GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – Facebook & Israel

Facebook has been in our NZ media news recently. But there is another issue human rights activists  have with Facebook. That is, Facebook’s cooperation with Israel’s suppression of Palestinians’ right to communicate.

Glenn Greenwald has reported that in 2016, Israeli officials said to Facebook

“We are going to enact a law that requires you to delete the accounts of the—whatever accounts our government identifies as guilty of incitement… companies that don’t comply with its censorship orders…the only way that you can avoid this law is if you voluntarily obey the orders that we give you about who should be deleted.”

Greenwald  added, “And Facebook, whether because they were driven by business interests of not wanting to lose the Israeli market, or ideology, that they support the Israeli viewpoint of the world, which ever one of those motives might be driving them, or whatever mixture of motives, complied with the Israeli demands. “

In September 2016, Facebook representatives met with the Israeli government to be told which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted ‘incitement’. Israeli intelligence has developed a predictive policing system, a computer algorithm, that analyzes social media posts to identify Palestinian ‘suspects’. They claim they can predict who is likely, some time in the future to commit ‘terrorism’.

The Israelis say that social media leads to incitement, pointing to the number of ‘likes’ as evidence. For Palestinians, using social media to share what they witness is their only way of communicating .

The meetings were called for and presided over by Israel’s  Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. Shaked herself , via Facebook in 2015, called for the genocide of Palestinians , declaring that  “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy”, and calling  for the destruction of anything connected with Palestinians “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”

She called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.” Her post was shared more than one thousand times and received almost five thousand ‘Likes’.

The next day Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive allegedly by six Israeli Jewish youths.

But never mind. Israeli Jews are free to say what they like on Facebook. Israelis have virtually free rein to post whatever they want about Palestinians. Calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed. Palestinian politicians. Ahmad Tibi and Haneen Zoabi, both Palestinian members of the Knesset, are regularly subjected to violent threats on Facebook.

The meeting with Facebook and the Justice Minister was about silencing Palestinians,    including Palestinian journalists, from reporting what they witness, and/or for complaining about any aspect of the ongoing occupation.

Facebook,  obediently following orders from the Israelis, has been on a ‘censorship rampage’ against Palestinians.  

Facebook has suspended the personal profiles and organizational pages of Palestinians, while Israeli occupation forces have detained hundreds of Palestinians for their posts on social media.

The most well known cases are of the poet Dareen Tatour , under house arrest, still, after posting a poem Facebook in 2015, and the  astrophyicist professor Imad Barghouti. Dareen Latour’s case has been taken up by writers around the world. The arrest of Professor Barghouti, who has worked with Nasa, sparked outrage among many British academics.  

The Palestinian Authority, PA, is also cracking down on dissent. Under their new   ‘Electronic Crimes Law’, the PA detained Youth Against Settlements leader Issa Amro of Hebron in September 2017, for criticising the PA on Facebook.  Issa Amro is highly respected by international rights activists. The settlers in Hebron, fanatic fundamentalists from New York, are notorious for their violence.

 

The most recent news is of the raid on Birzeit University by Israeli police (or IDF?). Mascarading as journalists, they arrested students they identified as possible future ‘enemies’. Among those arrested was 22-year old  Istbraq Tamimi, secretary of the university’s student council. She is studying radio and television journalism in the media faculty at the University. Are the Israelis assuming that she is capable of saying something or reporting something one day  that does not meet approval?

She is one of about 60 Birzeit students held in Israeli detention.

 

 

There is so much more that could be said.  Glenn Greenwald is very concerned about social media censorship. He writes about the Chinese and US Governments’, as well as the Israel Government’s, dealings with Facebook.  

Samidoun and electronicintifada are two sources about information re Palestinian prisoners.

The main point to be made is that Facebook is not a feel-good charity; it’s a profit-driven corporation.  It has power that we the public need to try to comprehend.

 

Lois Griffiths is a human rights activist