Families of October 7 victims demand 4 billion shekels from Meta for failure to remove Hamas videos

The plaintiffs accuse the company of not preventing the dissemination of videos of murders, kidnappings and abuses and, in fact, turning into a platform for the propaganda of terror.

Thus, Mor Beida learned about the death of her grandmother Bracha Levinson, who was killed in her own home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from a video that terrorists filmed on Levinson’s phone and posted on her Facebook page. Despite numerous requests and complaints from relatives, the page was blocked only a few hours later, and the video was deleted only a day later. Other families also said they saw their loved ones being taken hostage in real time.

Lawyer representing the family, Gali Kerner, argues that Meta had technological tools to prevent the broadcast and distribution of such content, but the company failed to use them. The plaintiffs are demanding the creation of filtering mechanisms, warnings about traumatic content and algorithmic blocking in real time.

Let us recall that Israeli victims of terror have already filed a lawsuit against Facebook. In 2015, Shurat HaDin filed a representative lawsuit in New York court on behalf of about 20,000 Israelis demanding the removal of pages containing incitement and instructions for carrying out terrorist attacks.

Families of the victims of the Hamas attacks later filed a claim in the United States for billions of dollars in compensation. They argued that Facebook provided a platform for Hamas to plan and incite terrorist attacks.

At a hearing this week at the Tel Aviv District Court, the parties were asked to proceed to negotiations through a mediator.