This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)
During the ongoing aggression on Gaza and up until late November 2023, Israel bombed about 50 media headquarters and centers operating in the Gaza Strip. These include the offices of Al Jazeera Network, the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Al-Aqsa Media Network, Ma'an News Agency, Sawa News Agency, Shehab News Agency, Al-Quds newspaper, Radio Baladna, Zaman Radio, the National News Agency, Khabar News Agency, Al-Ayyam newspaper, Event Media Services Company, the Fadel Shana Foundation, Holy Quran Radio, Shams News Agency, and the APA office. According to what the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate cited from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “The Israeli war on Gaza is the deadliest in terms of the number of journalists killed in more than 30 years.”
Crimes with a clear goal: Silencing journalists
In an interview with Medfeminiswiya, Omar Nazzal, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said, “The occupation’s crimes against the press corps have not stopped since October 7. The Syndicate has documented the killing of at least 62 journalists in the Gaza Strip. This figure exceeds the total number of journalists killed by Israel in the 23 years preceding October 2023. It is three time the number of journalists killed around the world since the beginning of this year.”
Nazzal emphasized that murder is not the only type of crime Israel is committing against journalists; there are many different crimes deliberately targeting journalists, their families, and homes, which are being bombed when the journalists themselves are home or not.
He explains that there are 1,200 journalists in Gaza, and that all of them “no longer work from their offices but in harsh conditions in the courtyards of hospitals and shelter centers that don’t provide them with even the minimum requirements for journalistic work. This poses a serious threat to their lives, especially the journalists who are still in Gaza City and northern Gaza. On top of these difficult circumstances,” Nazzal continues, “the occupation army and its intelligence branches are constantly threatening the lives of some of these journalists, warning them to stop their reporting in the north or run the risk of being killed.”
The occupation’s crimes against the press are not limited to Gaza. The Syndicate documented 38 cases of journalists being arrested, 32 of whom are still in occupation prisons. Most of them have been transferred to administrative detention, Nazzal says, “which means that the arrests were made on the basis of these people’s journalistic work and against freedom of opinion, expression, and publication. There are broad and many different types of violations pertaining to the prevention of movement and mobility via military checkpoints that have now cut off the West Bank, and they are also attacking people with bullets, sound bombs, and gas.”
When asked about the reasons for which Israel is committing these violations against the Palestinian press, Nazzal states, “It’s clear now. The occupation is trying to stop the Palestinian narrative from spreading around the world, is trying to block the spreading of images that show the magnitude of the genocidal massacres the occupation is committing in the Gaza Strip, the extent of the military losses its forces have suffered, which it is trying to hide. This explains the targeting of journalists, especially in northern Gaza, in recent days.”
On a related note, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Anthony Bellanger has asserted that the IFJ fully stands with Palestinian journalists and the Journalists Syndicate in its work to serve them, further adding that he has addressed international institutions, including UNESCO, about the crimes being committed against journalists in the Gaza Strip. Bellanger indicated during a meeting he held at the headquarters of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in Ramallah on November 22 that discussions are underway with the Syndicate and relevant authorities to provide safe homes for journalists in Gaza and provide for their needs, in an attempt to protect them and provide them with a safe workplace. He also saluted the Journalists Syndicate’s filing of a case over the war crimes being committed against journalists to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
7amleh-The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement has documented 687 cases of removal, restriction, or deleting of Palestinian accounts. These are in addition to other such cases that did not reach the Center and were therefore not recorded, which means that actual figures are likely to be significantly higher.
Targeting pro-Palestinian digital content
Facebook, other Meta-affiliated companies, and the X platform are facing accusations of restricting pro-Palestinian content and spreading hate speech that incites hatred and violence against Palestinians, notably during the period of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Monitoring and Documentation officer at 7amleh-The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement Ahmed Qadi explains to Medfeminiswiya how it’s become clear, since October 7, that “the monitoring and restricting of Palestinian content on social media platforms has been witnessing a massive, unprecedented escalation, and this has included deletions, removals, and access restrictions.”
Qadi added that the 7amleh Center has, to date, documented 687 cases of removal, restriction, or deleting of Palestinian accounts. These are in addition to other such cases that did not reach the Center and were therefore not recorded, which means that actual figures are likely to be significantly higher.
He also drew attention to the emergence of new methods of restricting Palestinian content and different patterns that did not previously exist. Some Instagram users were unable to comment on content that mentioned Palestine or included war stories, and some stories and posts were shadowbanned or restricted, leading to limited access to news about Palestine. Some pages and accounts were heavily restricted, their profiles appearing as a blank page with no posts despite the account actually having many. These are new patterns that Instagram has not acknowledged: it has instead claimed in its statements that these were unintended technical issues. But their intentionality is clear. The above methods join the traditional restriction methods, of course, such as accounts getting notified that their content has been removed or restricted.
For Qadi, the irony is that the companies behind these social media platforms claim that they are deleting or restricting access to content that is inflammatory and promotes hate speech. What about Hebrew-language content, then, of which the 7amleh Center has now documented the publication of more than 1,100 items that promote hate speech and were never removed? This just suggests that incitement is acceptable in Hebrew, but Palestinians are denied the right to express themselves.
In total, using the Violence Indicator, the 7amleh Center has detected more than a million cases of hate speech and incitement against Palestinians and pro-Palestine people on social media platforms in Hebrew. This content is still actively being spread as the political situation continues to escalate in the region since October 7, especially on the X platform which not only fails to track harmful content but also allows it to be published and spread.
The Center has warned that hate speech and incitement on social media translate into real attacks on the ground and holds social media companies like Meta and X responsible for managing the content posted on their platforms, especially content posted in Hebrew.
It will be difficult for suspects to prove their innocence in the absence of clear standards that determine consumption limits. The law also violates citizens’ privacy and monitors their digital activity.
A dangerous and vague law issued by the Knesset
On the Palestinian side, then, things have gone beyond digital content violations and censorship as citizens are finding themselves under unjust arrest and facing unjust legal proceedings—in reality, in real life, on the ground. This is because the Israeli Knesset ratified the law that bans the consumption of “terrorist publications,” as the law describes it, on November 8, 2023.
The law prohibits the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization that express direct calls to commit an act of terrorism” under the concepts of Israeli law. These “publications” also encompass “expressions of praise, support, or encouragement of terrorist acts, under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization” to which this law applies. The offense carries a penalty of up to one year’s imprisonment.
Simply put, this law seeks to punish people based on what they think and not on how they act, thus contradicting criminal law that doesn’t punish someone for their thoughts.
In addition, it will be difficult for suspects to prove their innocence in the absence of clear standards and a clear understanding of what the acceptable limits of this type of consumption are. Not to mention that the law violates citizens’ privacy and monitors their digital activity, thus dealing with them as potential criminals. It also limits journalistic work which is organically linked to the consumption of content and exposure to facts during periods of emergency. The law criminalizes journalists but also affects the public’s right to know, asserts the 7amleh Center.
