Militants and journalists consider that there is a digital “persecution” against Palestinians on Facebook due to the removal of publications.
Using the keywords “Facebook restricts Jerusalem,” Palestinian militants and journalists They have been carrying out a campaign for a month against the American social media giant accused of deleting, through its algorithms, pro-Palestinian content on its platform.
On December 4, journalist Christine Rinawi posted on her Facebook account a video showing Israeli security forces shooting in Jerusalem at a Palestinian lying on the ground, killed after carrying out a knife attack on an Israeli civilian.
Shortly after publication, the journalist, followed by about 400,000 people on the social network, notes that the photo was removed from his account, which had already been restricted when he shared images of another attack in Jerusalem.
In both cases, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, estimated that the violent images violated its rules.
But Rinawi told AFP that in her understanding it is more of a digital “persecution” against the Palestinians. This correspondent for the public channel Palestina TV assures that she does not share personal opinions but acts as a journalist.
The Internet outlet Maydan Al Quds suffered a similar fate. His main account, followed by more than 1.2 million people, was directly suppressed. Then a second page, followed by 80,000 people, also disappeared.
“Silencing” the Palestinians
The newsroom hesitates to create new Facebook pages “because they could be suppressed again,” explains journalist Baraa Abou Ramoz, who accused the US giant of wanting to “silence the voice of Jerusalem.”
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch drecently announced a “censorship” of Facebook for having “unfairly” suppressed pro-Palestinian posts in May, at a time of increasing violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
According to Sada Social, a movement defending “Palestinian digital rights,” 600 pro-Palestinian accounts or posts were restricted or suppressed in 2021, a record.
For Rama Youssef, spokesperson for the “Facebook caesura Jerusalem” campaign, the platform follows a “double standard”. Consulted by AFP, Meta assured that the same rules apply to all Internet users “without distinction”.
“We have a dedicated team, including Arabic speakers and Hebrew speakers, who look after the safety of our community by taking care of removing harmful content, while responding as quickly as possible to any errors,” stated one company spokesperson.
The term “martyr”, often used by Palestinians to describe people killed by Israeli forces, whether in an attack or otherwise, it is still a problem because it is prohibited by the social networksays Iyad Al Rifai, a Palestinian media specialist.
Meta “invokes US law that considers attackers as terrorists,” explains this expert who said he had had several interviews with those responsible for the company. When asked about its policy on this word, Meta did not comment. (I)
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