Despite Facebook’s pledge, Fatah’s terrorism promoting page still active
Fatah’s Facebook page, which was shut down for a short while over its incitement to terrorism, is back up, despite a pledge by the social media giant to combat online incitement on its platform.
Facebook logo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Following a campaign by the Israeli Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Fatah has removed 17 posts promoting terrorism in an attempt to scale back its blatant transgression of Facebook’s rules. However, some 100 posts lauding terrorists and acts of terrorism are still posted.
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.
Facebook has still taken no action against Fatah’s page, despite Director of Facebook’s Global Counterterrorism Policy Team Brian Fishman’s statement in September at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism (ICT) conference that the “basic approach at Facebook is that terrorists are not allowed. By policy, there may be no praise, support, or representation of a terrorist organization, a terrorist actor, a terrorist event.”
PMW published a report in September documenting the terror promoting content on Fatah’s Facebook page during the first six months of 2019, which it shared with Facebook.
PMW, which monitors and combats incident in the Palestinian media, has informed Facebook of Fatah’s attempt to hide its terror promotion and has provided them with the links to all the terror promoting posts that were taken down and that are still posted.
“Facebook removes terror promotion in ‘real-time,’ except when the murder of Israelis is being celebrated and promoted,” PMW stated. “While Facebook is bragging internationally about fighting terror, Palestinian terror is being embedded in the hearts and minds of the next generation of potential terrorists, thanks to Facebook.”
Fatah’s page has previously been suspended and reinstated by Facebook.
