Washington – Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg have been hit with a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages over a page on the social network which called for a “Third Intifada” against Israel.
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Facebook this week shut down the “Third Intifada” page, which had almost 500,000 fans, but the lawsuit filed in a court here claims that the social network showed “negligence” by not quickly responding to appeals to remove the page.
Besides awarding damages, the complaint calls on the court to bar Facebook “from allowing the Facebook page titled ‘Third Palestinian Intifada,’ and other related and similar sites, which advocate violence and death to Jews.”
The suit, a copy of which was obtained by technology blog TechCrunch, was filed in DC Superior Court by Larry Klayman, who describes himself in the complaint as “an American citizen of Jewish origin” who is “active in matters concerning the security of Israel and all people.”
Klayman also identifies himself as the founder of Freedom Watch, whose website describes it as a political advocacy group dedicated to protecting privacy, free speech and other rights and “our national sovereignty against the incompetent, terrorist state-controlled United Nations.”
Facebook dismissed the case as “without merit” and said it would fight.
“While we haven’t been served with a complaint, we believe the case is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” a Facebook spokesman said.
Facebook shut down the page on Tuesday, several days after Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein sent a letter to Zuckerberg urging him to remove it.
Facebook said the page was initially tolerated because it “began as a call for peaceful protest” but direct calls for violence began appearing and the page was removed for violating Facebook’s policies.
1 billion in damages. yea right. DISMISSED….
if it was kept up we could have caught our enemy
Aside from being an embarrassment to Jews everywhere, and reinforcing the “ambulance-chasing” stereotype, what exactly are this person’s damages?
I sincerely hope facebook responds with counterclaims of abuse of process, frivolous prosecution, etc.
Sueing is not gonna help anything, Facebook should give out the Info who opened that page to Shabak etc. And they should hunt him down and hang him ym”s!!
I hope a judge will consider the suit, but not necessarily grant any money, just to make a point for Facebook not to look the other side when violence is promoted…
Its not about $$$ its about making a point……
This suit actually has merit. I can not attest that the sum is acceptably correct that they sue for, but that said, there is merit. If facebook was aware of the hate and death crys in the sites prospects, they had a diligence to remove it before it gained any steam. To say that the site was allowed to amass 500,000 visitors and persons gives us an example of how a facebook site can indeed show us that there are that many people who are willing to make a public statement with their photo with death threats to humanity. So this is a problem. Had they stopped it at 5000 persons, there would be no reason to think that there were a total of that many death stimulating faces that wanted to be indeed culprits in the solicitation of murder for hire. So guess what folks. Lawsuit has much merit. I cant say that Mr. Zuckerberg is a bad guy but that said, lets see how we handle heresy and Godless murder threats in the future. Having a 500,000 person inception of names and faces indicates to the arab community that the responsibilty for murder is diluted by the number of crying persons and thus it makes it an easier thing to say that they can take blood for their wanting future.
If its legal to burn Korans which has already resulted in over 20 deaths of innocents, why would anyone believe it is illegal to have a facebook page promoting Infatada. Free speech unfortunately goes both ways.
The cost of defending a war against these terrorists may cost a billion. So the nu$ber is not so far fetched. The intention is to prevent terror.
I feel Facebook should have acted much quicker to take down the page. As for this lawsuit I don’t think this guy who comes from nowhere is entitled to a billion dollars. He’s just trying to milk them for money he’s not entitled to.
I dont know if it will help their case. VIN please pass it along, facebook has multiple intifada pages in Arabic. Even one page with well over 3 million likes. dont ask me how i know. just type this in arabic and youll see الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الثالثة
The person suing has not ‘standing’; no sane judge will allow the case to last more than 5 minutes.
I agree with #2 & #4 but I believe Facebook was working with Shabak collecting as much info from those who hate Israel.
To #13 , your comparison is wrong. By burning the koran you are not telling anyone to kill. Here they are telling to kill
Blah blah blah…..shut it down and 6 more like it crop up somewhere else. Also, the fact that they waited so long was only a good thing – it meant more people were able to find out about it and take time to be outraged. In any case, I never got why everyone made such a big deal about it in the first place. People like to think they are making some sort of difference by protesting a FB page but the reality is that it will take a lot more than shutting a page down to make a difference. We need global awareness and a lot of help from Above.
As a conservative-libertarian American and a observant (a.k.a. Orthodox) Jew, I’m not sure I agree with this lawsuit.
From the legal standpoint, there were no damages as of yet, and hopefully there should be none come May 15th. Even if, G-d forbid, the Muslims do respond to the page, you cannot hold a person responsible for the actions of other human beings to such a great extent.
However, even if it were Facebook’s responsibility for the most part, such a lawsuit would give Jews more negative publicity which would just be detrimental. Liberals and Judeophobes are always looking for ways to denigrate Jews and portray them as money-hungry, and this will do nothing but feed that stereotype. Yes; Blacks, Muslims, and every other “minority” group in the States can get away with it, but Jews cannot and that is a fact. We are not, and cannot be, an aggressive nation. We do not accomplish anything by playing the victim card; we succeed by proving ourselves worthy of the world’s respect.
Anyway, even if we did win, who would keep the money? Klayman and his colleagues will pocket most of it and go retire. The rest will probably go to the ADL, an unnecessary liberal organization which does nothing but repeatedly shoot itself in the foot (such as condemning Glen Beck, Israel’s greatest supporter in the media) and feed the fire of anti-Semitism. We, as Jewish Americans, have absolutely nothing to gain from this; we can only lose.