Image [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor] found in a 2018 article titled “Israel counts on Saudi ‘fatwa’ to discourage protests”
The amazing phenomenon the world is largely unaware of is that the more brutal the suppression of Palestinian resistance is, the more determined Palestinians everywhere are in their commitment to defend themselves. Palestinians are saying, literally, “over our dead bodies.”
The denial, suppression and violation of Palestinians’ right to resist the ongoing colonization and judaization of their homeland is so brutal and vicious, the mind boggles in awe at their heroic steadfastness — as they mourn and bury their slain martyrs, as they denounce and reject their puppet leader’s shameless complicity with those intent on liquidating their just cause, as they look on with rising alarm and anger at kowtowing Arab governments selling Palestine down the river.
The reason you may not have heard anything positive about the burgeoning Palestinian armed resistance in the West Bank, for example, is because the tools of corporate America’s mainstream and social media are primed to step over those bodies, convinced that unhinged Israeli greed, violence and brutality will finally succeed in stamping out Palestinian resistance, that the coffin lid on Palestine only needs one or two more screws to stay put.
And they conspire to make sure you only hear stories and analyses and see images of defeat rather than of resilience, defiance, and opportunity.
As many are aware, anti-Zionist attacks on Israel and pro-Palestinian speech is restricted and penalized on many social-media platforms. Recently, using the standard of “dangerous individuals and organizations” as cover, Facebook removed one of my posts in which I shared and quoted from Khaled Barakat’s seminal article about Israel’s colonization of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.
تطورات الضفّة: نحو فهم أدقّ للمُستعمَرة
وأدواتها
السبت 2 أيلول 2023
خالد بركات
https://al-akhbar.com/Albilad/369122/
Facebook’s decision to delete the above content is in keeping with documented efforts on the part of Meta to erase the Palestinian narrative and color Palestinian resistance as terrorism. This bias has been amply documented by the following recent expose: “Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel”:
Tip of the Iceberg episode investigated how Facebook targets Palestinian content related to Israel: “The programme’s investigation, which aired on Friday, included admissions by Eric Barbing, former head of Israel’s cybersecurity apparatus, about his organisation’s effort to track Palestinian content according to criteria that included ‘liking’ a photo of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces.”
As I explained to Meta’s Oversight Board in my appeal requesting a review of Facebook’s decision to remove my post of Khaled Barakat’s article that I had shared in a group (ironically called “Free Speech on Palestine”) that also resulted in restrictions imposed on my Facebook profile:
“Virtually all Palestinian political and resistance organizations are classified by the Israeli occupation as ‘terrorists.’ These are the organizations and political parties that represent the majority of the Palestinian people, and any serious discussion of Palestinian politics, society and history will also be a discussion of these movements. Such restrictions — often seemingly employed algorithmically — prevent Palestinians from discussing their politics and their lives, as well as their resistance, on one of the world’s largest social media sites.
The standard used also means I cannot share/discuss, for example, content from Palestinian institutes such as the study (مجموعات المقاومة في الضفة الغربية تفاصيل النشأة والتطور/) on the rise, development and strategic impact of armed resistance in the West Bank conducted by Masarat -The Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic Studies:
Nor can I discuss views (English with Arabic subtitles) on Palestinian armed resistance as expressed recently by the Electronic Intifada’s co-founder Ali Abunimah on Al Mayadeen.”
I urge you, therefore, to take the time to click on the links I have provided above to educate yourselves on what Palestinian political analysts and intellectuals are saying, and what Meta in its flagrant espousal of the racist colonial Zionist cause does not wish you to share or discuss.
Note: First published on Medium
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
