HAIFA, ISRAEL – Hate speech and incitement in Hebrew targeting Palestinians on social media is on the rise, said 7amleh- the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media in a statement.
7amleh has documented over 103,000 instances of hate speech and/or incitement in Hebrew out of 120,000 posts collected between October 7-18 using their recently developed Violence indicator.
The vast majority of these instances were found on X, which is allowing the spread of harmful content without sufficient moderation, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
7amleh said 63 percent of the documented instances of hate speech and incitement were based on political affiliations and/or nationalist sentiments, and 34 percent were rooted in racist bias.
The remaining instances included gender-based and religious violence, among others.
7amleh recently developed the Violence indicator – a linguistic model that uses artificial intelligence technology to automatically and immediately monitor the spread of hate speech and violence on social media platforms in Hebrew targeting Palestinians.
The findings are then presented on 7or – the Palestinian Digital Rights Violations Observatory.
7amleh’s interactive data analytics display enables users to use the model as a tool for understanding how prevalent hate speech and incitement are on social media platforms.
7amleh documented an additional 701 violations that targeted Palestinian users and supporters in the since October 7- 18, which have been submitted by users on 7or.
Those submissions have been reviewed by 7amleh, and were escalated to the appropriate corresponding social media company.
The violations include 286 cases of account restriction or account takedowns on Palestinian activists, in addition to 415 instances of hate speech and incitement.
Among the targeted accounts are official pages of civil society organizations and independent media organizations.
Those include Quds News Network, followed by more than eight million users on Facebook, as well as the Instagram page of Mutaz Azaiza, followed now by more than four million users.
Mutaz Azaiza’s page faced several restrictions which were appealed.
However, the Facebook page of Quds News Network in Arabic got unpublished and permanently removed from the Meta platform.
7amleh also documented hate speech, incitement, and disinformation surrounding the bombing of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
7amleh also documented more violations by online platforms aimed at silencing Palestinians and violating their digital rights and their rights to freedom of expression.
This is done by limiting outreach, restricting accounts, as well as content removals and account suspensions.
It is worth noting that most violations aimed at silencing Palestinians occurred on Meta’s platforms (Instagram and Facebook).
7amleh emphasized, “Social media companies must not discriminate against Palestinian users.”
It said, “They should not restrict Palestinian content due to political pressure, and must commit to the removal of hate speech and incitement across all platforms, especially as this kind of speech translates into real-world violence committed against Palestinians.”
It encourages social media users to report any instances of digital rights violations including hate speech, incitement and spread of false news in the digital space to 7or platform.