Facebook censors & restores video calling Palestine 'Israel’s weapons-testing lab'

A video accusing Israel of using Palestinians to test weapons and methods of repression that it later exports around the world was removed from Facebook for several hours, and was only restored after complaints.

“Palestine is Israel’s personal laboratory for testing, refining and showcasing methods and weapons of domination and control,” says journalist Rania Khalek in a video recorded for In The NOW web show, which was published on Friday.

After it was posted on Facebook, however, the video was “erased without explanation.”

Several hours later, Facebook restored the video after “some complaints,” Khalek said.

Social media giants have the ability to “disappear content as they please,” she noted, adding that this is “creepy and alarming and should be loudly opposed.”

This is not the first time that Facebook has censored pages and content critical of Israel. Facing political pressure after the 2016 US presidential election, the social media giant has stepped up censorship across its platform, teaming up with the NATO-backed Atlantic Council. It has also often had to backtrack on decisions to suspend or remove content as “mistakes,” due to public pushback.

In addition to pro-Trump bloggers Diamond and Silk, Facebook’s censorship net also caught an article by a pro-Democrat outfit ThinkProgress. An infamous photo of French President Emmanuel Macron with half-naked, gang-signing residents of St. Martin was also censored on grounds of “nudity and sexual acts.”

“This is why social media giants censoring content is bad. Eventually you’ll get censored,” Khalek said in a tweet on Friday.

In her video, Khalek takes aim at Israel's marketing of their military technology as “battle-tested” and “combat-proven,” arguing that this means they are being used to oppress Palestinians. Not only have Israeli arms exports quadrupled between 2002 and 2017, the country is the world’s leading supplier of drones, and was even given a contract by the US to build a high-tech “virtual wall” on the US-Mexico border in 2014, according to Khalek.

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