Apple has honored a request from Israel to pull a free iPhone application from its online store that the Israeli government said incited violence against the Jewish state. The Arabic-language app., developed by a Dubai company and entitled “Third Palestinian Intifadah,” was designed to help users “organize anti-Israel protests and share a variety of pro-Palestinian material such as songs, articles, and photos of so-called martyrs,” reported CBN News. The Arabic term “Intifadah” refers to a pair of violent uprisings against Israel over the past two decades.
A spokesman for Apple explained that the smart phone application was removed from the Apple Store“because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”
In a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein expressed concern over the potential for the app. “to unite many toward an objective that could be disastrous.”
Wrote Edelstein: “Upon review of the stories, articles, and photos published by means of the application, one can easily see that this is, in fact, anti-Israel and anti-Zionist.” He noted that “as is implied by its name, the application calls for an uprising against the State of Israel,” and recalled that the same group had earlier launched a Facebook page calling for an “uprising against the State of Israel by use of lethal force, while using hateful material based on wild and groundless accusations.”
Similar to Apple’s response, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg honored a request by the Israeli government to take that page down.
As reported by CBS News, “Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center had also urged Apple to remove the application. The center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said in a release … that ‘the leading new media and technology companies should not be facilitating entities with a track record of promoting incitement and violence.’”
In a follow-up letter Edelstein thanked Apple for its quick response to his concern, calling it “an additional step in preventing hostile elements, which are frequently tainted by anti-Semitism, from spreading incitement via the ‘new media.’”
Added the Israeli spokesman: “By its action, Apple has proven, as Facebook did, that it shares the values that oppose violence, incitement, and terrorism.”
In its guidelines for developers, Apple stipulates that applications “containing references or commentary about a religious, cultural, or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected.”
As reported by The New American, on at least two occasions homosexual activists have used those guidelines to pressure Apple into pulling iPhone applications they insisted were threatening to their lifestyle. In March Apple dropped an app. developed by the ministry Exodus International that was designed to help individuals leave homosexuality, after “gay” activists convinced over 200,000 people to contact Apple and demand the app. be rejected. Months earlier, after similar complaints the company pulled an app. that included the text of the Manhattan Declaration, a Christian manifesto that, among other things, offers a scriptural view of sexuality and marriage at odds with the homosexual lifestyle.
