Digital Rights Weekly Update: 7 - 13 March
7amleh
March 12, 2025, 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media has released its annual report, Racism and Incitement Index 2024, revealing an alarming increase in digital hate speech and incitement against Palestinians, particularly on X and Facebook. According to the report’s findings, 12,482,041 inciting and violent posts in Hebrew were documented throughout 2024—an average of 23.6 posts per minute—demonstrating the increasing use of digital spaces as tools for hostility and incitement. The report highlights a strong correlation between the rise in hate speech and political and military developments, especially during the genocide targeting Palestinian people in Gaza. It shows that political, racial, and religious motives were the main drivers behind this surge, which did not only target Palestinians in general but specifically focused on Palestinian Jerusalemites. A total of 8,484 inciting and violent posts targeting Palestinian Jerusalemites were documented, most of them on X, indicating a dangerous trend of systematic targeting of this group.
Middle East Monitor
Israeli military intelligence has built an artificial intelligence tool made up of a vast collection of data gathered from intercepted Palestinian communications, which it is using to more easily identify dissent against Israel’s occupation and carry out raids in the occupied West Bank. According to a joint investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the Israeli military’s notorious Unit 8200 has been building and training an AI model to understand spoken Arabic through the use of intercepted telephone conversations and text messages between Palestinians from the occupied territories.
From Bot Farms to Censorship: Israel’s Disinformation Warfare against Palestinians
Palestine Chronicle
From the outset of its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel recognized the digital space as a crucial battleground, having long understood the power of online narratives. Alongside its destruction and cleansing efforts on the ground, it waged a relentless digital war aimed at silencing the Palestinian narrative. Employing a range of strategies to dominate the digital discourse, Israel invested vast resources to suppress Palestinian voices online. Yet, despite its extensive capabilities, controlling the digital narrative has proven far more challenging, as efforts to erase Palestinian realities online mirror its actions on the ground. As a key tactic in its digital warfare, Israel deployed disinformation campaigns to discredit Palestinians, erode empathy for them, delegitimize their claims, and justify its genocidal attacks.
Israel's new 'media war room' targets Palestine content in latest propaganda push
The New Arab
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that the government is to launch a "media war room" to target Palestine content online, in the latest attempt to propagate pro-Israel narratives on internet platforms. As reported by The Times of Israel, the office of Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that the war room will consist of Israeli diplomats and students who specialise in international communications. The statement added that the initiative will focus on monitoring and reporting any pro-Palestine content, by researching roughly 250 news channels and around 10,000 Israel-related news items across various platforms. The ministry claims that it will particularly target "false or biased reports," further arguing that it will act "swiftly by deploying Israeli and pro-Israel spokespersons to debunk accusations and present Israel’s narrative".
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