Claim:   On-line bookseller Amazon.com is partnered with the web site Intifada.com.

Status:   Not any more.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2001]

A good friend of mine, while searching the Internet, ran across Intifada.com. OK. Then he sees a promotion right on their web page by Amazon.Com advising the readers that: "You can buy books about the Intifada and Palestine from Amazon.Com. All profits from the referral will go to developing Intifada.com." How great! I would assume that this pretty well eliminates Amazon.Com as a book seller, for those of us that understand that the Intifada is about killing Israeli civilians and driving Israel out of the land of their forefathers. And obviously Amazon.Com is not planning on receiving any more of our business! It would also be nice for us to notify Amazon.Com of our decision and how shocked we were at their evident lack of knowledge of the conflict and the terrorist activities and suicide bombings of civilians that have been the paramount focus of this Intifada.

Origins:   Like many other web retailers, Amazon.com operates an associates program under which operators of qualifying web sites can earn commissions by directing visitors to purchase books and other products through Amazon.com's own site. (We here at snopes.com participate in this program, offering links on our site to various urban legend-related books which can be purchased through Amazon.com.)

An inquiry to Amazon.com about this issue drew the following terse response:

Greetings from the Amazon.com Associates Program.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us regarding the Web site www.intifada.com.

Please note, this account has been suspended pending further investigation, and we have requested they remove all links to Amazon.com immediately.

Thanks again for contacting us regarding this matter.

Amazon.com's posted policy states that sites which may be found unsuitable for acceptance into their associates program include those that promote sexually explicit materials; promote violence; promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age; promote illegal activities; include "amazon" or variations or misspellings thereof in their domain names; or otherwise violate intellectual property rights. Intifada.com did have Amazon.com associate links on their site at one time (as confirmed by Amazon.com's statement that their account has been "suspended"), but we have no way of knowing whether Amazon.com took them on as an associate site because they didn't feel the site unsuitable under their guidelines, or because they simply didn't screen the site's application as thoroughly as they ordinarily do. Either way, Intifada.com no longer has any links to Amazon.com that we can find.

Last updated:   7 March 2008

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