Right On The Right

The web poses new challenges, especially in conflicts where there's a crisis of identity. Palestinians living in the contested areas want to be known as residents of Palestine, while Jewish settlers of course want to be called Israeli. Facebook got dropped into this very conflict of identity:

Facebook, which unwittingly had dropped itself smack in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reversed itself Monday and now is allowing Jewish settlers in the West Bank to list themselves as residents of Israel, not a country called "Palestine."

Users of the social networking Web site who live in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the West Bank protested when Facebook automatically listed "Palestine" as their hometown, the Jerusalem Post reported.

A settlers group accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.

"I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called 'Palestine,"' Ari Zimmerman wrote in a posting on Facebook, Reuters reported. "I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in 'Palestine,' nor does anyone else."

This is a good move by Facebook, although the unabashed Israel-supporter in me would've liked Facebook to put all of the contested territories under Israel. They could easily provide the Palestinian government's support of state-sponsored terrorism as the rationale for failing to include Palestine. If they must include Palestine, Israel should absolutely be an option, and failure to include the Democracy as an option in those territories would be horrendous.