Palestinians create backup Facebook pages to “confront” Israel and “Facebook’s policy” against terror promotion
Interview with Birzeit University lecturer on electronic media Muhammad Abu Al-Rub about Palestinian pro-terror content being blocked on Facebook.
Birzeit University lecturer on electronic media Muhammad Abu Al-Rub: “The Israelis are following the Palestinian [Facebook] pages, and mainly the [official PA] TV and radio pages. [They] are reporting them and restricting them. This constitutes pressure on the young people who work in electronic media at the [Palestine Broadcasting] Corporation (PBC), because they want to preserve the Palestinian narrative and not to submit to the conditions of Facebook and the occupation. At the same time they want to spread the Palestinian content. Therefore there are many Facebook pages, including the Facebook page of the PBC, that create copies, additional pages for backup, because they are in a state of confrontation with the occupation and those responsible for Facebook’s policy… Completely simple Palestinian posts, [like] a post of the father of Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi (i.e., terrorist, numerous shooting attacks) sitting next to the grave to mark 40 days after [his son] the Martyr’s death.A post like this in and of itself ensures that an account with millions of followers will be restricted. The Israelis are following [our pages]. They are handing over keywords to the company Meta [that owns Facebook]. The reason for this is that [the Israelis] don’t want these cases of heroism to constitute an example for the Palestinian youth. Therefore everyone who uses keywords that are connected to the young people who did heroic operations (i.e., terror attacks) – they [Facebook] restrict their content, and sometimes [issues] a warning to the page or erase it, as has happened with many Palestinian Facebook pages…”
Official PA TV host: “It is important to note that due to the restriction of content of [official] PA TV’s Facebook page, there is an additional backup Facebook page named “PA TV Plus.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Nov. 23, 2022]