TikTok 'bans' Gaza journalist Bisan Owda account with 1.4 million followers

Bisan Owda, one of the most followed Palestinian journalists on social media, has accused TikTok of banning her account, citing changes to the platform’s US ownership and remarks made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The 28-year-old journalist claimed on Wednesday that her original TikTok account - which previously had 1.4 million followers - was no longer accessible.  

Speaking in a video filmed from Gaza and shared across her social media platforms, including a newly launched TikTok page, Owda said she had spent four years building her following before losing access to the account. 

"TikTok deleted my account. I had 1.4 million followers there, and I have been building that platform for four years," Owda said. 

"I expected that it will be restricted, like every time, not banned forever," she added. 

The Emmy award-winning journalist and activist, who has gained international recognition for her reporting on Israel’s more than two-year devastating war on Gaza, pointed to recent statements by Netanyahu and Adam Presser, the newly appointed chief executive of TikTok’s US arm, as potential explanations for the ban. 

In her video, Owda shared footage of Netanyahu meeting pro-Israel influencers in New York in September last year, during which he expressed hope that the "purchase" of TikTok would be completed. 

"We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media," Netanyahu said at the time. 

The Israeli leader, who is currently facing arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), added: "The most important purchase that is going on right now is … TikTok. TikTok, number one, number one, and I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential."

Owda also shared an undated clip of Adam Presser discussing changes introduced at TikTok during his tenure as head of US operations.  

In the video, Presser said that "the use of the term Zionist as a proxy for a protected attribute" had been designated "as hate speech", referring to the nationalist ideology that emerged in late 19th-century Europe advocating the creation of a Jewish state. 

"There’s no finish line to moderating hate speech, identifying hateful trends, trying to keep the platform safe," Presser said. 

TikTok announced last week that a deal to establish a separate US version of the platform had been completed, with the new entity controlled by investment firms - many of them US-based - including several linked to US President Donald Trump. 

As of Wednesday, at the time of publication of Owda’s latest video, her original TikTok account appeared to remain visible in the United Kingdom and the Middle East.  

However, the most recent video displayed on the page dated back to September 2025 and had accrued just 14,700 views, a sharp drop compared with Owda’s previous videos, which typically attracted between 100,000 and one million views. 

The Gaza-based content creator is widely known for posting daily videos from inside the war-torn territory, often opening with the line: “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m still alive.”  

She later produced a documentary of the same name with Al Jazeera’s AJ+, which won an Emmy Award in 2024 for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story. 

The developments come as the Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents hundreds of journalists working in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, voiced frustration after Israel’s Supreme Court again delayed a ruling on a petition calling for free and independent press access to Gaza.  

Since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, foreign journalists have been barred from entering the enclave independently. 

Instead, Israel has allowed only a limited number of reporters to enter Gaza on a case-by-case basis through embeds with its military.