Following Israeli campaign, Facebook shuts down Fatah’s page over incitement
A massive campaign launched by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) calling on Facebook to shut down Fatah’s page over its incitement to terrorism was crowned with success on Wednesday with the page’s closure.
Facebook logo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Fatah utilizes social media as a platform to turn its terrorists into heroes and role models, and through its Facebook page “instantaneously promotes terror to its 224,000 Facebook followers,” PMW explained.
The campaign began in February when the Jerusalem-based research institute which monitors Palestinian incitement in the media released a comprehensive report on Fatah’s Facebook page documenting its terror glorification and incitement to violence throughout 2018. The report showed that Fatah’s content was in direct violation of Facebook’s community standards. However, Facebook refused to close the page.
PMW published a new report earlier this month, documenting the terror promoting content on Fatah’s Facebook page during the first six months of 2019, which it shared with Facebook.
Simultaneously, PMW also launched a social media campaign with partner organizations worldwide urging the social media giant to immediately and permanently shut down Fatah’s page, for openly violating Facebook’s guidelines.
Facebook finally shut down the terror-promoting page on Wednesday.
Itamar Marcus, director of PMW, said the achievement was “an important step in the war against Palestinian terror.”
He expressed hope that this will be “a permanent closure and not a short-term suspension. The more we can shut down terror promoting social media, the more lives will be saved.”
Fatah’s page has previously been suspended and reinstated by Facebook.
Facebook has previously faced allegations and legal action over its facilitation of pages owned and used by terrorist organizations but has dodged the charges in most instances.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) media on Tuesday accused PMW of “waging a war” against its Facebook page. Fatah is the ruling party in the PA.
“The Israeli occupation (i.e. PMW) is waging a new war against the Fatah Movement’s Facebook page… The occupation is claiming that the page glorifies Palestinians that carry out operations (i.e., terror attacks) against the occupation… We in Fatah are proud of our Martyrs, who defended their homeland and fought the gangs of murderers, who Israel glorifies,” Ma’an, an independent Palestinian news agency, reported.
