The computer giant Apple’s decision to remove an application from its online
store called “3rd intifada” is an additional step in “preventing hostile
elements – which are frequently tainted by anti-Semitism – from spreading
incitement via the new media,” Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister
Yuli Edelstein said Thursday.
Edelstein was responding to Apple’s
decision to remove the application because, as the company was reported to have
said, it “violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups
of people.”
The offending application gave information about protest
activities planned against Israel, some of them violent. Edelstein sent a letter
to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday, requesting that the computer giant stop
sales of the application.
Earlier in the year, public outcry against a
Facebook page carrying the same title was also removed after company heads
decided that the page’s creator had posted incitement to violence against
Israelis and Jews.
Edelstein issued a statement saying that by its
action, Apple has proven, as Facebook did, “that it shares the values that
oppose violence, incitement and terrorism.”
In both the Apple application
and Facebook page, opponents expressed their concerns that calls for a third
intifada were inherently violent.
Edelstein claimed that both the Apple
application and Facebook page were started by the same organization, seeking the
same goals.
In his original letter to Jobs, Edelstein wrote that he
believed Apple, “as a pioneering and progressive company, places the values of
liberty, freedom of expression and creativity as a guiding light.”