YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations

A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel s genocide in Gaza A video scrutiny uncovering Israel s role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist Another video revealing Israel s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website along with their channels archives The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups Al-Haq Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights The move came in response to a U S regime campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank YouTube is furthering the Trump administration s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes The Palestinian groups YouTube channels hosted hours of footage documenting and highlighting alleged Israeli cabinet violations of international law in both Gaza and the West Bank including the killing of Palestinian civilians I m pretty shocked that YouTube is showing such a little backbone explained Sarah Leah Whitson executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now It s really hard to imagine any serious argument that sharing information from these Palestinian human rights organizations would somehow violate sanctions Succumbing to this arbitrary designation of these Palestinian organizations to now censor them is disappointing and pretty surprising After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants and charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant with war crimes in Gaza the Trump administration escalated its defense of Israel s actions by sanctioning ICC authorities and targeting people and organizations that work with the court It is outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from society view stated Katherine Gallagher a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights Congress did not intend to allow the president to cut off the flow of information to the American masses and the world instead information including documents and videos are specifically exempted under the statute that the president cited as his authority for issuing the ICC sanctions Alarming Setback YouTube which is owned by Google verified to The Intercept that it deleted the groups accounts as a direct product of State Department sanctions against the group after a review The Trump administration leveled the sanctions against the organizations in September over their work with the International Criminal Court in cases charging Israeli agents of war crimes Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and transaction compliance laws YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle revealed in a announcement According to Google s Sanctions Compliance publisher plan Google publisher products are not eligible for any entities or individuals that are restricted under applicable arrangement sanctions and export compliance laws Al Mezan a human rights organization in Gaza explained The Intercept that its YouTube channel was abruptly terminated this year on October without prior notification Terminating the channel deprives us from reaching what we aspire to convey our message to and fulfill our mission a spokesperson for the group mentioned and prevents us from achieving our goals and limits our ability to reach the audience we aspire to share our message with The West Bank-based Al-Haq s channel was deleted on October a spokesperson for the group announced with a message from YouTube that its content violates our guidelines YouTube s removal of a human rights organisation s platform carried out without prior warning represents a serious failure of principle and an alarming setback for human rights and freedom of expression the Al-Haq spokesperson declared in a comment The U S Sanctions are being used to cripple accountability work on Palestine and silence Palestinian voices and casualties and this has a ripple effect on such platforms also acting under such measures to further silence Palestinian voices By doing this YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian sufferers The Palestinian Center for Human Rights which the UN describes as the oldest human rights organization in Gaza reported in a report that YouTube s move protects perpetrators from accountability YouTube s decision to close PCHR s account is basically one of numerous consequences that we as an organisation have faced since the decision of the US governing body to sanction our organisations for our legitimate work mentioned Basel al-Sourani an international advocacy officer and legal advisor for the group YouTube mentioned that we were not following their agenda on Group Guidelines when all our work was basically presenting factual and evidence-based reporting on the crimes committed against the Palestinian people especially since the start of the ongoing genocide on October By doing this YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian casualties al-Sourani added Looking Outside U S The three human rights groups account terminations cumulatively amount to the erasure of more than videos The deleted videos range in scope from investigations such as an analysis of the Israeli killing of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to testimonies of Palestinians tortured by Israeli forces and documentaries like The Beach about children playing on a beach who were killed by an Israeli strike Several videos are still available through copies saved on the Internet Archive s Wayback Machine or on alternate platforms such as Facebook and Vimeo The wiping only affected the group s official channels videos which were produced by the nonprofits but hosted on alternate YouTube channels remain working No cumulative index of videos deleted by YouTube is available however and various appear to not be available elsewhere online Videos posted elsewhere online the groups fear could soon be targeted for deletion because a multitude of of the platforms hosting them are also U S -based services The ICC itself began exploring using utility providers outside the U S Al-Haq reported it would also be looking for alternatives outside of U S companies to host their work YouTube isn t the only U S tech company blocking Palestinian rights groups from using its services The Al-Haq spokesperson declared Mailchimp the mailing list system also deleted the group s account in September Mailchimp and its parent company Intuit did not directly respond to a request for comment Caving to Trump s Demand Both the U S and Israeli governments have long shielded themselves from the ICC and accountability for their alleged war crimes Neither country is party to the Rome Statute the international treaty that established the court In November the ICC prosecutors issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant charging the leaders with intentionally starving civilians by blocking aid from entering into Gaza Both the Biden and Trump administrations rejected the legitimacy of the warrants Related Netanyahu Is Blowing Up the Gaza Ceasefire and Trump Is the One Losing Face Since his re-election Trump has taken a more aggressive posture against accountability for Israel In the early days of his second term Trump renewed sanctions against the ICC and issued new more severe measures against court leaders and anyone accused of aiding their efforts In September in a new order he specifically sanctioned the three Palestinian groups The U S moves followed Israel s own designation of Al-Haq as a terrorist organization in and an online smear campaign by pro-Israeli activists attempting to link Palestinian Centre for Human Rights with militant groups The sanctions freeze the organizations assets in the U S and bar sanctioned individuals from traveling to the country Federal judges have already issued preliminary injunctions in two cases in favor of plaintiffs who argued the sanctions had violated their First Amendment rights The Trump administration is focused on contributing to the censorship of information about Israeli atrocities in Palestine and the sanctions against these organizations is very deliberately designed to make association with these organizations frightening to Americans who will be concerned about material endorsement laws revealed Whitson of DAWN which joined a coalition of groups in September to demand the Trump administration drop its sanctions Like multiple tech firms YouTube has shown a ready willingness to comply with demands from both the Trump administration and Israel YouTube coordinated with a campaign organized by Israeli tech workers to remove social media content deemed critical of Israel At home Google YouTube s parent company secretly handed over personal Gmail account information to U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an effort to detain a pro-Palestinian learner organizer Even before Israel s genocidal campaign in Gaza YouTube had been accused of unevenly applying its public guidelines to censor Palestinian voices while withholding similar scrutiny from pro-Israeli content Such trends continued during the war according to a Wired overview Earlier this year YouTube shut down the official account of the Addameer Prisoner Sponsorship and Human Rights Association The move came after pressure from UK Lawyers for Israel which wrote to YouTube to point out that the organization had been sanctioned by the State Department Whitson warned that YouTube s capitulation could set a precedent pushing other tech companies to bend to censorship They are basically allowing the Trump administration to dictate what information they share with the global audience she declared It s not going to end with Palestine The post YouTube Quietly Erased More Than Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations appeared first on The Intercept