Throughout 2022, 7amleh was awarded consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Council (ECOSOC) and accepted as a member of the Global Network Initiative (GNI). Alongside launching the European based Palestine Digital Rights Coalition, as well as the US-based Palestine Digital rights Coalition, beside its work in continuing to raise the capacity of Palestinian civil society, activists and human rights organizations, to raise awareness on digital rights, and to advocate for Palestinian digital rights locally, regionally and internationally in order to achieve a safe, fair and free digital space. 7amleh has also successfully launched the sixth edition of the Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF 2022) with more than 1300 unique attendants and more than 300.000 viewers throughout social media.
People trained (63% women, 34% men)
Organizations’ needs assessed for further training
Palestine Digital Activism Forum attendees
Reports of Digital Rights Violations to Palestinian Digital Rights Observatory 7or
Positive responses by social media companies
Publications
Video views on social media
Engagement on Social Media
In December, 7amleh published the research “Gender-Based Violence against Palestinian Women in the Digital Space”. The research analyzes the phenomena of gender-based violence online for Palestinians through a large-scale survey, focus groups, and interviews in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and among Palestinians in Israel; and showed that about half of participants feel monitored online. Manal, a focus group participant explains: “Recently, there have been a lot of attacks on women's rights defenders. My former director at the Women's Studies Center received death threats on Facebook because of her posts that advocate women's rights. She received death threats on her messenger... “
In September, 7amleh published a concise “Guide to Combatting Online Hate Speech”. The guide is designed as a concise reference outlining the definition of hate speech - in contrast to freedom of expression -, the local legal and international human rights framework, as well as concrete examples of and how to deal with hate speech.
The report “Monitoring and Analysis of the Second Phase of the Palestinian Local Elections: A Reading of the Digital Local Policies” monitors the electoral behavior of Palestinians in the local elections within the occupied West Bank and the electoral campaigns and debates taking place in the digital space as part of these elections.
A position paper titled “Supply and Demand: The U.S.’ Impact on Israel’s Surveillance Sector” was published specifically in order to provide an insight into the US impact on Israeli surveillance industry between 2002 and 2022, and their influence on Palestinian digital rights, providing essential context and analysis to urgent conversations surrounding the use and abuse of new technologies.
The “Survey of Attitudes towards Privacy and Data Protection in the Palestinian Context” analyzes and illustrates the awareness and understanding of privacy and data protection of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory. The survey showed that more than half of the respondents feel that their data is not sufficiently protected, and 69% support a privacy and data protection legislation. The social media campaign included a video in Arabic.
The report “Privacy & Personal Data in Palestine: Double Violations and Absence of Legislation” examines the status of, as well as challenges to, privacy and personal data in Palestine by the Palestinian Authority as well as internet service providers, electronic payment companies, and telecommunications companies.
The Legal Analysis “What is the ‘Facebook Bill’? More Restrictions on Palestinian Content” analyzes the impact of the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislations’ approval of the bill for ‘Preventing Incitement on Social Media’, which seeks to regulate government involvement in removing content or restricting access to content on online platforms. 7amleh objects to this bill as it paves the way for increasing Israeli governmental censorship, particularly of Palestinian content.
The “Needs Assessment of Palestinian Youth Digital Activity: Challenges and Needs” analyzes the knowledge and skills of Palestinian Youth in the digital space, including on digital safety, hate speech, gender based violence online, and the reporting of digital rights violations; as well as the challenges and need to increase the space for a safe, free and fair online space for Palestinian youth.
The annual index of racism and incitement against Arabs and Palestinians in Israeli public Hebrew conversation on the internet, showed an increase of racism and incitement of 8% in comparison to 2020 with 620,000 inciting and racist conversations. With this increase, 11% of overall online conversations are racist and inciting in their nature. The majority of these posts were shared through Twitter.
7amleh’s annual analysis of the digital rights situation in Palestine, “Hashtag Palestine 2021” revealed more than 1000 digital rights violations of Palestinians and their supporters throughout 2022. Violations by governmental actors, in specific the Israeli authorities are ongoing and escalating, as well as censorship on social media platforms is continuing, and increased during the political developments of May 2021.
The first Palestinian open source digital rights observatory ‘7or’ has been growing since its official release in November 2021, and has received more than 1100 reports of digital rights violations between January and December 2022. As a trusted partner of social media companies, 7amleh has brought a total of 999 cases to their attention, and like this has managed to have 340 accounts or pages restored, removed or secured, and has only received 240 negative responses. It now has more than 70 partners, including referrals to further support such as psychological support, as well as a technical support, and seven volunteers supporting the ongoing work of 7or. Based on the data collected through the database and the media monitoring on the Palestinian digital rights coverage, 7amleh has been publishing regular reports on the violations of Palestinian digital rights including weekly updates, monthly updates, quarterly reports and annual reports. Additionally, 7amleh follows up on the reports of digital rights violations with social media companies.
