Over 4,800 restrictive measures on Palestinian social media content since October 7, says NGO

AMMAN — There has been over 4,800 restrictive measures enforced by social media platforms against Palestinian content since October 7, according to the Palestinian NGO Sada Social. 

Its statement issued on Sunday said that these measures include restricting, blocking and deleting content as well as taking down entire pages and personal accounts. 

The NGO referenced an announcement on Thursday by Meta, a parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, which stated that it has removed or marked as disturbing more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew or Arabic.

Meta additionally announced that it has detected and removed a cluster of activity and accounts linked to Hamas in 2021, and restricted a number of Instagram hashtags. Sada Social’s tracking efforts found #طوفان_الأقصى (Tawafan Al-Aqsa) to be one of these restricted hashtags. 

The Palestinian NGO’s statement added that there are over 8,000 posts in Hebrew and other languages on social media platforms containing inciting speech against Palestinians, calling for “killing and exterminating” them as well as strengthening the blockade on Gaza, cutting off water, electricity and medicine. 

It also tracked “dangerous” groups of settlers on Telegram, inciting against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, which lead to the death of six Palestinians shot by settlers in Qusra village in Nablus, in addition to assaults by settlers on Palestinians’ properties. 

Moreover, the statement revealed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank received over 138 direct messages written in Hebrew, threatening to hunt them down and kill them. 

It added that Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok allowed over 150 pieces of false and fake content, without any measures to combat and investigate it, which “gave Israel the green light to kill civilians in Gaza”. 

WhatsApp also blocked over 12 calls through its application and 35 accounts for “allegedly breaching social standards”. Some of these accounts are for journalists and users in Gaza, according to the statement.

Sada social stressed that this leaves Gazan people in grave danger due to their inability to communicate during the Israeli onslaught, which has led to cutting telecommunication networks from Gaza. 

Danger of suppressing Palestinian narrative 

It also pointed out that Meta and TikTok have blocked the phrase “from the river to the sea”, [which alludes to liberating all occupied Palestinian land], under the clause of “antisemitism”. 

“This constitutes a dangerous attempt to obliterate the Palestinian narrative, pushing the idea of antisemitism to try to silence voices that support Palestine and speak up against the Israeli occupation and apartheid,” Sada Social stated. 

It stressed that these findings point towards social media platforms’ clear government-backed intentions to “obliterate” the Palestinian narrative, while hiding Israel’s crimes against Gaza and giving it full control over the narration of the course of events from its “own viewpoint”.

Khaled Qudah, a senior journalist and member of the Jordan Press Foundation’s (JPA) council, noted that the attempt to suppress the Palestinian narrative on social media platforms is “dangerous”, especially in light of the biased coverage of Western media outlets, which reached a “shameful” point of circulating false and unverified information.

“This failed attempt is also indicative of the falsity and fragility of the Israeli narrative, and it highlights the importance of continuing to talk and publish about the struggles of Palestinians and the crimes Israel continues to commit against Gazans,” he told The Jordan Times. 

Qudah added that biased reporting that only allows the Israeli narrative to be heard, will perpetuate hate and justify violence against Palestinians and their supporters around the world. 

American and International media outlets on Monday circulated news about a 71-year-old man in Chicago who stabbed to death a six-year-old Palestinian American boy, and severely wounded his mother in their own home.

Local media outlets in the US cited officials saying that the attack is a hate crime, tied to the ongoing Israel-Palestine war. 

“This horrific hate crime is a direct result of the dehumanisation of Palestinians that has proliferated in American media in the last week,” the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), an independent non-profit organisation based in California, said on Monday, condemning the attack.  

“From Gaza to the US, children are being killed because of the incessant dehumanisation of Palestinians,” it added.