<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/facebook-labels-palestinian-journalism-hate-speech">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/facebook-labels-palestinian-journalism-hate-speech</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Facebook labels Palestinian journalism
"hate speech"</h1>
<div class="meta-data">
<div class="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr"
style="text-align: left;">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-
</span><span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2018-03-27T18:19:50+00:00">27 March 2018</span></span>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4" dir="ltr"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div>
<article>
<figure id="file-58171"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>Facebook is defending its decision to shut down the
page of a major Palestinian news outlet, describing
the action as a move against “hate speech.”</p>
<p>On Saturday, the social media giant <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/facebook-censors-palestinian-news-outlet-1">closed
without warning</a> the page of the Safa Palestinian
Press Agency, which had 1.3 million followers, as well
as Safa’s account on the photo sharing site Instagram.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the Palestinian Media Association <a
href="https://palsawa.com/post/146546">condemned</a>
Facebook’s widening assault on the free speech of
Palestinian journalists, calling it “clear submission
to the policies and dictates of the Israeli occupation
which is pursuing Palestinian activists on the basis
of their political views and intellectual positions
and issuing prison sentences against them.”</p>
<p>But Facebook is justifying the removal of Safa’s
account. “This page was correctly removed for
violating our community standards,” a company
spokesperson emailed The Electronic Intifada Monday
evening. “There is no room for hate speech or
incitement of violence on our platform.”</p>
<p>The spokesperson provided no evidence to back up the
company’s accusations against Safa, but asserted, “We
care about the voices, opinion and rights of all the
different communities on Facebook; however, keeping
our community safe is our priority.”</p>
<p>By referring to “hate speech” and “incitement” as
justifications to silence journalists, Facebook has
adopted the framework of Israel, which routinely uses
such broad and ill-defined terms to describe virtually
all criticism of its violent military occupation over
Palestinians or of its state ideology, Zionism.</p>
<p>The company did not respond to a question about
whether it had taken the action against Safa based on
a request from Israel.</p>
<h2>“Eagerness”</h2>
<p><em>The Intercept’s</em> Glenn Greenwald has
previously <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-deleting-accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-u-s-and-israeli-governments/">written</a>
and <a
href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/2/glenn_greenwald_is_facebook_operating_as">spoken</a>
about Facebook’s collusion with Israel and the United
States to silence voices they don’t like.</p>
<p>“Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness
– at times bordering on eagerness – to curry favor
with powerful governments by deleting content that
they dislike,” Greenwald told The Electronic Intifada
on Tuesday.</p>
<p>“One of the countries to which Facebook has proven
itself most subservient is the Israeli government, and
as a result, it has engaged in a year-long censorship
spree against Palestinians whose crime is that they
express views and engage in activism that Israeli
officials dislike.”</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-facebook-closes-page-of-hamas-affiliated-palestinian-news-agency-1.5939345">According</a>
to the Israeli newspaper <em>Haaretz</em>, Facebook’s
latest crackdown on Palestinian journalists and
activists began several weeks ago, after Israeli
occupation forces <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-leaders-celebrate-extrajudicial-execution">extrajudicially
executed</a> Ahmad Nasser Jarrar, a man Israel
claims was involved in the shooting death of an
Israeli settler in early January.</p>
<p>Israeli lawmakers also <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/how-facebook-protects-israel">discussed</a>
how to suppress online content, including getting
Facebook to take down images of Jarrar.</p>
<p>Since the beginning of the year, <em>Haaretz</em>
says, citing an unnamed Palestinian activist who
monitors the issue, about 500 Facebook pages of
Palestinian activists and journalists have been closed
by the company.</p>
<h2>Wide-ranging coverage</h2>
<p>According to <em>Haaretz</em>, Safa has been
operating for a decade as a “Hamas-affiliated”
counterpart to Wafa, the official Palestinian news
agency that is controlled by the Palestinian Authority
and the Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas.</p>
<p>But Safa’s <a href="http://safa.ps">website</a>
shows that its reporting is fairly typical of a wide
range of Palestinian media outlets, covering violence
by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians,
local, regional and international politics, and human
interest stories.</p>
<p>The outlet carries reports on the activities of all
political factions. On Tuesday, for instance, <a
href="http://safa.ps/post/232300">one of its lead
stories</a> was on a cabinet meeting led by Rami
Hamdallah, the PA prime minister, in which Hamdallah
asserted that his government “will not abandon our
people in Gaza.”</p>
<p>Hamas and the PA <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/omar-karmi/targeting-palestinian-unity">remain
bitter rivals</a> over who should run Gaza.</p>
<p>The report includes the PA’s claims about the
achievements of its efforts in Gaza, such as bringing
together 55 countries at a donors conference last week
to fund a $565 million water desalination plant in the
Israeli-blockaded coastal territory.</p>
<p><a href="http://safa.ps/post/232296/">Another report</a>
Tuesday carries a statement by Abbas’ official
spokesperson describing recent US decisions to cut aid
to the PA as “a war on our people.”</p>
<h2>Obeying censorship</h2>
<p>Palestinians are avid users of Facebook and it is
often a primary source of information about what is
happening in their communities.</p>
<p>But social media has made it hard for Israel’s
censors to control information flowing from and to
Palestinians under their military rule.</p>
<p>Last week, an Israeli military court <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-sentences-ahed-tamimi-eight-months-prison">sentenced</a>
Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to eight months in
prison for slapping a heavily armed occupation soldier
in the West Bank.</p>
<p>It also sentenced her mother Nariman for filming the
incident and <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/22/israel-jails-palestinian-mother-facebook-live-video-daughter-slapping-soldier/">streaming
it on Facebook</a>.</p>
<p>Israel’s persecution of the Tamimi family over the
incident has become an international rallying point
for Palestine solidarity.</p>
<p>But for now, Israel appears to have solved its
Facebook problem by leaning on the company to submit
to its commands.</p>
<p>According to Glenn Greenwald, “Facebook has empowered
Israeli officials to control its content by obeying
their censorship dictates in almost all cases.”</p>
<br>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>