The silent deletion: Inside the digital war on Palestinian evidence

Human rights organizations are facing an unprecedented campaign aimed at erasing digital archives and silencing their documentation of the crimes of the Israeli regime.

What began as a political decision by the United States has now turned into widespread, coordinated digital censorship, threatening decades of human rights documentation that form the backbone of Palestinians’ legal cases in international courts.

For years, human rights groups have meticulously collected evidence of abuses by the Israeli regime, ranging from targeted killings and home demolitions to torture and violations of prisoners’ rights. A large part of this work has been compiled as part of ongoing investigations and submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

However, in recent weeks, YouTube has removed more than 700 videos belonging to three human rights organizations — Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. These videos included survivor testimonies, footage of military attacks, and forensic investigations that had become the foundation of global human rights reporting.

These removals stemmed from U.S. sanctions issued under Executive Order 14203, an order enacted to prevent the ICC from investigating the Israeli regime’s war crimes.

This digital crackdown did not occur by chance. It comes after years of systematic efforts to delegitimize the human rights community, including the Israeli regime’s designation of several major organizations as “terrorist entities” in 2021, followed by their criminalization by the regime’s military commander in the occupied West Bank.

This designation paved the way for today’s escalated campaign to destroy Palestinians’ documentation work, both on the ground and online.

YouTube did not attribute the account removals to automated errors or content-violation policies; instead, it removed Al-Haq’s account without prior notice or justification. Zeina Hourani, a representative of the organization, said: “We were simply told that no account exists with that email address.”

In response to The Intercept, YouTube confirmed that, after a review, it removed the accounts of the aforementioned groups as a direct result of U.S. State Department sanctions.

This order grants the U.S. government broad authority to sanction individuals or institutions that support the ICC’s efforts to investigate or prosecute the Israeli regime.

Raji Sourani, a human rights expert, described these sanctions as a scandal in the field of human rights. He said that no legal organization has ever before been sanctioned merely for cooperating with an international legal body.

Digital erasure

This deletion is part of a broader pattern of extensive digital censorship targeting Palestinian content globally. According to a report by the 7amleh Center, digital platforms are increasingly adopting moderation systems that disproportionately suppress pro-Palestinian voices.

One expert at the center stated that the behavior of major technology companies is neither accidental nor neutral. Platforms routinely comply with Israeli regime removal requests at a very high rate and rely heavily on automated systems instead of human review. This accelerates the mass removal of Palestinian-related content while simultaneously limiting transparency and accountability.

While Palestinian archives are being erased, pro–Israeli-regime digital networks are aggressively moving to dominate the narrative.

Israeli regime ministries, cyber units, and coordinated volunteer networks have launched online campaigns, encouraging users to mass-report Palestinian content and using automated moderation systems to remove images of violations by the occupying army.