“Personally, my account was deleted 3 times, and 7or platform was able to restore it. My account was restricted and banned from posting more than once, and “7or” was able to remove some of these restrictions ... 7or platform contributed a lot to confront the injustice against Palestinian content”, Akeel Awawde, journalist
Regular quarterly reports on digital rights violations were published for the periods of January to March, April to June, and July to September. 7amleh publishes 3 quarterly reports each year, the reports provide an analysis of the data collected to show patterns of digital rights violations. At the end of the year, an annual report, Hashtag Palestine, is published which provides a more in-depth contextualization of the violations throughout the whole year.
Additionally to the quarterly reports, 7amleh has been publishing monthly reports covering the digital rights trends and main updates in Palestine for January, February, April, May, July, August, October, and November in English and Arabic.
Furthermore, 7amleh continues monitoring the media focusing on Palestinian digital rights. On a weekly basis 7amleh shared the most important Palestinian digital rights through its Digital Rights Weekly Updates.
In the first half of 2022, 7amleh documented an increase in the cases of gender-based violence online (GBVo), and regarding this, together with seven civil society organizations, published a joint statement denouncing the incitement to violence against the LGBTQ community in Arabic.
In December, 7amleh launched a campaign in Arabic to further educate on how misleading content, fake news, incitement, restrictions on social media platforms affect Palestinians, and how to collect the necessary information to report those digital rights violations through 7or.
In August, 7amleh was accepted as a member of the international Global Network Initiative (GNI) focused on protecting and promoting freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector.
Additionally, in order to better and more effectively coordinate the US and Europe advocacy on Palestinian digital rights, 7amleh has launched a US-based Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition (US-PDRC) with 18 members in January, and a European-based PDRC with 11 members in November. Both coalitions meet regularly to coordinate Palestine advocacy in the United States and Europe, in particular regarding US-based social media and tech companies, and the decision-makers in the European Union respectively.
In August 2022, 7amleh was awarded consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Council (UN ECOSOC), thus enabling 7amleh to bring the world’s attention to Palestinian digital rights, and the human rights violations they are exposed to such as surveillance, online censorship and online hate speech.
7amleh participated in a European Union session on the Gaza Blockade and the Israeli Surveillance State, together with the former and current UN Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine, and Oxfam (live feed on Facebook) Furthermore, 7amleh spoke at a hearing organized by the European Parliament PEGA Committee on the issue of the Israeli Pegasus spyware. 7amleh also gave a presentation on Palestinian digital rights and their relevance for the European Union’s foreign and domestic policy and strategy unit before the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine.
7amleh is continuing to meet regularly with social media companies such as Meta, Twitter and Google in order to discuss violations of Palestinian digital rights on these platforms, and restore content that was wrongly censored. Additionally, 7amleh has participated in a summit held by Meta in Jordan in June 2022, as well as Meta Community Summit in the Middle East in October 2022. In light of the marginalization of tech workers speaking out for Palestinian human rights, 7amleh, in coordination with a group of local human rights organizations, published a statement in solidarity with these tech workers advocating for the undividability of human rights. Furthermore, 7amleh’s Advocacy and Communication Manager, Mona Shtaya published an Op-ed commenting on that, titled Google and Amazon put profit before principles with Project Nimbus. Furthermore, 7amleh commended Booking.com’s decision to to label unlawful Israeli settlements on their holiday booking web platform, and recommends other such platforms follow suit. Later on, the company reversed the decision and added a warning "Please review any travel advisories provided by your government to make an informed decision about your stay in this area, which may be considered conflict-affected, The Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition published a statement welcoming the filing of a lawsuit against the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. The lawsuit was filed against the NSO Group for infiltrating the phone of French-Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender Salah Hammouri.
7amleh is regularly meeting with the Arab Alliance for Digital Rights to discuss and coordinate on digital rights issues. The alliance furthermore holds regular meetings with social media companies in regard to content moderation in the Arab World.
The Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition continues to meet regularly, on a bi-monthly or as-needed basis to discuss relevant Palestinian digital rights developments. PDRC member organizations have participated in 7amleh’s campaign on Meta, and PayPal amongst others. Recently, the PDRC has also been receiving growing interest from human rights organizations to join the Coalition.
