The New Arab
Social media companies are blocking posts related to the war on Gaza to comply with the UK's new Online Safety Act, which came into effect on 25 July. BBC Verify found that content on X and Reddit has been restricted on X for those who have not verified their age on the sites. The content includes topics from the war on Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to parliamentary debates on grooming gangs. The report highlighted that a video posted to X of a man in Gaza searching for his family members under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israel had been restricted, despite not showing dead bodies or graphic images. Users who did not verify their age were met with a message reading: "Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age." X removed the warning after being approached by BBC Verify.
AA
Israel’s military intelligence agency has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store and analyze intercepted Palestinian phone calls at a vast scale, according to an investigation by The Guardian, the Palestinian-Israeli publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. The system, operational since 2022, can process up to “a million calls an hour” and has been used to support military operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, according to the investigation. It revealed the partnership took shape after a 2021 meeting between Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 commander Yossi Sariel and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Armed with Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, Unit 8200 began building a powerful new mass surveillance tool: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” According to The Guardian, a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence revealed how Azure has been used by Unit 8200 “to store this expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communications.”
ARAB NEWS
Viral hashtags such as #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack have mobilized millions, sidelining mainstream media and challenging the dominant Western portrayal of Israel as a democratic outpost and as a recurrent victim. Instead, for much of the world, Israel stands increasingly accused of operating as a Western colonial and apartheid state in the heart of the Middle East, charged with war crimes documented in real time. Social media has transformed global outrage into protests on university campuses, boycotts against complicit corporations, and, crucially, legal action. For instance, evidence gleaned from soldiers’ posts and digital archives — often collected by grassroots actors — has been used by organizations and even states when filing cases at the International Court of Justice. The trail of legal pursuit is now extending to IT companies that have enabled Israel to weaponize untested artificial intelligence to hunt down Palestinians. Gaza has become a testing ground for future weapons of mass destruction.
The Guardian
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his supporters have variously argued that there is no starvation in Gaza, or that if there is hunger it is the fault of Hamas – who they accuse of stealing aid – or the United Nations. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Amit Segal, the chief political correspondent for Israel’s Channel 12, said he did not believe there was hunger in Gaza. Israel’s consul general in New York said that there was “no deliberate starvation in Gaza, only a deliberate disinformation campaign orchestrated by Hamas”. Social media has also helped spread misinformation about hunger in Gaza, with photographs and video of cafes being presented as evidence that there is no famine. One Israeli creator on YouTube with more than 400,000 subscribers posted a video entitled “Summer 2025 (Genocide Never Tasted So Good)”, which highlights the existence of several small cafes in Gaza City in an attempt to disprove the existence of food shortages. But Israeli government data clearly shows that it is starving Gaza. UN-backed food security experts said that Gaza is currently experiencing a “worst-case scenario” famine. Even Netanyahu’s biggest ally, Donald Trump, has said there is “real starvation” in the territory. Despite such conclusions, pro-Israeli figures have continued to cast doubt on the veracity of images of malnourished children. In an interview with Piers Morgan, the US media personality Megyn Kelly dismissed such images as having been “manipulated”, before claiming that Hamas and “frankly a lot of Palestinians” are “masters of propaganda and they’re fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera”.
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