site".

Facebook defines itself as "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them".

"Thanks for expressing your concerns to us. We understand that Facebook's geographical classifications are not satisfactory to all of our users. We are currently working on new ways to address this issue, and we hope you will bear with us as we work towards a solution that will be acceptable to everyone involved."

I got upset at the article and more upset at my beloved Facebook. I have had issues in the past with groups of mine either disappearing or being hijacked by others and even with a friend of a friend working at Facebook those issues are still ongoing.

But last night I wanted to make sure that this article was true and that indeed you could no longer list cities in Yesha as part of Israel. I started to rant and rave on Twitter about this topic - how could Facebook take such a political stance on this ever evolving personal issue. To not allow a user to list what they consider their own home town and country?! Especially if Palestine used to exist but according to my history books its been just a "few" years since Palestine became Israel? When did we revert backwards?

And I found out the article was WRONG!!!! I was not all that surprised to find out the JPost was behind the news but pleasantly surprised by the speed in which Facebook changed their policy and gave two options for their users.

You now have the ability to state that you are from Israel or from "Palestine" (though as of right now that country does not exist)

I am still not happy about Palestine being listed as a country of residence on Facebook (or any other site for that matter) but at least Facebook understood and respected their users enough to give them options.

*********UPDATE************

What I failed to realize before writing this post was that Yesha communities were listed in Facebook until their decision to automatically change the country to Palestine. Facebook now allows a few of the larger cities in Yesha to chose Israel or Palestine but has yet to re-list communities or "settlements" in Yesha.


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The real question is .. why isn't NYC, NY listed as its own country? We all know its separate from the rest of the United States or the world for that matter? :)