On 24 June, Google-owned YouTube deleted the channel of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, claiming that it had violated the platform’s ‘violent criminal organisations’ policy. YouTube simultaneously deleted the channel of Samidoun coordinator Charlotte Kates with no warning whatsoever. These actions signal broad collusion by social media and digital sharing platforms with the Zionist state and its backers, complying with direct lobbying by the occupation.
The campaign to silence Samidoun has been led by Meta, which runs Instagram and Facebook. From 10 April, a series of Samidoun Instagram accounts was systematically suspended with no recourse to genuine appeal. This included the international Samidoun Network account, which had over 20,000 followers, and regional accounts of Samidoun campaigns in Gothenburg, Paris Banlieue, New York/New Jersey, the Netherlands, Albuquerque and Manchester. Run by FRFI supporters, the Manchester Samidoun campaign had faced censorship for images featuring Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled and posts promoting meetings and film shows, including those at student solidarity camps. Other pages targeted for suspension included the Facebook page of Victory to the Intifada, the campaign set up by FRFI and Muslim activists in Britain in 2000, and which has consistently supported Samidoun calls to action.
This censorship is linked to the 2015 Zionist state establishment of a cyber unit, working around the clock to silence anti-Zionist voices, with Meta a particular partner. Of 20,000 requests by this cyber unit in 2019, Meta complied with 90%, maintaining this percentage since the October 2023 outbreak of the al-Aqsa Flood operation. Among the posts deleted by Meta during this period and documented by Access Now include:
- Censorship and removal of evidence documenting the 17 October Zionist massacre at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed 471 people and injured over 342.
- Instagram removing on 28 October videos showing the arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank, claiming violations of ‘dangerous individuals and organisations’ policies.
- The silencing, banning or ‘shadow banning’ of Palestinian journalists including Leila Warah, Faten Elwan, Saleh Al-Jafarawi and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, along with the accounts of Ajjyal Radio Network, BreakThroughNews, 24FM and Palestinian Refugees Portal.
- Hiding keywords, symbols and hashtags, including ‘al-Aqsa Flood,’ ‘resistance’ and the Palestinian flag.
Having already engineered its algorithms to hide or ‘shadow ban’ pro-Palestine content since and before October 2023, Meta is particularly desperate to cleanse its platforms of any support for resistance leaders. Similar to the treatment of Manchester campaigners, Samidoun Paris is among the campaigns to have content deleted for featuring ‘dangerous individuals and organisations’. The latter includes images and information on political prisoners Khalida Jarrar and Ahmad Sa’adat, and martyred prisoner and activist Khader Adnan. In early June, representatives of the Zionist state had written directly to the Samidoun web host, demanding that the website be taken down as it constituted a ‘cybercrime’.
Signalling a trend that specifically targets principled, anti-imperialist campaigns and platforms, Meta and YouTube censorship has also included the Within Our Lifetime, Mapping Project, Mondoweiss and the Palestine Chronicle. It is imperative that this censorship is fought, alongside building and strengthening revolutionary, pro-Palestine media outside of the confines of social media corporations. We urge all supporters of Palestinian liberation to complain to Meta and demand that Samidoun and Victory To the Intifada have their accounts reinstated.
LINKS
Samidoun timeline of online censorship: tinyurl.com/samidoun-timeline
Samidoun videos are viewable at: https://odysee.com/@samidounnetwork:d
