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LEAKED DATA REVEALS MASSIVE ISRAELI CAMPAIGN TO REMOVE PRO-PALESTINE
POSTS ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM  
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Waqas Ahmed, Nicholas Rodelo, Ryan Grim, and Murtaza Hussain
April 11, 2025
Drop Site News
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_ A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are
critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was
directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to
internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. _

Pro-Palestine protesters in front of Meta headquarters on November 3,
2023. , Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

 

A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are
critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was
directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to
internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta
has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since
October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests
globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of
posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the
largest mass censorship operation in modern history.

Government requests for takedowns generally focus on posts made by
citizens inside that government’s borders, Meta insiders said. What
makes Israel’s campaign unique is its success in censoring speech in
many countries outside of Israel. What’s more, Israel's censorship
project will echo well into the future, insiders said, as the AI
program Meta is currently training how to moderate content will base
future decisions on the successful takedown of content critical of
Israel’s genocide.

The data, compiled and provided to Drop Site News by whistleblowers,
reveal the internal mechanics of Meta’s “Integrity
Organization”—an organization within Meta dedicated to ensuring
the safety and authenticity on its platforms. Takedown requests (TDRs)
allow individuals, organizations, and government officials to request
the removal of content that allegedly violates Meta’s policies. The
documents indicate that the vast majority of Israel’s
requests—95%—fall under Meta’s “terrorism” or “violence
and incitement” categories. And Israel’s requests have
overwhelmingly targeted users from Arab and Muslim-majority nations in
a massive effort to silence criticism of Israel.

Multiple independent sources inside Meta confirmed the authenticity of
the information provided by the whistleblowers. The data also show
that Meta removed over 90,000 posts to comply with TDRs submitted by
the Israeli government in an average of 30 seconds. Meta also
significantly expanded automated takedowns since October 7, resulting
in an estimated 38.8 million additional posts being “actioned
upon” across Facebook and Instagram since late 2023. “Actioned
upon” in Facebook terms means that a post was either removed,
banned, or suppressed.

Number of posts reported by the Israeli government over time, by
country of post origin. Obtained by Drop Site News.

Number of posts actioned upon by Meta over time, by country of post
origin. Obtained by Drop Site News.

TAKEDOWN REQUESTS

All of the Israeli government’s TDRs post-October 7th contain the
exact same complaint text, according to the leaked information,
regardless of the substance of the underlying content being
challenged. Sources said that not a single Israeli TDR describes the
exact nature of the content being reported, even though the requests
link to an average of 15 different pieces of content. Instead, the
reports simply state, in addition to a description of the October 7th
attacks, that:

_This is an urgent request regarding videos posted on Facebook which
contain inciting content. The file attached to this request contains
link [sic] to content which violated articles 24(a) and 24(b) of the
Israeli Counter-Terrorism Act (2016), which prohibits incitement to
terrorism praise for acts of terrorism and identification or support
of terror organizations. Moreover, several of the links violate
article 2(4) of the Privacy Protection Act (1982), which prohibits
publishing images in circumstances that could humiliate the person
depicted, as they contain images of the killed, injured, and
kidnapped. Additionally, to our understanding, the content in the
attached report violates Facebook’s community standards._

Meta's content enforcement system processes user-submitted reports
through different pathways, depending on who is reporting it. Regular
users can report posts via the platform’s built-in reporting
function, triggering a review. Reported posts are typically first
labeled as violating or non-violating by machine-learning models,
though sometimes human moderators review them as well. If the AI
assigns a high confidence score indicating a violation, the post is
removed automatically. If the confidence score is low, human
moderators review the post before deciding whether to take action.

Governments and organizations, on the other hand, have privileged
channels to trigger content review. Reports submitted through these
channels receive higher priority and are almost always reviewed by
human moderators rather than AI. Once reviewed by humans, the reviews
are fed back into Meta’s AI system to help it better assess similar
content in the future. While everyday users can also file TDRs, they
are rarely acted upon. Government-submitted TDRs are far more likely
to result in content removal.

Meta has overwhelmingly complied with Israel’s requests, making an
exception for the government account by taking down posts without
human reviews, according to the whistleblowers, while still feeding
that data back into Meta’s AI. A Human Rights Watch (HRW)
report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content
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7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or
suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content
in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of
Israel.

A source within Meta’s Integrity Organization confirmed that
internal reviews of their automated moderation found that
pro-Palestinian content that did not violate Meta’s policies was
frequently removed. In other cases, pro-Palestinian content that
should have been simply removed was given a “strike,” which
indicates a more serious offense. Should a single account receive too
many strikes on content that it publishes, the entire account can be
removed from Meta platforms.

When concerns about overenforcement against pro-Palestinian content
were raised inside the Integrity Organization, the source said,
leadership responded by saying that they preferred to overenforce
against potentially violating content, rather than underenforce and
risk leaving violating content live on Meta platforms.

