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Facebook shuts down page of academic program sponsoring Palestinian event

"As with the removal of other profiles and pages, Facebook’s erasure of the AMED Studies program page demonstrates the egregious role private tech companies have taken in suppressing free and open intellectual exchange."

On April 12 Facebook removed the event page for a panel on Palestine. The next day the tech company shut down the page for the academic program that sponsored it. Ironically, the open classroom is about free speech.

Image from Facebook showing the event had been taken down. (Image via AMED)

The sponsor of the event is the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies program at San Francisco State University. Last September they sponsored a similar event that was censored by Facebook, Zoom, and YouTube.

“As with the removal of other profiles and pages, Facebook’s erasure of the AMED Studies program page demonstrates the egregious role private tech companies have taken in suppressing free and open intellectual exchange,” reads a statement put out by the program “In deleting the page of a vital, intersectional program like AMED studies that routinely stages open classrooms on the intersection between the Palestinian struggle and various other liberation movements across the globe, Facebook is depriving countless students, scholars, organizers and community members of access to irreplaceable pedagogical material and programming.”

The September panel was blocked in response a coordinated campaign by pro-Israel groups, angry about Leila Khaled being one of the featured speakers. Khaled is a member of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the United States government views a terrorist organization. She connected to a series of hijackings in 1969 and 1970 and is viewed as a symbol of resistance by many Palestinians.

Earlier this year, a coalition of human rights organizations launched a global campaign called “Facebook, we need to talk.” The move came in response to the company’s censorship of Palestinian voices and a proposed revision to the company’s hate speech policy that would have established Zionism as a protected category.

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More evidence that the Zionists are becoming increasingly panic stricken. The rapidly emerging truth will inevitably become a flood.

Imagine the politics that will follow after one secular state, with equality under the law, emerges front and center.

Millions of Muslim in Pakistan Malaysia Bangladesh India Indonesia Iran Iraq use this platform to post mostly garbage . Why don’t they boycott facebook ?

Israel is following the same foolish and self defeating policy the British did in Nothern Ireland inthe early part of the struggle.I am embarrassed to admit that the Gov of the republic joined Britain in this fools errand.

Tv stations North and South as on mainland Britain were forbidden to show the faces of IRA Spokespersons or allow their actual voices to be heard.We were subjected to the spectacle of watching actors stand in for the real victims.Can,t have these terrorists telling their side of the story.

I should note that the Unionists were not subjected to such restrictions.The late “Never,Never Never” Rev Ian Paisley had carte blanche on all forms of media.

Israel might learn something from the history of others and end their attempts to hide the truth from the rest of the world.