Jewish group asks Iceland to act on pro-Palestine website

BOSTON (AP) — A Jewish advocacy group is calling on Iceland’s government to take action against a pro-Palestine website seeking to “dismantle” various Boston-area Jewish institutions that’s being hosted by an Icelandic internet company.

The website is hosted by Reykjavík-based 1984 Hosting Co.

The Anti-Defamation League, in a letter Wednesday to Iceland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, said it has already voiced its concerns about the “Mapping Project” to Iceland’s ambassador to the U.S. and its national police but hasn’t received a “substantive response.”

The website features an interactive map of Massachusetts listing nearly 500 institutions — many of them Jewish — and accusing those institutions of complicity in a range of “harms,” including ethnic cleansing, colonialism and Zionism.

“We deeply regret the apparent lackadaisical attitude of Icelandic officials toward this threat to the Jewish community and ask that your government take expeditious measures to prevent this website from being hosted in your country,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO wrote in the letter.

Icelandic authorities will cooperate with U.S. officials if a request for mutual legal assistance is received, but the government doesn’t have jurisdiction to investigate crimes by subjects located in other countries, Sveinn Guðmarsson, a spokesperson for the Iceland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, said in a statement Thursday.

The FBI’s Boston office and the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts’ office, which have both said they’re looking into the site, declined to comment Thursday.

The 1984 Hosting Co., which also declined to comment, has previously said it doesn’t “host those who advocate violence, terror, suppression or hatred” but declined to address the Jewish community’s concerns.

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