Israel behind ‘mass censorship operation’ on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram: Report
Facebook’s parent company Meta has carried out a “sweeping crackdown” on Facebook and Instagram posts critical of Israel or vaguely supportive of Palestinians since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, according to the Drop Site online news outlet.
Citing internal company data and whistleblowers, Drop Site reports that Meta complied with 94 percent of all takedown requests submitted by the Israeli government and removed more than 90,000 posts to comply with Israel’s takedown request within 30 seconds, on average.
Meta’s automated takedowns also resulted in “an estimated 38.8 million additional posts being ‘actioned upon’ across Facebook and Instagram since late 2023”, Drop Site said.
“The leaked documents reveal that Israel’s takedown requests have overwhelmingly targeted users from Arab and Muslim-majority nations,” the news site said.
“Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit – widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history,” it said.
US rights advocates file lawsuit challenging Trump’s ICC sanctions
Two human rights advocates represented by the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s imposition of sanctions against International Criminal Court (ICC) staff, including chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
In February, Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on ICC staff and barring US citizens from providing services benefitting them over the court’s pursuit of legal cases against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday in federal court in Bangor, Maine, Fortify Rights co-founder Matthew Smith and international human rights lawyer Akila Radhakrishnan argued the order unconstitutionally curtails their speech by preventing them from speaking with Khan.
The pair said the order bars them from providing legal advice and evidence to the ICC chief prosecutor, violating their rights under the First Amendment.
Smith and Radhakrishnan said they had been forced to cease their work with the ICC’s prosecutor’s office, in which they had been seeking justice for victims of atrocities worldwide.
“This executive order doesn’t just disrupt our work – it actively undermines international justice efforts and obstructs the path to accountability for communities facing unthinkable horrors,” Smith said.
Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team says US judge ruling ‘historic in its unfairness’
Johnny Sinodis, a member of the detained Columbia University student’s legal team, said the immigration judge who on Friday ruled that Mahmoud Khalil could be deported didn’t show “an ounce of desire” to give him a fair hearing.
“[The ruling] was historic in its unfairness. The judge went out of her way to make very clear to us and anyone in the courtroom that the constitutional arguments we were making had no place in immigration court,” Sinodis said in an online news conference.
Another of Khalil’s lawyers, Marc Van der Hout, described the ruling by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana as the “epitome of the lack of due process in a court proceeding in this country”.
“It was shocking. The immigration judge had made up her mind before the hearing even started. What she was going to do, she basically cut off questioning throughout the proceeding,” he said.
Khalil – a US permanent resident arrested and facing deportation over his pro-Palestine activism – can still appeal the decision.
