An international research institution has accused Israel of using its relations with Facebook to "fight" Palestinian content in cyberspace.
In a report received by the German Press Agency (DPA), Impact International for Human Rights Policy linked Palestinian complaints about Facebook restrictions on their content and the existence of economic interests between them and Israel.
Impact said Facebook´s business has recently grown, transforming it into a huge company that employs tens of thousands of people, which as the company expands its customer base, the company is seeking to expand beyond its national borders.
Providing regional headquarters locations for multinational companies, such as Facebook, offers them several advantages such as attracting more investment, creating jobs and connecting people working there with all kinds of experience with other national and multinational companies working there.
The Foundation´s Executive Director Maha Al-Husseini pointed out that Israel hosted a regional headquarters for Facebook, which allowed it to have an increasing influence on the Palestinian content and reached the point of arresting dozens of Palestinians for exercising just their right to freedom of expression.
Al-Husseini warned to the complaint of Palestinian social media platforms "repeatedly" of restricting Palestinian content on Facebook, "which can be linked to the pressure of Israel on the global company."
Al-Husseini highlighted the frequent visits of senior officials in Facebook and Israel and the conclusion of agreements between the two sides on the pretext of fighting incitement, which resulted in severe restriction of Palestinian content at a time when Israeli content calling for spreading hatred and propaganda against Palestinians was rarely dealt with.
Impact International stressed that multinational corporations such as Facebook "must abide by their own ethical rules that call for the promotion of freedom of expression, rejection of hatred and violence and respect for human dignity and life."
Recently, according to specialized documentation issued by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (Mada) that Facebook has closed since the beginning of this year dozens of pages for Palestinian media and activists from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
PCHR said in a report that "most of the closed pages are widely followed, and the owners have not received any advance warnings or explanations that justify Facebook´s move to close."
The Center condemned the "wide campaign" of Facebook on Palestinian media pages and considered it "a serious and serious violation of media freedoms and in response to Israel´s positions on what it considers incitement against them or against its policies and army."
In a related context, the Center (Sada Social) in a monthly report, that the management of Facebook "continues to restrict Palestinian content, without prejudice to all standards and professional ethics and rights in dealing with the Palestinian content and privacy as a people under occupation."
"More than 17 violations of Palestinian content on social media sites during the month of August, most of which were inside the Facebook site, which claims to open a safe and free space to express personal opinions and beliefs," Sada Social said.
In June last year, the Israeli Ministry of Justice revealed that in 2017, Facebook´s administration responded to nearly 85% of Israel´s requests to remove, ban and submit data on Palestinian content on the social networking site.
In April, the Hebrew daily Ha´aretz reported that Facebook had invested heavily in artificial intelligence operations in Israel through a new research and development center designed to help engineers and programmers work at the company and abroad.
Facebook is one of more than 300 multinational companies that have opened research and development facilities in Israel.
Palestinians complain that Israel is working in cooperation with social media administrations, especially Facebook, to fight Palestinian content, first and foremost, banning the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists for allegedly inciting terrorism.
Saleh al-Masri, head of the Committee to Support Journalists in Gaza, says Facebook´s administration deliberately closes dozens of personal Palestinian pages for no apparent reason, often without alerting them to the pages, as are the rules and regulations known to the company´s management.
Al-Masri criticizes "the transformation of Facebook´s important platform from a platform of awareness and knowledge exchange to a security platform that takes measures that serve Israel´s policies and are contrary to the global human rights system."
He pointed out that there are dozens, even hundreds of Israeli incitement sites on Facebook, without taking any action against them, and this shows that there is a "double standard policy and confirms that what the Facebook administration is doing violates all laws and customs and clearly violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Al-Masri asserts that the continued closure of the Palestinian pages "negatively affects the freedom of opinion and expression, and it negatively affects the values ​​of social communication because they are, in short, part of silencing voices and suppressing public freedoms."
It is noteworthy that the Palestinian Prisoners and Editors´ Affairs Authority in the PLO stated that Israel arrested more than 350 Palestinians in 2018, including journalists and writers for publications, slogans, posters or posters and photos of dead and prisoners on Facebook pages, and sometimes because of the participation and admiration of other publications.
