[News] The world owes Palestine this much – please stop censoring Palestinian voices

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 The world owes Palestine this much – please stop censoring Palestinian
voices
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Tuesday 10-December-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/the-world-owes-palestine-this-much-please-stop-censoring-palestinian-voices/

Social media censorship is a global phenomenon, but the war on
pro-Palestinian views on social media represents a different kind of
censorship, with consequences that can only be described as dire.

Long before the current devastating war on Gaza and the escalation of
Israeli violence and repression in the Occupied West Bank, Palestinian and
pro-Palestinian voices have been censored.

Some date the censorship to an agreement in 2016 that, according to the
Israeli government, sought to “force social networks to remove content that
Israel considers to be incitement.”

This was translated, almost immediately, to the shutting down of thousands
of accounts and the barring of many social media influencers, with the hope
of slowing down the vastly growing pro-Palestinian tendencies in all
Meta-linked platforms.

The war on Gaza, however, has escalated the censorship. In a report
submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion
and Expression, Human Rights Watch noted that the documented restrictions
on freedom of speech “undermine the fundamental human rights to freedom of
expression and assembly.”

The censorship became so sophisticated and increasingly involved a direct
Israeli role. To ensure that ‘offenders’ to Israeli sensibilities were
eliminated in large numbers, Meta began censoring specific words, thus
deeming entire contents offensive, racist and anti-Semitic.

But Meta was not the only social media network involved in this practice.
On 17 November, 2023, the X platform (previously known as Twitter) declared
that users who write terms like “decolonization”, “from the river to the
sea”, or similar expressions would be suspended.

One year later, the social media platform Twitch followed suit by revising
its ‘Hateful Content Policy’ to include “Zionist” as a potential slur.

Not only do these decisions, and many others, directly impair the freedom
of speech and press, but they also confuse rational conversations with
anti-Jewish sentiments.

The word ‘genocide’, for example, is not a swear word, but a common term,
embraced by numerous countries around the world, accusing Israel of
carrying out acts of genocide, meaning the “systematic destruction of a
group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race”.

Under pressure from many countries, and after presenting a powerful case at
The Hague, South Africa managed to compel the International Court of
Justice to investigate Israel’s acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip in
violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In other words, this is not a matter for Mark Zuckerberg or any other
social media company to decide, based on direct consultations with those
carrying out the mass killings in Gaza.

The same applies to Zionism, an ideologically situated political movement
that traces its history to 19th-century Europe, thus, neither to a specific
race nor a religious text.

While many are, rightly, outraged by the fact that this kind of widespread,
and growing, censorship directly challenges the main tenets of democracy,
the actual harm for Palestinians is much bigger.

According to a November 2024 report by the Sada Social Centre for Digital
Rights, the surge in digital violations targeting Palestinian content could
not come at a worse time.

According to the organization, “Meta platforms accounted for the largest
share of violations at 57 per cent, followed by TikTok at 23 per cent.”
YouTube and X follow at 13 and 7 per cent respectively.

This censorship, according to Sada, includes the shutting down of WhatsApp
accounts, another Meta-owned platform that is also tightly controlled.

Unlike most of us, Palestinians in Gaza use these platforms to communicate
with one another, to know who is dead and who is alive, and to raise
awareness of certain massacres, often taking place in isolation, especially
in the northern Gaza Strip.

Regarding northern Gaza, Sada Social spoke of a ‘digital blackout’, which
has compounded the horror of that region – famine, mass killing,
destruction of all hospitals, etc.

In the specific case of social media censorship in Gaza, lives are
literally being lost as a result of politically motivated decisions.

HRW was one of many rights groups that have routinely spoken about the
‘systematic censorship’ by Meta. A December 2023 HRW report identified the
following recurring patterns of censorship: removal of content, suspension
of pro-Palestinian accounts, the reduction of visibility, known as
‘shadow-banning’, the restrictions on engagement, and the deliberate misuse
of policies on hate speech and graphic content.

The danger of this kind of censorship is multilayered. It is a direct
threat to one of the most basic freedoms guaranteed under the law in any
democratic society. In the case of Gaza, the censorship takes a dark,
deadly turn as it could make the difference between people dying under the
rubble of their homes or receiving assistance.

Additionally, censorship of this magnitude often creates precedents and
often leads to other forms of censorship that, in fact, are already taking
place against other vulnerable communities, whether on a national stage or
globally.

While the international community is yet to translate its verbal solidarity
with Palestinians into any meaningful action, the least we could do is to
give Palestinians their full rights to express their views, share their
pain, and raise awareness of their collective plight. The world owes them
that much, and no social media company should be permitted to hinder such a
simple and reasonable demand.

*-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).*
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