Al-Azhar, the top Sunni Islamic scholarly institution in Egypt, has expressed concern over Israel’s purchase of Google Ads to discredit the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
In a statement issued by its Observatory for Combating Extremism, Al-Azhar noted that in so doing, the Israeli occupation expands the battlefield, which now extends to online platforms that should uphold the values of transparency, integrity and neutrality that they claim to champion.
“In a continuation of a series of fabricated narratives aimed at garnering global sympathy, the Israeli government has engaged in a mass purchase of promotional content from the tech giant Google. This move is intended to direct search engine users seeking information about UNRWA to a site that falsely accuses UNRWA of having links to the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas,” the observatory said.
“When searching for news related to UNRWA, users will find sites appearing at the top of search results that aim to undermine the credibility of the agency by claiming that the agency is linked to Hamas, a claim that the agency has repeatedly denied, as no evidence has been provided to support it at all.”
Several Western governments who had decided to suspend donations to UNRWA earlier this year, following an Israeli claim that the agency’s staff had taken part in the 7 October infiltration into Israel by resistance fighters, have since reversed their decision after Israel failed to provide evidence for its allegations.
The statement concluded by stressing the importance of online platforms resisting the lure of disguised bribes, warning against their descent into complicity in the unjust blockade and ongoing genocide in Gaza by preventing news coverage and the silencing of content that exposes Israeli war crimes and genocide.