Twitter continues bias against Palestinian content, suspends pro-Palestine account

QNN TeamNovember 17, 2022
2 minutes read

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Twitter has suspended account of Palestine Online, a pro-Palestine team aims to expose Israeli occupation crimes online, without no apparent reason except silencing the Palestinian narrative, activists have said.

On Thursday, managers of the Palestine Online team announced that Twitter suspended the account with 82,000 followers and provided no reasons for such a move.

In a tweet from the team back-up Twitter account, the managers confirmed the suspension with a screenshot of a message from Twitter that read, “Account Suspended. Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter rules.”

The managers told Quds News Network (QNN) that “it is clear that the reason behind the suspension is hiding and silencing the Palestinian narrative which exposes the reality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine,” adding this is an “unjustified move.”

The managers added, “We will continue exposing Israel’s violations to the whole world and the social media giants’ censorship of Palestinian content will not deter us from covering what the Israeli occupation commits in Palestine.”

The Palestine Online managers noted that Pro-Palestine teams and networks are “no strangers to such restrictions on social media,” as “suppressing and fighting the pro-Palestine content has been done 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 complete freedom is what the social media giants, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have been doing since the past years,” they added.

Sada Social Center, a Palestinian digital rights organization that specializes in protecting Palestinian narratives on social media platforms and monitoring 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.

In 2021, however, it documented 1593 violations against Palestinian content, including 174 on Instagram, 16 on YouTube, 853 on Facebook, and 445 on Twitter.

In response to the suspension and the “deliberate bias” against Palestinian content, Palestinian and pro-Palestine activists launched an online campagin yesterday, tweeting on the hashtag #TwitterCensorsPalestine, calling the microblogging and social networking company to stop censoring the Palestinian content.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territory, tweeted, “I trust you can explain the reason behind this suspension. Can you?” while mentioning Twitter Support and Twitter’s official account.

Geoffrey Young, a US Democrat who will be running for Kentucky Governor in 2023, also tweeted, “Twitter has suspended the account of Palestine Online, one of the most influential Palestinian news outlets on Twitter, to prevent them from conveying the truth of Israeli apartheid to over 80,000 followers.”

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QNN TeamNovember 17, 2022
2 minutes read

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