Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif is the latest victim of Meta’s continuous targeting on online figures detailing the horrors of the Gaza genocide.
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif announced that Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) has shut down his Instagram account.
Al-Sharif, who is reporting from the Gaza Strip, shared a screenshot to his public X account in which Instagram had sent him an alert saying it had closed his accounts on Wednesday.
“After gaining over 1,200,000 followers and a view rate of over one billion, Meta has decided to close the account of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif,” the post added.
Al-Sharif has since created a new Instagram account, which has already garnered over 180,000 followers in less than 48 hours.
The Al Jazeera journalist took to his new account to say that the Israeli occupation was trying to “censor the truth” throughout its efforts to close down platforms and target Palestinian content.
“Despite this campaign, we will be reporting from this new account to continue bringing you all the latest news and events,” Al-Sharif said via Instagram story.
This would not be the first, nor the last, time that Meta has purposely targeted journalists, platforms and content creators who continue to report from or on Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.
In fact, the company has been repeatedly accused of being complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide on the Gaza Strip, which entered its second year in October.
A recent report by the Intercept detailed how former senior Israeli government official Jordana Cutler, who was appointed as Meta’s Israel & Jewish Diaspora policy chief in 2016, had a hand in promoting a campaign to flag and censor Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Instagram accounts and posts.
Since the beginning of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, Instagram users have observed cases of pro-Palestine content being flagged, deleted, or not receiving adequate engagement, otherwise known as a “shadow-ban.”
Even before the Israel’s genocide began, Meta had been exposed for displaying a bias against pro-Palestine content.
In September 2023, Meta deleted Al Jazeera Arabic presenter Tamer Almisshal’s verified Facebook account, just one day after an episode of Almisshal’s investigative show “Tip of the Iceberg” aired exposing Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content.
When the Israeli war widely known as the genocide began, both Meta and X deleted the account of the largest Palestinian social media news page ‘Eye on Palestine.’
The account has been lauded for continuously exposing Israel’s ongoing crimes against Palestinians and providing up-to-date news on the genocide.
In justification, Meta said it blocked the account due to “security concerns.”
In December, A report by the Human Rights Watch called out Meta’s flawed policy and overreliance on artificial intelligence to moderate pro-Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.
“Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and
Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship
of social media amid the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups
that began on October 7, 2023,” the report said.
In October, the Israeli army publicly accused six Al Jazeera journalists of being “Islamic Jihad terrorists” or affiliated with the Hamas movement, a move that the Al Jazeera Media Network condemned and rejected.
Al Jazeera pointed out that these “fabricated accusations” were “a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region”.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli Occupation has killed over 130 journalists and media personnel in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and Lebanon, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
