Wide Protests and Campaigns Against Facebook Attack on Palestinian Content

Gaza, MINA – On Wednesday evening, a large electronic campaign was launched against the social networking platform Facebook, because of its attack against Palestinian content.

Activists on social media launched electronic campaigns, in conjunction with a series of international and loca protests, to pressure Facebook to retract its policy towards Palestinian content, MINA’s Contributor in Gaza reported.

Thousands of posts, on social media, confirmed that the Palestinian narrative will not be absent from social media platforms, despite the Israeli incitement that coincides with the Facebook platform’s attack against Palestinian content.

The activists denounced Facebook’s policy, which escalates its violations against the Palestinian narrative with flimsy pretexts, while at the same time it does nothing about the escalating Israeli incitement, which calls for the killing and arrest of Palestinians.

The “Facebook Blocks Jerusalem” campaign said that there is a real danger threatening Palestinian content, especially after Facebook developed an algorithm that enables it to delete users’ posts if they include the names of Palestinian factions, even without looking at the context in which they were mentioned.

In a brief video, the preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, expressed his regret that Facebook is blocking Palestinian news pages, as this contradicts freedom of opinion and expression and comes within the framework of bias towards the Israeli occupation.

Sheikh Sabri said that the Facebook administration is obligated to be impartial and to allow everyone to express their point of view, adding that Facebook is subject to legal accountability for distinguishing it between one media outlet and another.

Activist Dima Al-Shawa noted that 2021 is the worst year for Palestinian digital content because Facebook has deleted everything related to Palestine and Jerusalem in an attempt to uproot the Palestinian narrative.

The “Saudis with Al-Aqsa” account, which is followed by more than 90,000 people on Twitter, also interacted with the campaign, calling for sharing the hashtag “so that the voice of Palestine reaches the whole world, and we expose the racist practices of the Facebook administration.”

In 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Justice announced that the Facebook administration responded in 2017 to about 85 percent of the occupation entity’s requests to remove and block Palestinian content and provide data on it.

It is reported that during one year, Facebook deleted more than 350 Palestinian pages, while keeping thousands of Israeli pages that incite against the Palestinians.

Facebook has officially admitted responding to 90% of requests from the Israeli occupation government to delete Palestinian accounts and materials.

The Echo Social Center said that 2021 is the worst year for Palestinian content, as more than 600 violations were documented on Facebook, including more than 200 violations against pro-Palestinian media pages and journalists’ accounts. (L-K-G/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)