Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored
"The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that “the Israeli
government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to
tackle incitement on the social media network.” These meetings are
taking place “as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps
meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says
incites violence.” In other words, Israel is about to legislatively
force Facebook to censor content deemed
by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to
appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to
determine what content should be censored.
The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be
directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians who oppose Israeli
occupation. The AP article makes that clear: “Israel has argued that a
wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been
fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites.” As Alex
Kane reported in The Intercept in June, Israel has begun actively
surveilling Palestinians for the content of their Facebook posts and
even arresting some for clear political speech. Israel’s obsession with
controlling Palestinians’ use of social media is motivated by the way it
has enabled political organizing by occupation opponents; as Kane
wrote: “A demonstration against the Israeli occupation can be organized
in a matter of hours, while the monitoring of Palestinians is made
easier by the large digital footprint they leave on their laptops and
mobile phones.”
