Digital Rights Weekly Update: 6 - 12 February 2026

Policy Insight:

This week, we launch PDAF 2026 at a critical moment for Palestinian digital rights. As colonial violence intensifies on the ground, digital erasure unfolds alongside it, through surveillance systems, AI-driven military technologies, platform governance decisions, and corporate integrations that normalize tools developed through the monitoring of Palestinians.

The battle is no longer only over content removal. It is over infrastructure. Cloud acquisitions, AI targeting systems, and narrative-shaping digital platforms are reshaping how Palestine is seen, remembered, and governed.

PDAF 2026 will center the embattled Palestinian narrative while advancing stronger engagement on corporate accountability. If surveillance and digital control are becoming embedded models of governance, our response must be structural: demanding transparency, challenging corporate complicity, and insisting that digital systems respect rights rather than entrench dispossession.

News Digest

EU Approves Google Deal with Israeli Cyber Firm Born from Surveillance of Palestinians

Palestine Chronicle 

Alphabet’s Google has secured unconditional approval from the European Union for its $32 billion acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz — a decision that raises renewed scrutiny over the growing integration of Israeli security technologies, many developed in the context of military occupation and surveillance of Palestinians, into global digital infrastructure.

The European Commission concluded the takeover would not significantly reduce competition in the European cloud computing market, stating customers would retain alternative providers. Reuters news agency reported that EU regulators determined Google still trails Amazon and Microsoft in cloud infrastructure share and therefore the transaction would not create market dominance. The Commission also dismissed concerns that access to Wiz data would provide Google with an unfair competitive advantage. With the European Union and the United States both clearing the transaction, the path toward finalizing one of the largest technology acquisitions in history now appears largely open.

Digital illusions, political delusions: Israel’s Hasbara propaganda revisited in a time of genocide

Taylor & Francic

Debates about digital technologies absorbing old political conflicts have intensified in recent years. In an ebb and flow between optimistic promise and pessimistic anxiety, discussions regarding the transformative abilities of technology include cyber warfare; digital activism during the 2011 Arab uprisings and the Black Lives Matter movement; the impact of ‘fake news’ on elections; and more recently the domination of Artificial Intelligence. This article discusses Hasbara, a mixture of propaganda and diplomacy that operates mostly through digital media. I offer a longitudinal and return to earlier analyses and assertions. On the surface, the professionalisation of Hasbara was completed with Israel’s formation of an informal Ministry of Hasbara that expanded under the influence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and additional investment in a social media strategy. The evolution of Hasbara has nurtured discontent regarding Palestine and consent for Israel. Yet this has deformed into a major paradox where Israel is executing a military war and actively influencing opinions through racism and violence, and simultaneously highlights Western complicity with settler colonialism through regional alignment with (Western) imperialism. Digital infrastructures afford an ecology in which genocide cannot be hidden away: with every publicly live-streamed urban bombing and assassination, its moral neglect is laid bare.

What is Palantir? And why is this corporation so dangerous?

AFSC

The company conducts mass surveillance in the service of state violence, from ICE’s deportation machine to the genocide in Gaza. Palantir is the most dangerous tech company you may not have heard of. It uses artificial intelligence to weaponize our data against us. Built with CIA funding to support the U.S. “war on terror,” Palantir is a weapons company disguised as a software start-up. Now it helps Israel plan its military operations and powers ICE’s deportation machine. And it is everywhere. Palantir is used by militaries, police forces, banks, hospitals, and even your local pharmacy or favorite fast-food place. This technology is designed to help governments track and target individuals. It is killing people abroad and can be weaponized against everyone. That’s why it must be stopped.  

Widespread Controversy Over Palestinian Curriculum Amendments and Ministry Clarifies Reality of External Pressures

Alquds

Palestinian circles and social media platforms witnessed a heated debate following reports of significant amendments to national school curricula. These allegations included the deletion of content related to national constants and the alteration of established historical and cultural terms, raising widespread fears that official bodies were succumbing to conditional international pressures. According to activists and local media, the alleged changes affected dozens of textbooks for students from first to tenth grade. Criticisms focused on undermining sensitive issues such as the issue of prisoners, the right of return, and the status of Jerusalem, in addition to replacing educational texts with others said to promote alternative narratives. For its part, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education promptly issued a comprehensive clarifying statement to respond to these accusations and refute the published documents. The Ministry affirmed that the majority of what is circulated in the digital space has no connection to the official Palestinian curriculum, but rather is the result of forgery and distortion practiced by the Israeli occupation in schools in occupied Jerusalem.