Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Palestinian Arrested After Facebook Translates ‘Good Morning’ As ‘Attack Them’

A Palestinian man was mistakenly arrested in Israel after Facebook’s translation software turned his “good morning” photo caption into a threat.

The man, who works in a West Bank settlement, posted a photo of himself next to a bulldozer with the message “good morning” in Arabic. But Facebook’s proprietary translation algorithm translated it into Hebrew as “attack them.”

Local police officers were notified of the post and arrested the man. They were especially concerned that he was posing next to a bulldozer, which has been used by Palestinians in hit-and-run terror attacks.

Israeli security frequently monitors Palestinians’ social media accounts to detect possible terror threats.

No Arabic-speaking officer read the post before the man’s arrest, Haaretz reported. The man was soon freed after the police admitted a mistake was made.

“Unfortunately, our translation systems made an error last week that misinterpreted what this individual posted,” a Facebook spokesperson told Gizmodo. “Even though our translations are getting better each day, mistakes like these might happen from time to time and we’ve taken steps to address this particular issue. We apologize to him and his family for the mistake and the disruption this caused.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

The Forward is free to read but not free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make your Passover gift today!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.