Meetings with the Palestinian Authority have been ongoing throughout 2022 to address digital rights issues. A session on Digital Rights and Policies affecting Palestinian digital rights was held on November 16 as part of the global Entrepreneurship Week, which was attended by more than 50 participants. Since the end of 2021, 7amleh has been cooperating with the Central Elections Commission in preparation for the March 2022 Palestinian local elections. In addition to a training on digital marketing and reporting digital rights violations (see below), 7amleh has been raising awareness on social media on the issue, including a video (in Arabic).
The global Business for Social Responsibility Network (BSR) published their long awaited Independent Human Rights Due Diligence Report on Meta's content moderation practices as they pertain to Hebrew and Arabic language content in the Palestine/Israel context in September 2022. 7amleh issued a joint statement in response to the report along with 73 other organizations from around the world. The Washington Post and The Intercept both quoted 7amleh in their coverage of the report, and 7amleh’s General Director, Nadim Nashif published an Op-Ed about the report in Reuters. Once published, 7amleh launched its “Meta, Let Palestine Speak” campaign including a campaign webpage, an explainer video, as well as the call to send emails to Meta executives, which had over 3,000 emails sent. As part of this campaign, the webinar “Meta, Let Palestine Speak” was held on November 9 with 7amleh’s Mona Shtaya, BSR’s Dunstan Allison-Hope, and Center for Constitutional Rights’ Diala Shamas, which was attended by more than 415 live attendees.
7amleh, in coordination with SumOfUs relaunched the “PayPal: Stop Discriminating Against Palestinians” online petition, which grasped the attention of actor Mark Ruffalo, who tweeted about the campaign, and has reached more than 275,000 signatures. On August 4, 7amleh held the webinar “PayPal 4 Palestine” with Linda Sarsour (MPowerChange), Mona Shtaya (7amleh), Lara Friedman (FMEP), and Angus Wong (SumOfUs). The webinar was attended by over 350 people. Furthermore, 7amleh collected testimonials from Palesitnians negatively impacted by PayPal’s refusal to provide services in the West Bank and Gaza. In partnership with the European Legal Support Center, 7amleh used these testimonials to make a joint submission on the matter to The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human RIghts, as well as three Special Rapporteurs on the Rights to Development; on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance; and on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories in November of 2022.
The campaign aimed to raise awareness amongst European citizens about the Palestinian experience of living under a system of pervasive surveillance such as through facial recognition, spyware, and drones; and expands on the impacts of mass surveillance on the day to day life of Palestinians as individuals as well as communities. The campaign references how these same technologies and tactics also have an impact in Europe/on Europeans.
Together with 23 social media influencers, 7amleh alongside UNFPA and Burj Al-LaqLaq launched a campaign on ‘positive masculinities’ (in Arabic) in October 2022. All influencers shared short videos surrounding the issue of ‘positive masculinities’, including the responsibility of men in being an example for their children, women’s right to work, as well as the importance for men to express their feelings throughout social media channels.
The campaign in Arabic focused on gender-based violence online (GBVO) as an extension of GBV offline into the online space, and how reporting these violations to the digital rights observatory 7or is essential to stop GBVO.
In August 7amleh launched a campaign in Arabic focusing on privacy under the hashtag #خصوصيتك_حق (your Privacy is your right). This includes a video summarizing the findings of 7amleh’s survey of Palestinians on privacy, a video graphic shedding light on the situation of digital rights and privacy in the occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as various infographics (here and here) detailing the violations of the right to privacy the Palestinian Authority. As part of this campaign, 7amleh gave several interviews and participated in podcasts (in Arabic): an interview with Radio Ajyal, and two podcasts with Taqarob podcast and Medan podcast. 7amleh has also strengthened cooperation with PalTel, the Palestinian Telecommunications Company, as well as Jawwal, the Palestinian mobile phone operator to discuss privacy rights and digital rights.
At the end of March/ beginning of April, 7amleh launched a large-scale social media awareness-raising campaign against online hate speech in Arabic. The campaign was initiated in cooperation with a number of social media influencers, who each produced one video on the topic, and shared through 7amleh’s Facebook, Youtube and Instagram accounts: on Facebook Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4, Video 5, Video 6, Video 7, Video 8, Video 9. Throughout 7amleh’s social media channels this campaign reached 710,264, had an engagement of 1390, a viewership of 432,625 and 316,748 clicks.
As part of 7amleh’s ‘Digital Rights Ambassadors Trainings at three Palestinian universities, where students received trainings on digital rights, digital campaigning and advocacy, students launched a total of three campaigns; “Hey Google, Palestine is here”, addressing Google’s discriminatory policies regarding Palestine; “Facebook, it’s enough, we need to talk” (#فيسبوك_بكفي_بدنا_نحكي), which included the online petition “Facebook, We Need to Talk”, which has almost 60,000 signatures; and “We Want PayPal in Palestine”, addressing denying Palestinians their right to access PayPal services for Palestinians in the West Bank, whereas Israelis in unlawful Israeli settlements in the West Bank are guaranteed access.
