MEE: Meta targets Palestinian journalists and delete photos of martyrs

WPRLD, Aug. 12 (YPA) – Social media giant Meta has been censoring posts referencing the recent killing of a prominent Palestinian resistance fighter, mainly targeting journalists based in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported, citing activists.

Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a senior commander of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, was killed on 9 August by Israeli forces during an army raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus and subsequent exchanges of fire, along with Islam Sobhi and Hussain Jamal Taha.

Images of Nabulsi went viral following the news of his death. Yet, a number of Palestinian journalists and activists who shared photos and videos of Nabulsi said their posts were banned on Meta-affiliated social media platforms.

They said Instagram and Facebook began deleting and censoring photos of the “martyrs” and their families following the killings. Posts that mentioned Nabulsi, Sobhi and Taha were blocked, as well as any content that mourned their death.

“I am one of the victims of the digital massacre by Meta,”  Bassam, one of the most prominent activists from Jerusalem during the Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza 2021 aggression, told MEE.

“This is a digital Israeli aggression. While Palestinians on the ground are injured by bullets and shrapnel, we are wounded online by restricting and silencing our voices,” he said.

During the first half of 2022, Sada Social Center documented around 425 digital violations against Palestinian content on social media.

Mind Force, an Israeli PR firm now banned from Meta platforms, had spent about $12,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads and reportedly ran anti-Hamas political campaigns in the Gaza Strip.

Some of its accounts posed as freelance local journalists, the vast majority of the profiles used pictures stolen from other sites, and a few appeared to have been made with artificial intelligence.

E.M