Facebook blocks two Palestinian Arabic-language networks over covering pro-Palestine content

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The online social media and networking platform, Facebook, has blocked two prominent Palestinian Arabic-language networks on Sunday over covering pro-Palestine content, as a part a campaign aimed at stifling Palestinian voices.

Al-Qastal and Maydan al-Quds, well-known Palestinian networks hub for Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem, were blocked by the social media giant over covering pro-Palestine content and documenting Israel’s ongoing violations and attacks against Palestinians in Jerusalem.

The block came over covering yesterday’s shooting operation which was carried out by a Palestinian against Israeli occupation forces soldiers in the occupied city of Jerusalem during a surge of Israeli assaults against Palestinians, especially in occupied Jerusalem.

The operation resulted in the killing of an Israeli soldier and injuring four others. The occupation forces also shot dead the executor in the field.

Following the incident, the occupation forces launched arrest, investigation, and house raid campaigns against the executor’s family.

The two networks were documenting the attacks against the Palestinians, but the social media platform has blocked their pages.

The networks said several posts they published documenting the operation and Israeli forces attacks were reported and removed. Hours later, the two pages were blocked following dozens of reports.

Palestinian activists also said Facebook’s policy of censoring the pro-Palestine content has reached their accounts after they posted pictures and videos of the Jerusalem’s shooting operation executor and Israeli forces attacks of Palestinians following the incident.

Thus, the Palestinian activists and journalists have launched an online campaign using the hashtags #FBCensorsPalestine and #FbBlocksPalestine to express their opposition to the social media giant’s blocking of Al-Qastal and Maydan al-Quds, and Facebook’s ongoing stifling of their voices.

Pro-Palestine networks are no strangers to such restrictions on social media as the latter have been deleting and deactivating the accounts of Palestinians and pro-Palestinians.

However, Palestinian activists and networks have always said that fighting the pro-Palestine content on social media will not deter the news outlets or Palestinians from documenting and covering what the Israeli occupation commits in Palestine to the whole world.

They have always stressed they will continue covering and documenting the Palestinian cause and will strongly stand against Israel’s ongoing stifling of the Palestinian narrative.

Sada Social Center, a Palestinian digital rights organisation specializes in protecting Palestinian narratives on social media platforms and monitoting violations, documented more than 1200 violations against Palestinian content during 2020 only.

Facebook topped the list with 801 violations, followed by Twitter with 276 violations, Instagram with 25 violations, and 10 violations on YouTube.

Thus, fighting the pro-Palestine content on social media by the platform’s administrations has become very common lately, adding that pro-Palestine content is not safe in any of these platforms, especially Facebook, which is the most used among Palestinians.

Morover, suppressing and fighting the pro-Palestine content has been in coordination with the Israeli occupation government and security agencies, on the pretext of preventing Palestinian “incitement and hate speech” on its platform, stifling the Palestinian voices while giving the Israeli narrative the complete freedom.

The continuous suppressing and fighting of the Palestinian narrarive may result in a complete non-existence of the narrarive while promoting the Israeli narrative.