Digital Rights Weekly Update: 20 - 26 February 2026

Policy Insight:

This week underscores how the battle over narrative is intensifying, not only through censorship, but through strategic investment in shaping information ecosystems. The banning of five Palestinian media platforms covering Jerusalem, alongside intensified digital monitoring during Ramadan, reflects a tightening grip on Palestinian voices under the pretext of “incitement.” Narrative control is no longer reactive; it is institutionalized.

At the same time, investigations reveal a multimillion-dollar state-backed campaign targeting right-wing Christian audiences in the United States through websites designed to resemble independent research platforms. These sites are structured to influence AI chatbots and search engines, signaling a shift from traditional propaganda toward manipulating generative AI outputs. Parallel reporting exposes coordinated visual disinformation campaigns aimed at denying Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. These efforts show that significant resources are being deployed to engineer perception at scale.

Beyond narrative warfare, proposals to impose externally controlled digital financial systems in Gaza, alongside the continued integration of AI-driven military analytics by companies such as “Palantir Technologies”, point to a deeper architecture of digital control. Information manipulation and technological governance are converging. The policy challenge ahead is not only protecting speech, but confronting a model in which data, infrastructure, and narrative are weaponized simultaneously.

News Digest

Digital architecture of control and displacement: Digital wallets as an emerging instrument of silent genocide in Gaza

Euro Med Human Rights Monitor

 The Israeli and US plans aiming to transform the Gaza Strip into an economy lacking financial sovereignty are extremely concerning. The plans suggest abolishing cash currency and enforcing a transition to a digital economy managed by external entities aligned with Israel. This would change access to money and basic transactions from a fundamental right into a revocable privilege, making food, medicine, and shelter dependent on security decisions and military assessments. It reflects a coercive restructuring of daily life aimed at pushing the population toward poverty and displacement, managed through technology. After over two years of financial blockade, Liran Tancman, an Israeli businessman and former officer in Israeli Intelligence Unit 8200, who has been involved with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), said at an event in Washington that rebuilding Gaza depends on restoring its digital and economic connectivity. He outlined a vision for creating a “secure digital backbone” to support electronic payments, education, and financial services, alongside an “Amazon-like logistics system”. This approach aims to transition the economy from a rights-based framework to one focused on operational and security control.

Israel bans 5 Palestinian media platform over coverage of Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem

AA

Israel has banned five Palestinian media platforms covering Israeli measures in the occupied East Jerusalem on claims of “incitement.” Israel’s Defense Ministry issued an order on Sunday to ban Alasima News, M3raj Network, Al-Quds Albawsala Network, Maydan Al-Quds, and Plus Quds Network. None of these media platforms have offices in East Jerusalem. "Defense Minister Israel Katz signed an order designating these platforms as terrorist organizations, and the Attorney General confirmed that there is no legal obstacle," Israel's Channel 12 reported. The platforms “are accused of incitement by focusing on developments in (East) Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque," it said. Following the Israeli order, Alasima News said it was suspending all media activities until further notice, while there was no immediate comment from the other four platforms.

Fighting the 'Jesus Was a Palestinian Lie': Inside Israel's MAGA Influence Campaigns

Haaretz

An investigation by Haaretz reveals a $9 million Israeli government-funded influence campaign targeting the American evangelical right. Operated by U.S. firm Clock Tower X, founded by former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale, the campaign runs a network of at least seven websites designed to resemble independent think tanks. Framed as an effort to combat antisemitism, the sites promote pro-Israel and explicitly anti-Palestinian narratives, including theological attacks on “Palestinianism” and content tailored to resonate with MAGA-aligned Christians. The operation goes beyond traditional messaging: it is structured to influence AI chatbots and search engines by producing encyclopedia-style entries optimized for generative AI systems.

Palestinian solidarity in Britain ‘being silenced and criminalised’

The Guardian

Palestinian solidarity is being “silenced, criminalised and sanctioned”, according to an advocacy group that says it has recorded more than 900 examples of repression across Britain in the last six years. People had been targeted with smears, disinformation, harassment, doxing (having private or identifying information published online), visa cancellations, financial blacklisting, loss of employment and arrest, according to the European Legal Support Center, which, along with the research group Forensic Architecture, has created the “index of repression”. The ELSC said such consequences had been justified by allegations of antisemitism or terrorism support, with the main “actors of repression” being police (220 incidents), educational institutions (192), pro-Israel advocacy groups (141), and journalists and other media actors (141). At a press conference on Wednesday, Bob Trafford, of Forensic Architecture, said: “The data, painstakingly gathered and verified by ELSC, reveals the operation of a system, not something which is centrally directed, of course, but something which is organic, multipolar, self-reinforcing and mutually exacerbating.