A US lawyer is suing Facebook for more than $1 million after, he says, it put his life in danger after being too slow to remove a radical Palestinian page.
The page calls for a ‘third Intifada’ – an invasion of Israel – and attracted over 330,000 fans. Facebook initially said it would monitor the page and remove posts inciting violence, but last Tuesday pulled it altogether.
But this was too little, too late, according to Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch. He says that, as a Jew, he’s a potential target of the Palestinian group, and that Facebook endangered his life by leaving the page active for several day.
“One can explain the initial refusal to take down the page as an effort by Zuckerberg and Facebook to increase the social network’s net worth based on viewership and use,” he says. “It is not in dispute that Facebook has profited handsomely by the turmoil in the Middle East.”
His complaint alleges assault and negligence, including wilful and wanton conduct, gross negligence and recklessness. It’s put Klayman’s life at risk, he says, along with that of other prominent Jews. He reserves the right to be amended into a class action suit and prays for compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $1 billion.
Klayman says he knows Mark Zuckerberg’s evil because he saw it in a movie.
“Apparently, the ethically-compromised Zuckerberg has no conscience or sense of right or wrong, as depicted recently in the award winning film ‘Social Network‘,” he says.
“Defendants Zuckerberg’s and Facebook’s callous and greedy actions in not taking down the page, but wilfully allowing it to stay up for many days, has caused huge damage, for which they must be held accountable, so as to prevent this from ever happening again.”
The Anti Defamation League, which had also been calling for the removal of the page, is rather more easily mollified.
“Facebook’s decision to remove the cause page calling for a ‘Third Palestinian Intifada’ is a welcome development,” says national director Abraham Foxman.
“By taking this action, Facebook has now recognized an important standard to be applied when evaluating issues of non-compliance with its terms of service involving distinctions between incitement to violence and legitimate calls for collective expressions of opinion and action.”
When not dodging Palestinian bullets, Klayman is a regular in the US courts. Back in 1998, he sued his own mother, claiming she owed him $50,000 for nursing care for his grandmother.
Of course, Zuckerberg himself was raised as a Jew, although he now says he’s an atheist; maybe some of his relatives might think about suing him too, for endangering their lives along with Klayman’s.
