Digital Rights Weekly Update: 11 - 17 September 2026

Policy Insight

This week’s stories, from the suppression of Palestinian expression online to the use of AI in violence and displacement, highlight several things including our new report, Solidarity Censored, which provides an important comparative look across six European countries at how platform governance, national laws and state pressure interact to restrict freedom of expression, with direct consequences for digital rights.

At the same time, the documentary film NZA brings renewed attention to issues we have been reporting on for years: the weaponisation of AI and technology in acts of genocide and forcible displacement in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera’s report too shows how AI-assisted surveillance is being used to accelerate demolitions and the colonisation of the West Bank. These developments make accountability over how technology is designed, deployed and governed increasingly urgent.
News Digest

New 7amleh Report Examines the Online Suppression of Pro-Palestine Solidarity Across Europe

7amleh

7amleh released a new report, “Solidarity Censored: Examining Digital Suppression of Pro-Palestine Support Across Europe,” examining how expression in support of Palestinians is restricted online across France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom between 7 October 2023 and 31 December 2025. Combining legal analysis, case studies, survey data and interviews with affected users, civil society groups and tech workers, the report finds that suppression - through content removal, account suspension, reduced visibility, shadow banning and restricted features - stems not from platform policy alone but from a chilling combination of platform governance, national law and state pressure, often leaving users without explanation or means of appeal. 

Cisco Likely Allowed Harassment of Pro-Palestinian Workers, Agency Says

The New York Times

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found “reasonable cause to believe” that Cisco Systems violated federal civil rights law by subjecting Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees to a hostile work environment based on national origin, religion and association, following complaints filed after 7 October 2023. Employees in an internal group called Bridge to Humanity had sent leadership a letter - signed by more than 1,700 staff - calling on Cisco to end its technology dealings with Israel's military; workers say the company shut down the group's internal communication tools without responding and failed to act as signatories faced harassment, while a separate internal forum allegedly hosted discriminatory posts that went unaddressed. 

In their words: Israeli forces describe AI-backed Gaza killing in new film

France 24

“NAZA,” a documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor - the Oscar-winning directors of “No Other Land” - premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 10 September to a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation, and went on to win the Special Jury Prize. Shot in secret over nearly three years, the 80-minute film is built on anonymous testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources describing the systems used to target Palestinians in Gaza, including “Lavender,” an AI-assisted tool that mined Gaza's monitored telecommunications network - calls, movements, contacts - to generate assassination targets “on a mass scale, like a factory,” in the words of one interviewee. Its title refers to a military acronym used to calculate anticipated civilian casualties before a strike. 

Israel weaponises AI for West Bank demolitions

Al Jazeera

An investigation details how the Israel Land Authority is using “ImiSight,” an AI system built by Rafael, to scan satellite and aerial imagery and automatically flag any minor change or repair in the Palestinian landscape as “illegal construction.” First tested in the Naqab, where it contributed to the eviction of more than 2,600 Bedouin residents across 10,700+ square kilometres, the tool was handed to a dedicated Israel Land Authority enforcement unit set up in April 2025 and expanded to the West Bank's Area C and East Jerusalem. Demolitions there rose 80 percent between 2023 and 2025 compared with the prior decade, with 1,288 structures destroyed in the first nine months of 2025 alone — even as Israeli authorities approved more than 40,000 new settler housing units over the same period. “The algorithm here is a 'force multiplier,'” said Amir Daoud of the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, warning that automation lets responsibility for demolitions be dispersed and escaped.