[News] Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2026/06/18/israel-facebook-censor-content-moderation-iran-war/>
Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
Sam Biddle
June 18, 2026
------------------------------

[image: image.png]
A residential area where an Iranian ballistic missile struck in Arad,
southern Israel, on March 22, 2026. Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images

Israel’s government asked Meta to censor social media content about its
ongoing war against Iran, according to internal documents viewed by The
Intercept.

Company records show that Israel petitioned Meta to take down Facebook and
Instagram posts expressing support for Iran, opposition to Israel, and even
depictions of Iranian missile impacts.

The government flagged a variety of materials related to the war, including
posts mourning the death of Ayatollah Khamenei following his assassination
by the U.S. and Israel on the opening day of the conflict, content
supportive of Iran’s retaliatory attacks, and Iranian accounts that shared
military analysis and propaganda sympathetic to the Iranian regime’s
perspective.

“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war
efforts is as old as time.”

In some cases, Meta complied with the censorship requests, the records
show, though it is unclear on what grounds. Meta maintains that it only
removes content as required by law or materials that violate its speech
policies.

When asked how many Iran-related takedown requests had been granted to date
since the war began, the company did not answer. The Israeli Ministry of
Justice, which submits takedown requests to social media platforms, did not
respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s social media lobbying is not new
<https://theintercept.com/2016/07/28/critics-fear-crackdown-on-palestinian-free-speech-as-israel-takes-aim-at-facebook/>;
for years the nation has leaned on its close relationship with Meta to push
for targeted enforcement of the company’s content moderation rulebook.

Israel’s Office of the State Attorney routinely lodges complaints to social
media platforms on behalf of state security agencies about content deemed
illegal or said to promote “terrorism,” according to its website. In the
documents reviewed by The Intercept, the office in some cases made no claim
that the social media content violated Israeli law. Instead, the office
asked that posts or accounts should be removed because they were in
violation of Meta’s content moderation rulebook.

Meta, for instance, designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps a “Dangerous
Organization
<https://theintercept.com/2021/10/12/facebook-secret-blacklist-dangerous/>,”
and prohibits users from engaging in many forms of positive speech about
its actions. This means posts supportive of retaliatory missile launches by
the IRGC, for instance, could run afoul of the company’s rules. No such
prohibition exists for users who post favorably about the U.S. or Israeli
militaries.

Meta did not respond to questions about the Iran war requests, but
spokesperson Daniel Roberts provided a statement to The Intercept. “Anyone
is able to report content they think violates our rules. Regardless of who
or how a piece of content is flagged, we assess it based on our policies,
which govern what is and isn’t allowed on our platform. It is wrong and
irresponsible to imply that these requests are in any way unusual or
improper.”

A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not
permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction
of whom are American.

Meta has faced scrutiny, specifically in the Middle East, for removing
content that doesn’t violate the company’s rules. A 2022 audit commissioned
by the company itself
<https://theintercept.com/2022/09/21/facebook-censorship-palestine-israel-algorithm/>
found discrepancies in its content moderation practices between Arabic and
Hebrew content. “Arabic content had greater over-enforcement (e.g.,
erroneously removing Palestinian voice) on a per user basis.” the company
found. A 2023 report
<https://www.oversightboard.com/news/6579237612162797-oversight-board-publishes-four-summary-decisions-including-on-antisemitism-law-enforcement-and-violence/>
by the company’s inhouse Oversight Board described the “over-enforcement”
of the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals blacklist,
disproportionately
<https://theintercept.com/2021/10/12/facebook-secret-blacklist-dangerous/>
composed of Muslim and Middle Eastern entities.

Meta has long claimed that as an American company, it is legally required
to sometimes remove content pertaining to certain entities sanctioned by
the U.S., such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But legal scholars
say that has little to no precedent or basis in existing sanctions law,
which focus on matters of material support rather than political speech.
It’s a policy that has created an immense ideological slant: A company
headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible
speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are
American.

Further adding to the imbalance when it comes to Middle East crises is the
fact that Meta has granted Israel privileged access to its content
moderation policy teams. In 2024, The Intercept reported how Meta employee
Jordana Cutler, a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, served as a dedicated
liaison to the Israeli government
<https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/>,
advocating for the country’s interests and helping facilitate the removal
of unwanted speech. Few other countries in the world have a dedicated
representative within Meta — in 2020, a similar policy head for India
market resigned after revelations
<https://www.wsj.com/tech/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346?mod=article_inline>
she had lobbied for rule enforcement that favored India’s ruling Hindu
nationalist party. Asked if Cutler has had a role in facilitating Israeli
takedown requests of content relating to the war, Meta did not respond.

“Meta’s close relationship with the Israeli government for takedown
requests has been a long-standing issue,” Evelyn Douek, a Stanford Law
School professor and scholar of digital speech policies, told The
Intercept. “Meta’s acquiescence in lots of takedown requests has been a
long-standing practice.”

These asymmetries of censorship power are particularly sensitive during
times of war, said Douek.

“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war
efforts is as old as time,” she said. “Allowing governments to claim
national security reasons to suppress speech willy-nilly would obliterate
the value of speech protections.”

According to a source familiar with the matter, Israel lobbied Meta to
implement a blanket rule restricting imagery of war damage within its
territory, mirroring an Israeli news media censorship policy that bars
journalists from documenting weapon impacts without military approval
<https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-israel-gaza-idf-reporting/>. Meta
has so far declined to implement such a policy for its billions of global
users, the source said. Meta did not respond to questions about the status
of this request.

The U.S. and Iran signed on Friday a ceasefire agreement
<https://theintercept.com/2026/06/15/trump-us-iran-war/>, though Israel has
suggested it would not abide by the terms of a deal. While many of the
censorship requests directly addressed the war, others were tangential to
the conflict itself. The records show Israel has pushed to remove content
expressing outrage over last month’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque
<https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0BmAZJHBsnw> by far-right government
minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It also sought to stifle posts critical of
rhetoric by Israel that linked Israel’s recent closure of Al-Aqsa with the
ongoing war.

In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown
requests.

In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown
requests. The State Attorney’s Office boasted a 92 percent compliance rate
in 2023, and a 2025 report
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorship-meta> by
Drop Site News said the overall rate has climbed to 94 percent since the
October 7 attack by Hamas.

Records reviewed by The Intercept show Israel asked for Iran war takedowns
using the exact same language evoking Hamas’s October 7 attack that it
submitted when requesting the censorship of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli
speech
<https://theintercept.com/2024/02/08/facebook-instagram-censor-zionist-israel/>
across the globe during Israel’s war on Gaza
<https://theintercept.com/collections/israel-palestine/>.

“It suggests that they don’t expect their requests are being reviewed very
carefully,” Douek said.

Douek argued that the wartime censorship requests underscore the danger of
policing speech entirely out of public view through “opaque processes” like
governmental backchannels.

“These companies … have been responsive to their own geopolitical and
commercial interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful
governments.”

“These platforms have always maintained that they are neutral, or that they
are just a platform for people to express their views, but it has long been
true that these companies have always presented a particular view of the
world and have been responsive to their own geopolitical and commercial
interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful governments,”
Douek said.

This creates a deeply lopsided dynamic when it comes to the Iran war: The
two arguably best-represented governments in the world within Meta — the
U.S. and Israel — are allied belligerents in a conflict against a state
deeply sanctioned by the company’s speech rules. “You’re going to end up
with a skewed debate,” Douek said.
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