Israel has a powerful ally in their siege of Gaza: Social media platforms

Illustration: TBS

A father ran to the white tents — makeshift medical rooms. He was holding two bags carrying the body parts of his children. "This is all of them," he cried out. This is one scene capturing what unfolded after Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza was bombed by Israeli airstrikes on 17 October. 

You can rest assured that US President Joe Biden will not be "painting a vivid picture" in remarks to Muslim community leaders in the US as he did with the "beheaded babies by Hamas" news last week. The beheading babies news was debunked because the Israeli government could not confirm their own claims. 

However, the bags with the body parts of children carried by the father are not unverified. It is footage with witnesses. Gazan doctors also held a press conference after the bombing surrounded by dead bodies in bags. There are two individuals sitting with dead children in hand and their faces uncovered — showing the lengths survivors are taking to show evidence of the massacre. 

When the news broke of the bombing of a Gaza hospital by the Israeli government, the immediate response on social media also arrived in a frenzy. Scores of accounts which posted news of the Baptist hospital bombing were met with a barrage of critical comments. 

The comment section filled up at warp speed. "It was Hamas who bombed the hospital. Not Israel" read message after message. To counter, Palestinians on ground zero in Gaza, in the West Bank and elsewhere across the world and non-Palestinians responded with well-documented atrocities being carried out by the Israeli government. 

To not much avail though. Ever since 7 October, these voices on social media have been up against war propaganda manufactured by the Israeli government and then carried far and wide by its allies, including large sections of the mainstream media, as well as the social media platforms themselves. 

Soon after the bombing, two Israeli officials posted videos on posts claiming Palestinians were responsible for the hospital strike. 

They later deleted the video. Aljazeera reported that both accounts edited their posts after a New York Times journalist questioned the time stamps on the videos, which indicated that the videos were recorded at least 40 minutes after the explosion of the hospital was first publicly reported. 

The Israeli officials' accounts in question belong to the State of Israel and the Israeli ambassador to the United States. 

This is what the social media accounts standing in solidarity with the ground reality in Gaza are up against. A swathe of disinformation to delegitimise, dehumanise and erase war crimes committed against Palestinians. 

When they are killed, they need to convince the world that they are being killed by the Israeli government, because the mainstream media, who are flooding the news feeds of people on social media, are unwilling to do so. 

Take the New York Times' story headlined "Israel strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say'' or Haaretz's (an Israeli newspaper) "After Fatal Explosion at Gaza Hospital, Netanyahu Blames 'Barbaric Terrorists" or CNN's "Hundreds likely dead in Gaza hospital blast, as Israeli blockade cripples medical response". 

All three stories have garnered a lot more traffic than Al Jazeera's factual: "Israel kills 500 in Gaza hospital massacre."

There are other ways in which the truth is being obfuscated on social media. Take the interview posted by CNN journalist and TV host  Christiane Amanpour of an individual whose parents are among some 200 hostages abducted by Hamas on her Instagram account in the early hours of 18 October. It was posted approximately three hours after the hospital bombing.  

Or this one: BBC ran this on X - formerly known as Twitter - on 16 October, "Does Hamas build tunnels under hospitals and schools?" It garnered 26 million views. 

When social media platforms take a side

Facebook has 3.03 billion active users per month, Instagram has 2.5 billion active users per month and Twitter has 450 million active users per month. These are three of the major social media platforms. 

Social media is in theory free and offers equal space to everyone. One can choose however one wishes to use these platforms to raise awareness or take a stance on an ongoing conflict — or genocide. 

On 18 October, American-Kuwaiti journalist, Ahmed Eldin, with a following of more than 90,000 on X, posted on Instagram with nearly 350,000 followers, that during the bombing of the Baptist Hospital, Instagram blocked him from posting. And later in the day, his tweets wouldn't post. He said he had been trying for two hours. 

This is probably reminiscent of a May 2021 Washington Post story titled "Facebook's AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them." At the time, massive protests and riots took place stemming from the potential Supreme Court order for the eviction of six Palestinians from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers. 

Fast forward to October 2023. It was surprising to see #istandwithIsrael in the caption for a video clip posted by Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and researcher on 15 October on Instagram. The video clip caption also explains the clip — an interview with Sky News where the interviewer asks her if she regrets the 'prison break.' Mariam also wrote "Then they tried to ask me like I am a kha-mas spokesperson then they muted me. Then they brought on a soldier to speak from Jerusalem." 

The reason for the hashtag and why she typed out Hamas as kha-mas is the active use of shadow banning across social media platforms by the tech giants. 

Shadow banning is used to block (a user) from a social media site or online forum without their knowledge, typically by making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users. 

This is one example. Like Mariam, scores of people are using the same tactics to make sure their message and content reach the social media audience. Many are also requesting that their posts be saved and liked so that they can sustain their outreach — or not be erased. 

Arab News reported, "Mondoweiss, a news and analysis account dedicated to Palestine with platforms on X and TikTok, reported that its TikTok account had been temporarily taken down."  Some Instagram users have also complained of restrictions on their accounts and the inability to livestream. 

One London-based user, who asked not to be named for fear of harassment, told Arab News that she had posted several Instagram stories regarding Palestine that only received up to five views within a couple of hours. After posting a picture of a skirt, however, she reached 91 views in 40 minutes.

The same Arab News report mentioned how a social media user saw her Instagram story about Palestine go without any views for one hour. But when she used the #FreeIsrael hashtag for the Instagram story, she received 90 views within five minutes.  

"When I post about Palestine I get immediately shadow banned and almost 1 million less of you see my stories and posts," said American-Palestinian Bella Hadid in 2022 when Meta was accused of censorship of content related to Palestine. Now, again, social media users face the same kind of censorship.

Not just shadow banning, suspension of accounts or banning of accounts, Meta has also updated its strict guidelines earlier this week, stating that media news accounts promoting or using any content that indicates support for Hamas risk blocks. This newspaper already received a strike for posting a photo of Gaza residents fleeing Israeli air strikes. The post showed blood. It was flagged as too sensitive. 

Once flags are "resolved", which means taken down or changed, the strike disappears. 

But the same treatment is not handed down to Islamophobic hate speech spewing against Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims in general across social media platforms. 

Here is one example: A Middle East Monitor report said that 19,000 hate speech and incitement tweets in Hebrew had been documented on X, formerly known as Twitter, from 7 to 12 October, according to The Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media, 7amleh. 

The Palestinian organisation said that out of the documented cases, 50% are categorised as hate speech, and 30% as fake news or promoting violence and incitement. Overall, under 50% are politically motivated while 30% contain racial bias. The remainder include gender and religious discrimination. 

The report also mentions 357 violations have been reported through 7or — the Palestinian Observatory for Digital Rights Violations — from 7 to 11 October. These included 128 cases of account restrictions on Palestinian activists and supporters, and 229 cases of hate speech and incitement, which primarily targeted residents of Gaza, calling for the burning and destruction of the area and the killing of civilians. 

All of this together makes for a desperate and frustrating social media climate. In the end, even after 10 days of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians, people who are speaking on, sharing and trying to push the ground reality for the world to see — are being targeted and limited by tech giants. 

Social media is not a level playing field in this after all. 

TBS journalist Jannatul Naym Pieal contributed to this article.