X, previously Twitter, suspends hundreds of Palestinian accounts in the midst of the Israel-Gaza conflict

To stop the transmission of what it called “violent and hateful” propaganda online, social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has deleted “hundreds” of accounts it determined to be “affiliated with Hamas.”

According to the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino, the platform has removed accounts that breached rules intended to restrict the dissemination of “violent and hateful content” on X. According to the platform, posts with graphic material were also removed.

After Hamas conducted a surprise attack on Saturday, X reported on Monday that the number of posts from daily active users in Israel significantly increased.

Since then, Israel has attacked the beleaguered Gaza Strip nonstop, killing 1,799 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, and injuring over 6,000 more.

Facebook’s operating company, Meta, claimed to have deleted or flagged as “disturbing” more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic.

READ ASLO: Israel prepares a massive ground assault on Gaza, Netanyahu promises to “demolish” Hamas

According to the Arab Centre for Advancement of Social Media (7amleh), it has found more than 19,000 instances of inciting language and hate speech in Hebrew.

“The Israeli government is taking advantage of the current international sentiment to continue exerting pressure on social media companies to censor the Palestinian narrative and silence voices critical of Israeli policies,” 7amleh stated in a statement.

The decision by X to target accounts covering Palestine comes as it becomes more challenging to acquire information from people in Gaza due to Israel’s complete closure on its two million residents, which has cut off electricity and gasoline, and as Israel prevents foreign media from entering the besieged region.

The Instagram account of Mondoweiss’s Palestinian correspondent was suspended on Tuesday, while the news outlet’s TikTok account had been temporarily shut down the day before.

A request for comment from The New Arab went unanswered by an X official right away.