On January 18, 2022 7amleh held the digital security conference “Digital Security for Palestinians: Facing Challenges and Obstacles'', analyzing and discussing different aspects of digital security situation of Palestinians: digital security of children and adolescents, digital security for activists, women & human rights defenders, digital security for organizations, as well as digital security for women and LGBTQ+ online. More than 150 people participated in the conference.
7amleh is continuing to hold capacity building workshops and trainings on issues surrounding digital rights, digital security and digital activism, and in 2022 has trained a total of 3067 individuals, 76 trainers; and 54 organizations on digital rights issues.
A total of 667 Palestinian school students in East Jerusalem, 468 girls and 199 boys, as well as 511 students throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have been trained on digital security and how to best protect themselves online. All trainings took place at Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem.
As part of the UNFPA programme “Youth Ambassadors of Palestine” 7amleh has built the capacity of 19 Palestinians, 9 from Gaza and 10 from the West Bank, on issues of digital rights, digital security, digital advocacy, as well as mobile journalism and digital storytelling throughout four training sessions.
In the last quarter of 2022, 7amleh held training sessions on the Palestinian digital rights; with focus on privacy in addition to documentation of digital rights violations for five universities in the West Bank: Palestine Ahliya University in Bethlehem, al-Najah University in Nablus, Bethlehem University in Bethlehem, al-Quds University in Abu Dis Jerusalem, and Palestine University in Gaza, training a total number of 234 students. Furthermore, a total of 110 university students from Birzeit University, Al-Quds University, and the Arab American University were trained in five training sessions on digital rights, the violation of digital rights and their documentation, digital security, hate speech and stereotypes, as well as digital advocacy. As part of this project, the students then proceeded to run their own campaigns.
In order to build the capacity of civil society, organizations, and activists to be aware of their digital rights and to protect themselves against these violations and report them through 7or, 7amleh held a total of 9 training sessions, training a total of 137 people.
7amleh held the training “Be Safe” for women specifically on internet safety and protection for ten women in Haifa; a digital safety training for 15 journalists geared towards the specific needs of Palestinian journalists in Nazareth; a digital security training for human rights defenders; as well as digital campaigning for youth activists.
In order to build the capacity of digital security trainers, 7amleh held four trainings of trainers (TOTs), training a total of 76 digital security trainers. Whereas two of the trainings focused on how to deliver trainings with a new curriculum for high-risk human rights organizations, and on the legal security and tech-related aspects of creating digital security policies for organizations respectively; the ladder two trainings focused on recruiting digital security trainers, mainly teachers at schools, specifically for the Jerusalem area. Many of the trainers are now equipped with the necessary skills to deliver trainings on digital security to different audiences and age-groups.
7amleh has trained a total of twenty Palestinian human rights organizations in the West Bank and the Gaza strip in a series of three trainings on digital security, digital advocacy, as well as reputation management. Through these trainings, 25 human rights workers were trained in order to better equip them to undertake their work for Palestinian human rights.
In order to deliver digital security and digital advocacy trainings according to the specific needs of organizations advocating for Palestinian human rights, 7amleh has held organizational digital security and digital advocacy assessments for a total of 19 human rights organizations. Based on these assessments, trainings tailored to the needs, challenges, and resources in digital security and digital advocacy of these organizations were delivered to all 19 organizations, including on digital security for human rights, combating smear campaigns and hate speech online, digital appearance, digital marketing, digital advocacy, digital storytelling, and communication strategies.
In the last quarter of 2022, 7amleh assessed the needs of nine Palestinian human rights organizations in digital security through an extensive 3-day assessment. This will then guide the tailoring of digital safety trainings for these organizations’ needs, which will take place at the beginning of 2023.
In the last quarter of 2022, 7amleh held digital Safety trainings for a total of four media organizations and two human rights organizations, followed by an assessment of how the trainings have been applied within the organizations after a two month period. The four media organizations Radio Bethlehem 2000, Radio Alam, Radio the last story, PNN, Radio Hebron have completed both the five-day training sessions and assessment, whereas the human rights organizations have completed their four-day training sessions, and will have the follow-up assessment at the beginning of 2023.
