OCEAN COUNTY – Will Rise Up Ocean County rise up once more? Many do not think so as the controversial Facebook page has shut down again.

The page has been criticized in the last year for being a haven of anti-Semitism and forum for hate speech. As of Feb. 5, it has been deleted from the social media website for “using hate speech.”

Rise Up Ocean County, became active in 2018 and according to its administrators focused on bringing awareness to traffic, overcrowding and general growth issues. The page’s administrators took it down for 24 hours last month leading some to think it was gone for good but it rose back to the irritation of residents, clergy and public officials.

The administrators of Rise Up Ocean County administrators posted Facebook’s notification on their separate website: “Your page has been unpublished for using hate speech, which goes against the Facebook Community Standards.” They plan to appeal the social media group’s ruling stating its removal was “arbitrary and capricious.” In a January interview with Jersey Shore Online.com an administrator of the group who would not give his name, acknowledged that the group had come under great scrutiny by Facebook blaming Governor Phil Murphy and Attorney General Gurbir Singh Grewal for putting pressure on the social media platform.

The administrator had said that the platform was being more selective in what it was allowing to be posted, was cooperating with authorities and was being more cautious. In its appeal, the administrators said “our posts and our comments to insure that at all times we complied with Facebook community standards.”

The appeal adds that “the platform is too valuable to our efforts to risk losing it.”

Murphy and Grewal issued a joint statement said “we just learned that Facebook has decided to take down the public page on the company’s social network called ‘Rise Up Ocean County.’ Facebook’s action comes 10 months after the Director of our Division on Civil Rights, Rachel Wainer Apter, first sent a letter to Facebook expressing concerns about racist and anti-Semitic statements on the page.”

“There is a rising tide of hate around our country and around our state. We at the Division on Civil Rights are working with community organizations to combat it by creating connections, fostering mutual understanding and respect, and confronting stereotypes. You at Facebook also have a role to play in monitoring comments that incite violence based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, and disability,” Apter wrote in a letter to Facebook last April.

“Since then, we’ve consistently and repeatedly made clear our view that the page appeared to violate Facebook’s terms of service, and we appreciate that Facebook has now decided that this kind of hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform,” the joint statement added.

The statement included, “there remains much that should be done to stop the spread of hate on the Internet. The Murphy Administration will continue to call out hate whenever and wherever we see it, we will persist in demanding meaningful reforms to address the proliferation of hate online, and we will continue working to make New Jersey a safe and inclusive place for all of our residents.”

Almost a year ago, the subject of the Facebook page was noted at a press conference held in the lobby of the Jackson Municipal Complex a half hour prior to the township’s regular council meeting which the topic dominated. During the press conference various officials including (R-30th District) Sen. Robert Singer condemned the documentary and Rise Up Ocean County.

Mayor Michael Reina and the members of council said anti-Semitism had no place in Jackson or the rest of the world. The audience at that meeting was made up of many Orthodox Jews from Jackson, Lakewood and Toms River who joined township residents in calling for the governing body to adopt a resolution identical to one passed in Lakewood earlier this month proposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization.

The Freeholders passed that resolution days later. It denounced Rise Up Ocean County, calling it anti-Semitic based on the text and content of their posts and four trailers promoting the release of a documentary called “Ocean County 2030.” That documentary has not been released according to the administrators of Rise Up Ocean County.

The subject of that documentary were issues of current and future development in Ocean County primarily focusing on Lakewood, Toms River and Jackson, each of whom have had an increase in their communities’ Orthodox Jewish population.

Rise Up posted a response to the Freeholders, calling them traitors for passing the resolution shortly afterwards.