Google denies censorship of Palestinian footage

Google has denied reports that it has bowed down to pressure to censor videos which “incited” Palestinian violence against Israelis, Tikun Olam reported a statement by the company saying.

The world’s leading search engine said that though its officials did meet with Israeli ministers, this “was one of many [meetings] that we have with policymakers from different countries to explain our policies on controversial content, flagging and removals.”

The annoucement came “following media reports about a meeting last week between Google/YouTube executives and the Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs” Tzipi Hotovely, following which the Israeli minister announced that “there had been an agreement with Google to establish ‘a mechanism to monitor online materials’.”

Since the latest escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israeli security services that erupted at the beginning of October, many people have been sharing videos depicting Israeli aggression towards Palestinians to highlight the Palestinian perspective of the conflict.