7amleh successfully launched the sixth edition of the annual Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF) in May. The three-days online event attracted more than 1300 live participants and more than 300,000 attendees throughout social media channels. The local, regional and international speakers, trainers and participants discussed and built skills and capacities surrounding issues of “Digital Solidarity for Justice”. More than 120 speakers and trainers from all around the globe participated in the PDAF, including for instance US Congress Member Rashida Tlaib, member of the Danish Parliament Uffe Elbaek, and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lowler. Furthermore, the PDAF partnered with more than 60 local, regional and international organizations, including the social media companies Meta, and Clubhouse. All recordings can be accessed through this Youtube playlist. Alaa, a participant, explains his experience at the PDAF: "The people participating transcend all borders, barriers, and many geographical divisions, to gather in one place, which gives you the opportunity to learn, educate and hear and learn more about different opinions and experiences."
7amleh has been interviewed and mentioned in the media 212 times, including by TRT World, Middle East Eye, Press TV, and the Washington Post. 7amleh’s Executive Director Nadim Nashif published an Op-Ed through Thomson Reuters on “Meta and Human Rights in Palestine”: “Meta allocates insufficient resources to contextually aware and culturally-specific content moderation. Palestinians find themselves systematically censored every day, with no genuine right to appeal. What’s more, their freedoms are extremely vulnerable in periods of crisis, when their shedding light on the reality on the ground is vital. The blatant violation of fundamental freedoms caught the public’s attention thanks to heightened online pressure.”
7amleh’s Advocacy and Communication Manager Mona Shtaya published a piece for the Middle East Institute on “Nowhere to hide: The impact of Israel's digital surveillance regime on the Palestinians”: “Palestinians are routinely monitored in public spaces, as Israeli authorities deploy CCTV cameras in the streets of the Palestinian territory, specifically in Hebron and East Jerusalem. [...] Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have installed face-scanning cameras in Hebron, used by soldiers to identify Palestinians without having to check their IDs.”
Shtaya published a further piece for +972 Magazine titled “Who gets to speak out against their occupier on social media?” comparing how Ukrainians are allowed freedom of speech against their illegal occupation, while Palestinians are not: “Social media companies’ swift steps to protect Ukrainians’ free speech, especially in a time of war, was shocking to many Palestinians. Less than a year ago, during Israel’s attack on Gaza and the mass uprising in May, Palestinians turned to social media platforms to document human rights violations and disseminate their opinions with the aim of boosting and enriching the Palestinian narrative in the digital space, especially as that narrative rarely receives fair coverage in international mainstream media.” Furthermore, 7amleh was quoted in the Washington Post on Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content
Throughout 2022, 7amleh engaged almost 3 million people through their content on social media, and achieved almost 6 million video views. 7amleh is continuously increasing their follower numbers throughout all social media platforms, we have been trying to develop new ways and strategies to engage people and build a community on the platforms where people not only see our updates, news and announcement, but also get new knowledge and information regarding Palestinian digital rights issues, therefore encourage them to engage and also share such content with their networks. 7amleh’s and SumOfUs’ joint campaign on PayPal has gained the attention of actor Mark Ruffalo and has been retweeted by him.
In 2022, 7amleh was a partner of the annual Bread & Net Conference as well as the Build Palestine Summit. In 2022, 7amleh hosted two sessions at the Mozzila Festival: one on Israeli surveillance and the Palestinian experience, as well as a session on the attacks on indigenous content on social media platforms; as well as the session “Respect and Protect: How Civil Society can Best Advocate for digital rights on social media” on how social media can be employed to raise awareness on and strengthen digital rights, and participated in three more sessions discussing how tech companies are contributing to authoritarianism, to digital apartheid and how content moderation influences in particular women human rights defenders at the 2022 RightsCon.
At the annual Bread & Net Conference, 7amleh spoke at three sessions: “Wait, Who’s Timothy McVeigh” focusing on Meta’s and Youtube’s Content Moderation in foreign languages, including Arabic; a fire side talk with Meta’s Oversight Board; as well as “Subversion, Resistance and Safe Spaces: Wading through SRHR censorship online”.
Furthermore, amongst others, 7amleh spoke at the Geneva Graduate Institute’s conference “The Impact of Surveillance on Human Rights: Palestine and Beyond”, at Al-Shabaka’s webinar “Resisting Digital Repression in Palestine and Beyond”, and participated in DW’s Global Media Forum, an annual interdisciplinary conference for media professionals and decision-makers, the UNDP event “Digital Palestine” with a side event on “Privacy and Data Protection”, focusing on digital rights violations of Palestinians and how their data can be better protected; and in a session on “Closing digital divides and further harnessing ICT for sustainable development via the WSIS +20 review and the Internet Universality ROAM-X indicators“ with UNESCO at the World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2022.