REMOVE, STRIKE, SUSPEND

Within Meta, several key leadership positions are filled by figures
with personal connections to the Israeli government. The Integrity
Organization is run by Guy Rosen, a former Israeli military official
who served in the Israeli military’s signals intelligence unit, Unit
8200. Rosen was the founder of Onavo, a web analytics and VPN firm
that then-Facebook acquired in October 2013. (Previous reporting has
revealed that, prior to acquiring the company, Facebook used data
Onavo collected from their VPN users to monitor the performance of
competitors—part of the anti-competitive behavior alleged by the
Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration in its suit
against Meta.)

Rosen’s Integrity Organization works synergistically with Meta’s
Policy Organization, according to employees. The Policy Organization
sets the rules, and the Integrity Organization enforces them—but the
two feed one another, they said. “Policy changes are often driven by
data from the integrity org,” explained one Meta employee. As of
this year, Joel Kaplan replaced Nick Clegg as the head of the Policy
Organization. Kaplan is a former Bush administration official who has
worked with Israeli officials in the past on fighting “online
incitement.”

Meta’s Director of Public Policy for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora,
Jordana Cutler, has also intervened to investigate pro-Palestine
content. Cutler is a former senior Israeli government official and
advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cutler has reportedly
used her role
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flag pro-Palestine content. According to internal communications
reviewed by Drop Site, as recently as March, Cutler actively
instructed employees of the company to search for and review content
mentioning Ghassan Kanafani, an Arab novelist considered to be a
pioneer of Palestinian literature. Immediately prior to joining Meta
as a senior policymaker, she spent nearly three years as Chief of
Staff at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C—and nearly five
years serving as deputy to one of Netanyahu’s senior advisors,
before becoming Netanyahu’s advisor on Diaspora Affairs.

According to internal information reviewed by Drop Site, Cutler has
continued to demand the review of content related to Kanafani under
Meta’s policy “Glorification, Support or Representation” of
individuals or organizations “that proclaim a violent mission or are
engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms.” Kanafani,
who was killed in a 1972 car bombing orchestrated by the Mossad,
served as a spokesperson for the left-wing Palestinian nationalist
group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The
PFLP was designated as a terrorist group over a quarter century after
he was killed, which, according to Meta’s guidelines and Cutler’s
efforts, serves as a basis to flag his content for removal, strikes,
and possible suspension.

GLOBAL SCOPE

The leaked documents reveal that Israel’s takedown requests have
overwhelmingly targeted users from Arab and Muslim-majority nations,
with the top 12 countries affected being: Egypt (21.1%), Jordan
(16.6%), Palestine (15.6%), Algeria (8.2%), Yemen (7.5%), Tunisia
(3.3%), Morocco (2.9%), Saudi Arabia (2.7%), Lebanon (2.6%), Iraq
(2.6%), Syria (2%), Turkey (1.5%). In total, users from over 60
countries have reported censorship of content related to Palestine,
according to Human Rights Watch—with posts being removed, accounts
suspended, and visibility reduced through shadow banning.

Notably, only 1.3% of Israel’s takedown requests target Israeli
users, making Israel an outlier among governments that typically focus
their censorship efforts on their own citizens. For example, 63% of
Malaysia’s takedown requests target Malaysian content, and 95% of
Brazil’s requests target Brazilian content. Israel, however, has
turned its censorship efforts outward, focusing on silencing critics
and narratives that challenge its policies, particularly in the
context of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite Meta’s awareness of Israel’s aggressive censorship tactics
for at least seven years, according to Meta whistleblowers, the
company has failed to curb the abuse. Instead, one said, the company
“actively provided the Israeli government with a legal entry-point
for carrying out its mass censorship campaign.”

WAQAS AHMED is a _Pakistani journalist_. He is the former web editor
of Daily Pakistan and the Business Recorder.

NICHOLAS RODELO is a researcher at Drop Site News and Data analyst for
The Academic Trumpists (Routledge)

RYAN GRIM is a Reporter for The Intercept, Co-Host of Counter Points,
Host of Deconstructed podcast, author of We’ve Got People and This
Is Your Country On Drugs.

MURTAZA HUSSAIN is a reporter at The Intercept who focuses on national
security and foreign policy. He has appeared on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and
other news outlets.

DROP SITE NEWS -- Investigative journalism lives on.

_Independent news on politics and war. Founded by Ryan Grim, Jeremy
Scahill, and veterans of The Intercept._

Gaza is under siege. Ukraine is starting to use U.S. weapons inside of
Russia. India is assassinating its leader’s political enemies around
the world. The U.S. election has left the American people to choose
between Donald Trump, who uses the term Palestinian as a slur, and
Kamala Harris, who has done little to separate herself from the
genocidal policy of the administration in which she serves.

Free speech is under unprecedented assault from corporate and
government forces. Far right movements are surging in Europe and
beyond. A militant new labor movement is on the march here in the
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At a time when the world desperately needs hard-hitting journalism,
establishment and corporate media outlets are failing the public and
democracy itself. That’s why Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim
started DROP SITE, A NON-ALIGNED, INVESTIGATIVE NEWS
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