Jan 2 (IPS) – CIVICUS speaks with Palestinian lawyer and researcher Dima Samaro to discuss the challenges Palestinian civil society faces in resisting digital oppression and advocating for justice.
As director of Skyline International for Human Rights, Dima advocates for digital freedom and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She is a board member of Innovation for Change, MENA Hub, and Surveillance in the Majority World Network, and serves as a volunteer for Resilience Pathways. Resilience Pathways helps Palestinian civil society organizations (CSOs) reclaim their narrative amid Israeli efforts to manipulate public opinion and block funding. Limit civic space.
How are digital platforms influencing the Palestinian narrative?
Digital platforms have become central to shaping narratives about Palestine, often amplifying Israeli narratives while systematically silencing Palestinian voices. Platforms such as Meta, TikTok and X, formerly Twitter, regularly remove Palestinian content based on vague ‘policy violations’. This situation has intensified since October 2023, with Israel’s cyber department filing more than 9,500 takedown requests, 94% of which were approved. These actions resulted in the removal of posts, shadow bans (a form of censorship that limits the visibility of pro-Palestinian content without notifying users) and account suspensions, and extended to censorship of hashtags such as #FreePalestine.
Algorithmic bias further marginalizes the Palestinian narrative. For example, Instagram once mistranslated the Arabic phrase ‘alhamdulillah’ (Praise God) next to the Palestinian flag as ‘terrorists fighting for freedom.’ AI-generated images on WhatsApp depicted militarized scenes as illustrations for ‘Palestine’, but as benign cartoons for terms such as ‘Israeli boys’ or ‘Israeli army’. These incidents are often dismissed as technical errors, but they reveal systemic bias.
Policies such as Mehta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals framework are heavily influenced by the US terrorism designation and suppress Palestinian discourse by prohibiting expressions of ‘praise’ or ‘support’ for major political movements. Meanwhile, hate speech targeting Palestinians, including posts praising violence or calling for the destruction of Gaza, often goes unchecked. Ads that incite violence against Palestinians are permitted, but use of terms such as ‘Zionist’ is flagged as hate speech. This double standard silences Palestinian voices while enabling propaganda that justifies collective punishment and shields atrocities from investigation.
Platform collusion is more than censorship. Last April, +972 Magazine reported that Meta-affiliated WhatsApp played a role in supporting Lavender, an Israeli AI surveillance system linked to the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip. These shocking revelations suggest that companies are directly complicit in violating international law.
Digital platforms are distorting narratives, dehumanizing Palestinians, and normalizing violence against an already oppressed and besieged population. They actively suppress efforts to document war crimes and manipulate information. They must be held accountable for this.
What challenges does Palestinian civil society face?
Palestinian CSOs are under enormous pressure, including arbitrary arrests, travel bans, funding cuts and violence. In October 2021, Israel designated six major Palestinian human rights organizations as terrorist organizations. These unfounded accusations have delegitimized their work, sparked defamation campaigns, and enabled harassment and other restrictions on their work.
Many human rights defenders have also become targets of digital surveillance. Pegasus spyware, developed by Israeli company NSO Group, has been used to hack the devices of Palestinian activists and human rights defenders, putting their safety and work at risk. This surveillance has been widely condemned by organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
But the repression of Palestinian civil society goes beyond digital tactics. Human rights defenders are harassed, arbitrarily detained, and physically attacked. The situation in Gaza has worsened since October 2023. Several civil society workers have been killed, injured and detained, and many others have been displaced by ongoing bombings. Work was further hampered by destruction of infrastructure.
Journalists also face violence. Gaza has become the deadliest place in the world for journalists. To date, 195 journalists have been killed, many of them deliberately targeted while carrying out their duties. This loss of independent reporting creates a massive information gap, leaving human rights violations unreported and unidentified.
To make matters worse, international donors including Germany, Sweden and Switzerland withdrew funding due to unsubstantiated claims of links to terrorism. The ‘anti-sedition’ provisions imposed by the European Union also stigmatize Palestinian CSOs by forcing them to demonstrate neutrality, limiting their ability to document human rights violations without endangering their security.
How can Skyline International help solve these problems?
We work at the intersection of technology, social media, and human rights in Palestine and the region. We track, monitor and document human rights violations committed by countries and companies, especially in the digital realm. This includes digital surveillance tracking, analyzing the ethical implications of AI in conflict situations, and advocating for the protection of fundamental online rights such as freedom of expression, access to information, and the right to privacy.
In Palestine, we support civil society activists and journalists against online censorship and digital bias. We work closely with human rights activists to document cases of policy over-enforcement, content takedowns, account suspensions and algorithmic bias by social media platforms, as well as the illicit use of spyware and new technologies to target media workers. We also condemn Israel’s use of digital tools to target journalists in Gaza and Lebanon. Our goal is to bring national and international attention to these violations and advocate for protections of press and online freedom, ensuring journalists can report without fear of reprisal.
We also demand that technology companies account for their impact on human rights. For example, in September we sent an open letter to Binance, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, expressing serious concerns about the alleged mass seizure of Palestinian cryptocurrency wallets at the request of Israel. These measures will worsen the economic and financial blockade of Gaza, making access to essential resources such as water, food and medicine more difficult. We demanded transparency about the criteria used to determine which accounts are frozen and immediate action to mitigate the humanitarian impact on Palestinian users. Binance responded, but did not provide a clear explanation or action.
What can the international community do to support Palestinian civil society?
Support for Palestinian civil society work is critical to documenting abuses and advocating for justice. But this support must go beyond expressions of solidarity or charity. We need allies to support our fight for freedom and dignity.
The international community must go beyond empty rhetoric and take practical measures. You also need to do more than simply provide financial support. Political pressure must be put on Israel to end its occupation and respect Palestinian human rights. This includes protecting activists, fighting Israel’s constant attempts to criminalize and silence our work, and holding accountable those who profit from the ongoing genocide. This means halting arms exports to Israel and holding technology platforms accountable for their complicity in suppressing Palestinian voices, amplifying hate speech, and promoting Israeli surveillance and repression.
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Dima on Twitter
See also
Palestine: ‘The international community has failed to stop the genocide not because it cannot stop it, but because it will not stop it’ Interview with Tahrir Araz, 26 November 2024
‘AI-based weapons personalize violence, making it easier for militaries to authorize more destruction’ Interview with Sophia Goodfriend November 23, 2024
Palestine: ‘Ending impunity for violations of the rights of Palestinians will strengthen global norms that protect all human beings’ Interview with Kifaya Crime, 11 November 2024
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