PA: “Legitimate resistance to the occupation is not terror, but rather a right.”
Headline: “The [PA] Ministry of Information calls on the management of Facebook to honor freedom of opinion”
“The [PA] Ministry of Information said that it has been monitoring for a while what the management of Facebook is doing, and the operations it conducts to block accounts of Palestinian activists and pages of Palestinian institutions and news websites. [The ministry noted] that this is a phenomenon that has been exacerbated by the agreement between the company and the occupation authorities, under the pretext of supervision of the Palestinian content in the virtual world!
The ministry… emphasized that the attempt to silence the free Palestinian voice and to blame it for what is called ‘incitement’ is completely baseless and sins against reality, as the administration of the company and the global interactive platform can monitor for an hour the postings of the supporters of extremism in Israel – who call to kill our people and praise those who murder and burn our children – in order to reevaluate its unbalanced policy. This is because the legitimate resistance to the occupation is not terror, but rather a right that all conventions on human rights have recognized and guaranteed.
It called on the administration of the website not to harm the freedom of expression and publication, and not to ignore the racist and inciteful contents being posted by the extremists in the occupation state, who use this platform as a starting point for murder, carnage, and aggression.
The ministry again emphasized that the freedom of opinion and expression is guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that it is not a favor from anyone or a gift from a search engine or interactive platform.”
PA leaders and officials have legitimized Palestinian violence by quoting UN resolution 3236 which "recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means." The PA interprets "all means" as including violence against civilians, but has chosen to ignore the continuation of the resolution which states that the use of "all means" should be "in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations..." The UN Charter prohibits targeting civilians, even in war. Chapter 1, Article 1, opens by saying that "international disputes" should be resolved "by peaceful means."
Cartoon published in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
The cartoon shows an Israeli politician - recognizable as such because the figure used to depict him is a figure regularly used by the cartoonist to depict Israelis - using Facebook, in the image of a dog, to sniff something out. This cartoon refers directly to the PA Ministry of Information’s statement regarding freedom of expression on Facebook that was published in the same issue of the official PA daily.