You'd be surprised if not astonished that most of the planet isn't American and is not subject to American principles of law. But it is. Not only is Israel not America, neither is France, Spain, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Russia or Venezuela. Outside the borders of the US you're just another bunch of foreigners, sometimes behaving yourself and at other times acting like dicks. One might wish to cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on free speech, but it's not that clear what it includes and doesn't include. One might also look at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which in it's version of human rights states that free speech is OK, as long as it doesn't conflict with Sharia. "Palestine" is a signatory.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

To be fair, today's Palestinians have nothing to do with the 5th cent BC reference by Heroditus and nothing to do with Philistines who were related to the Phoenicians from further north. By the 15th century AD the population had dropped to about 150K, most of whom, given the high infant mortality rate, were likely children. The high degree of nomadism, roughly 50% and lawlessness pretty much guaranteed that the modern population is mostly descended from regional migrating individuals and tribes. There are exceptions such as the Christian communities of Nazareth and Bethlehem. The former community is in Israel and doing quite well, the latter is under the Palestinian Authority and is nearly extinct. I agree that the state of Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. It's also terribly unfair to hold Israel accountable for the lack of good governance by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and their unwillingness to come to the table to negotiate a peace agreement. Fatah and Hamas hate each other even more than than they hate Israel, though just barely. Part of the problem is corruption - as long as the aid money keeps coming in it's siphoned off by those at the top, keeping those at the bottom angry. There's little incentive for the current leadership to resolve the conflict and a lack of infrastructure to effect change.

The above hyperbolic rant is a perfect illustration of hate speech that is designed to incite and sow bigotry. Each of the statements made are provably false, yet "Coward" cannot be sued or held responsible for slander because the target isn't a person it is a community. In terms of unfettered freedom to spread hate America is an outlier and not the norm, so it is both chauvinistic and imperialistic to impose American values on the rest of the planet as a form of global law. I'll leave it to others for now to refute the claim, what is more important are the meta-issues. Free speech as a principle come what may is one school of ethical thought. Consequentialism is a contrasting approach - one considers the outcomes. Inciting Arabs to slit the throats of any Israeli that they meet was recently publicly advocated by PLO advisor Sultan abu Ein Ein on his Facebook page. 3 days later a 17 year old Palestinian youth broke into a home in the community of Kiryat Arba and slit the throat of 13 year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel. Other examples include inciting Palestinians to ram their cars into pedestrians and to poison the food of patrons in restaurants where they work. Then there's conspiracy theories such as claims that Israel is digging under Al Aqsa to undermine the foundations and cause it to collapse. Threats to al Aqsa are a staple of Palestinian Arab conspiracy theories and have a long history of incitement going back to the 1929 Hebron massacre and the start of the 2nd Intifadeh based on rumours surrounding Sharon's visit to the the Temple Mount - which had been previously cleared by the Palestinian Authority, which then encouraged the rumors. The problem is that Facebook is not a free press, it is a walled garden. People like "Coward" can publish what they like and there is no freedom to reply, as there is here. "Coward" can and do filter, censor and block what he doesn't approve of on his Facebook page. As supreme court justice Brandeis observed, when it comes to public lies and hate speech, "sunlight is the best disinfectant". The downside of Facebook's walled garden is that it provides places where the sun don't shine, and in certain cases there needs to be a remedy to that. What defines these cases does need to be discussed. Advocating Itbach al Yahud (slaughter the Jews), or any other group should never be acceptable.