Facebook: using the word ‘genocide’ is ‘hate’ because it ‘portrays Israelis as less than human’

Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians treats them as ‘animals’ and racist posts are freely shared – but calling genocide ‘genocide’ is beyond the pale…

Social media platform Facebook is removing even comments under posts if they mention the word ‘genocide’ – claiming they are ‘hate speech’ that ‘portray[s] [Israelis] as less than human’.

Skwawkbox reader William Bennett reacted to Skwawkbox’s revelation that Israel has told its troops not to post pictures of themselves committing war crimes by commenting “It’s actually an admission in that case that they’re committing genocide”. But Facebook quickly removed his comment:

The Meta platform said that this was unacceptable because it:

may attack a person or group of people based on who they are by portraying them as less than human.

When Mr Bennett appealed the decision, Facebook still did not restore the comment – claiming that ‘We’ve confirmed that it does not follow our Community Standards on hate speech’:

Israeli ministers and military chiefs have told their troops to shoot and starve Palestinians in Gaza because they are ‘animals’, and ‘Amalek’ – deserving only extermination – specifically ‘portraying them as less than human’. But describing their crimes as genocid, in agreement with the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, the United Nations and a string of human rights organisations, is beyond the pale according to Facebook.

Facebook has no problem circulating propaganda that promotes genocidal Israel:

And it has no problem propagating openly hateful racist and homophobic posts – even in the feeds of people completely opposed to such bigotry, as these examples forced onto the feed of Skwawkbox’s editor in just the last few days, despite repeated blocks and marking such posts as unwanted:

But calling a genocide a genocide, well, that’s a breach of ‘community standards’ according to Facebook – even when it has involved the murder of more than 200,000 civilians, mostly women and children, and the deliberate starvation and continued bombing of two million more.

Facebook’s parent company Meta has been exposed ‘devastating’ the reach of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian pages and their information and employing ‘policy heads’ to implement the Israeli government’s preferences on its platforms.

Now even a word confirmed in international law and by genocide experts is a no-no, because it’s not nice to the genociders.

SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:

Thanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!

If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.