WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Facebook page claiming victory in getting the Rolling Stones to boycott Israel is an apparent hoax.
The “Rolling Stones: Boycott Israel” page, established Wednesday, on Thursday reported that the group had cancelled a planned June 10 concert.
It cited “sources with the Rolling Stones,” but there has been no such announcement.
The page also posted a letter asking the group to boycott Israel and signed by the page organizers as well as supposedly by Electronic Intifada and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
But Electronic Intifada, an anti-Zionist news site, denied signing the letter and noted that it does not sign letters institutionally; moreover, the news site reported, the letter is a duplicate of a 2007 letter urging the Stones to boycott Israel that appeared on the Electronic Intifada site and was signed by 350 individuals.
Most of the Facebook page’s commenters are currently pro-Israel, suggesting that word of the page’s existence was more widely disseminated in the pro-Israel community than it was among backers of BDS. As of Friday, the page had 219 “likes.”
JTA and other Jewish outlets had reported on the Facebook page’s existence yesterday.
JTA has asked the page organizers to explain the apparent hoax.
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