On October 9th, Middle East Monitor announced a campaign to stop facebook censoring news and writing by Palestinians.  They claimed facebook was silencing Palestinian writers and voices to please Israel, the US and others.

Yes, it is censorship, because governments are using companies to silence voices.  Facebook is willingly doing it under political pressure from Israel, the US and others.

Campaign launched to end Facebook’s attack on Palestinian content

Palestinians said the social media giant was giving in to the Israeli government’s influence to suppress the Palestinian narrative and was adopting the occupiers’ definition of what incitement is.

Journalists and activists in Palestine yesterday launched a social media campaign against Facebook’s censorship of Palestinian content.

Using the hashtag FBblocksPalestine, the drive hopes to bring to light “the threat posed by Facebook against Palestinian content, and to make it public, as well as reveal the double-standard policy of Facebook management in dealing with Israeli and Palestinian incitement on its site,” says Eyad Rifai, head of Sada Social Centre which is running the drive.

On October 11th, fascistbook proved the need for the Middle East Monitor’s campaign: fascistbook censored the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) arabic language page (the English page is still active…for now). The news page and the accounts of its operators were all deleted without warning, explanation, or appeal. You don’t silence journalists for “security”, you silence them to prevent them from reporting the facts.

Facebook takes down page of Palestine news site

Facebook on Wednesday deleted the page of the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) in a move, the news site says, which is part of its war on Palestinian content on social media networks.

The site’s management said Facebook provided them with no prior warning before deleting the page, which had nearly five million followers, without any justification.

They called on Facebook to reinstate the page and stop its battle against Palestinian content, saying they have contested the ban.

The Palestinian Information Centre has previously been forced to suspend posting on Facebook after the social media giant banned the accounts of some of its directors. Member of management have also seen their accounts deleted and removed.

The blocking of the PIC’s page comes as part of an extensive campaign in recent weeks that included many Palestinian social media platforms.

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Germany is now as paranoid about false claims of “anti-semitism” as people were about UK libel laws.

‘You live in fear if you want to say something about Israel’

Pro-Palestine figures say Kamila Shamsie affair demonstrates how dissent is stifled in Germany when criticising Israel.

Berlin, Germany – A German jury’s decision to strip British Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie of a literary prize, because of her pro-Palestinian activism, underscores how ignoring Palestinian rights has become normalised in Germany, according to pro-Palestinian figures in the country.

On September 18, days after its initial decision, the eight-member jury of the Nelly Sachs Prize, named after the German-Jewish Nobel laureate, a poet and playwright, withdrew its $16,000 award over Shamsie’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

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Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed shows by winning the Nobel Peace Prize that you don’t solve international political issues with bombings, censorship or genocide. You solve it by treating people as human beings and building trust domestically and abroad, something Israel and the US have never done. It worked in Northern Ireland, too.