Report shows spike in online hate speech, censorship targeting Palestinians

A report published by a non-profit organisation has indicated an increase in attacks targeting Palestinian digital rights on key social media and technology platforms.

The report by 7amleh, which advocates for Palestinian digital rights, looked at registered violations between May 6 and 19, which they say numbered over 500.

These violations include the spread of hate speech and incitement against Palestinians and Arabs in the Hebrew language, and indicate an increase in censorship of pro-Palestinian narrative online.

❗️Over the past two weeks, 7amleh documented more than 500 reports of Palestinian digital rights violations, which showed a significant increase in the censorship of Palestinian political speech.

Check out full report: https://t.co/NFR9rINQRE#DigitalRights pic.twitter.com/eliPy3jcsh

— 7amleh حملة (@7amleh) May 21, 2021

A noticeable increase in attacks online was recorded after incidents in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers backed by Israel have attempted to forcibly displace Palestinian residents.

Palestinian content and accounts were also removed following the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli forces, and the protests and mobs of Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians, as well as the airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the report said.

7amleh broke down the reports by social media platforms, specifying that 50% of these reports related to Instagram, 35% to Facebook, 11% to Twitter and 1% to Tik Tok, while the remaining 3% “did not include sufficient information to be reported to companies”.

"Additionally, it is likely that the efforts of the Israeli Ministry of Justice’s Cyber Unit - which over the past years submitted tens of thousands of cases to companies without any legal basis - is also behind many of these reported violations"

"7amleh also received 40 reports that exposed the hate speech and incitement to violence directed towards Palestinians and Arabs online, including reports of Israeli extremist groups mobilising lynch mobs on WhatsApp and Telegram", it continued, blaming this incitement on the killing of two Palestinians later on.

In early May, Instagram admitted that user posts were removed, after being accused of deleting posts and suspending accounts reporting on the Sheikh Jarrah evictions which caught global attention.  

The social media platform said it was a “technical error”, after Palestinian activists and media outlets reported that posts had been taken down.

In its annual report published earlier this month, 7amleh had cautioned over digital monitoring and censorship of Palestinian accounts, which Israeli authorities had stepped up due to the coronavirus pandemic.

While acknowledging that this was to monitor Covid patients’ whereabouts, 7amleh warned that Israeli authorities were increasingly monitoring the movements of citizens, which “set a dangerous precedent in terms of human rights”.

Al-Hadith Newspapers, PalToday News Agency and a Hebrew-to-Arabic translator filed a legal complaint with Facebook on Wednesday for allegedly censoring their posts and shutting down their accounts.