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Israel jails Palestinian for Facebook post

February 14, 2017 at 4:50 pm

An Israeli court today issued a 17-month sentence against a Palestinian youth from the Shuafat refugee camp, in occupied East Jerusalem, for inciting “terrorism” on Facebook and supporting a “terrorist” organisation.

Read: Facebook closes accounts of Palestine activists

An Israeli report said the court named 12 charges against the Palestinian citizen, all related to terrorism.

Over 200 criminal cases against Arab Israelis and Palestinians have been opened in recent months, but Israelis inciting racism against Arabs face no prosecution, an Israel-based NGO revealed last week.

In a survey covering 2016-published posts, the Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement found that 60,000 Israelis have written at least one racist post against Arabs on Facebook in 2016.

Also read: Hamas slams Facebook for blocking Palestinian activists’ accounts

A crackdown on Palestinian social media users has been carried on in cooperation with Facebook. The Israeli government agreed with the social network to combat alleged “incitement” by Palestinians as it features in their posts. As a result, a number of Palestinian activists and news outlets have had their accounts closed.