20,000 Israelis sue Facebook for allowing Palestinian incitement

Special to WorldTribune.com

Facebook is being sued by some 20,000 Israelis who say the social media site has ignored postings by Palestinians inciting violence and calling for the murder of Jews.

The lawsuit filed in New York on Oct. 25 is requesting an injunction requiring Facebook to block all racist incitement and calls for violence against Jews in Israel. The plaintiffs are not seeking damages from Facebook.

facebookstab1The plaintiffs, in a press release, said a number of recent Palestinian attacks on Jews “were motivated by incitement to murder they read on Facebook — demagogues and leaders exhorting their followers to ‘slaughter the Jews,’ and offering instruction as to the best manner to do so, including even anatomical charts showing the best places to stab a human being.”

“Facebook’s refusal to remove the flood of extremist videos, statements and cartoons being posted by Palestinians is encouraging imminent violence and fanning the flames of the terrorist attacks that have overwhelmed Israel in the past month,” the plaintiffs said.

Israeli-American Richard Lankin, 76, is the lead plaintiff. He was critically injured in a recent terror attack in Jerusalem and died on Oct. 27.

Facebook, the plaintiffs say, “is far from a neutral or passive social media platform and cannot claim it is a mere bulletin board for other parties’ postings,” as it “utilizes sophisticated algorithms to serve personalized ads, monitor users’ activities and connect them to potential friends” and claims that it “has the ability to monitor and block postings by extremists and terrorists urging violence just as it restricts pornography.

“While everyone understands the need to keep the web free, Facebook’s decision to allow this flood of terrorist incitement and calls to murder Jews to continue has crossed all red lines,” says attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.” Facebook is fanning the flames of the current Palestinian intifada and its refusals to actively monitor and block the incitement to violence is an outrageous abandonment of its obligations to the public.”

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