Today is the 2nd day of Tamuz 5770
Uri Lander is 21 or 22 years old. He was born in Uruguay but now lives in Israel. A few weeks ago he checked his Facebook account before going to sleep. Uri found a new group “Yo Tambien Odio Los Judios” (“I also hate the Jews”).
Unfortunately, anti-Semitism – or the more politically correct anti- Israel movement- is so tolerated by us today that we got tragically ‘used’ to see this kind of expressions and we do nothing about it. But Uri -as his father, Dr Eduardo Lander proudly described to me- decided to take “immediate action”. Uri understood that if the Web is such a powerful tool to spread hatred it must work both ways. We should be able to use Internet also to demand justice!
Uri created a new Facebook group:
24 HORAS para que Facebook borre el grupo “YO TAMBIÉN ODIO A LOS JUDÍOS” (we give 24 hours for Facebook to delete the group “I also hate the Jews”) threatening Facebook that otherwise all of Uri’s new group members will close their Facebook accounts. Uri went to sleep. In the morning Uri checked his Facebook group and to his surprise he found out that the group had already 800 members…!!! In two days Uri’s group had 4,000 members and then it grew to 20,000. At that point Facebook finally closed the anti-Semitic group. Two weeks later, Uri’s group had 200,000 members. Most of them non Jews showing their sympathy for the Jewish people.
Uri made a change. And inspired a lot of people (including me) to use the Web as a vehicle for Israel advocacy.
Uri put together two important things: the power of the web and the ‘passion’ for Am Israel (Ahabat Israel) which today demands from all of us immediate action.
See the story of Uri’s Facebook group here:
http://2lifemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-also-hate-jews-on-facebook.html
