Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been slammed with a one billion dollar lawsuit for damages over a page calling for ‘the Third Intifada’ in Israel.
The page, which was closed by Facebook earlier this week, attracted over half a million fans initially with a call for supposedly ‘peaceful resistance.’ It was then discovered that administrators were urging users to ‘march into Israel,’ which violated Facebook’s protocols regarding hate speech and violence. ‘Intifada’, which translates to ‘uprising’ in Arabic, has historic significance to both Israelis and Palestinians, with previous Intifadas involving violence, terrorism, civil unrest and most recently, suicide bombings.
The page admins reportedly posted highly-charged quotes from Islamic traditional text, Hadith which, read: “The hour [of redemption] does not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and even the stones and trees say, ‘O Muslim, a Jew is behind me, so kill him.’”
Facebook axed the page on Tuesday, a couple days after Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein wrote to Zuckerberg, who is incidentally also Jewish, asking him to remove it. But an American Jew, Larry Klayman, is suing the company and founder for negligence, saying they did not act quickly enough to stop postings on the page in Arabic urging users towards violence. Facebook has responded by saying the case is ‘without merit’ and they intend to fight it in court.
via AFP.
