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One year into Israel’s military assault, which has expanded to Lebanon, Syria and Iran, but there are fewer images and video across social media.
The censorship not only continues but increases. As I persist in advocating for Palestinian people currently being slaughtered and starved to death by Israel, one of my main platforms for reaching an audience is Instagram. Meta, the company previously known as Facebook owns Instagram.
Following the response on October 7, 2023, by Hamas and other militarized Palestinian civilians to years of abuse and killings by Israeli military Meta began censoring content critical of Israel across its platforms. I began my Instagram account in 2016 and never had any posts removed.
One week after Israel began its military assault on the Gaza strip, I received a warning from Meta that my account was in danger of permanent deletion. The reason given was posting objectionable content without using a filter. I updated my version of the Instagram app as recommended by Meta and discovered that the filter was removed as an option.
Many of my posts have been removed and my account has been restricted from view to only the accounts that currently follow my account. I began documenting the numerous actions taken against my account by Meta. (Image editor is currently unavailable on my hosting account)
This was an attempt to prevent my re-posting video of the military assault captured by people in Gaza. Most of the videos were from civilians with no military background. They shared the videos to document the reality impacting civilians and counter the propaganda circulating across western news media that only military targets were being struck by the Israeli military.
In the year that Israel’s military assault has lasted there have also been several stories regarding the governments influence in censoring social media. From former Israeli government officials hired by social media companies using undue influence, to employees being fired for trying to counter unfair practices in their workplaces. Â
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There are links to the corresponding stories belowÂ
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/