The experience of Palestinians online points to a future in which tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter gain ever greater control over all of us – over what we know and what we are allowed to think, and over who is visible and who erased.
Did Britain and the US allow apartheid South Africa to advertise job opportunities to white Britons and Americans that were unavailable to those countries’ black citizens? And could it have held “employment recruitment” sessions for whites-only in British and American cities, in an effort to bolster its white population? Well, Israel is doing precisely the same for Jews, and there has been not a peep of protest.
When the Palestinians gain a little visibility in the west, it is chiefly because of grassroots activities like Israel Apartheid Week and the BDS movement. When the Jewish Labour Movement and the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland reject such initiatives as evidence of anti-semitism, they choose to speak in the loud voice of Jewish privilege, not the quieter voice of Jewish victimhood.
At last week’s Labour party conference, when members wanted to celebrate Jeremy Corbyn’s successes, media headlines were once again dominated by a supposed “anti-semitism crisis” in the party. But the real crisis is that Labour's pro-Israel old guard is now under fierce challenge from a new grassroots movement.
Some 200,000 documents concerning the mysterious disappearance of thousands of babies in Israel's early years have been made public for the first time. The Israeli government declassified the files, publishing them in an online archive, after decades of accusations that officials have been concealing evidence that many of the babies were stolen from their Jewish families, who had recently arrived in Israel from Arab states.
Israel is reported to be ready to expel an award-winning Australian journalist, Antony Loewenstein, after he asked a too-probing question of an Israeli politician. It is unsurprising to learn that Israel has no serious regard for press freedom. But more depressing has been the lack of solidarity shown by journalistic colleagues, most especially the Guardian.
Israel is locking away millions of official documents to prevent the darkest episodes in its history from coming to light, civil rights activists and academics have warned as the country's state archives move online. They claim government officials are concealing vital records needed for historical research, often in violation of Israeli law, in an effort to avoid damaging Israel's image.
Details of the biggest massacre committed by Israeli soldiers during the 1948 war have finally surfaced, decades after the documentation was locked away. Israel is still trying to silence its army's new generation of whistleblowers, even in an age of 24-hour news and social media. But Israel must face facts: the days when such systematic brutality could be kept under wraps are now over.
Israeli officials met executives at Google last month to persuade them that, for the sake of peace, they must censor the growing number of Palestinian videos posted on YouTube. But these videos are simply a record of Palestinians' bitter experiences of occupation. It is these experiences, not the videos, that drive Palestinians to breaking point.
