Meta just erased slain Gaza journalist Aljafarawi from IG. Is it whitewashing Israeli genocide?

In yet another example of how some Silicon Valley firms collude with the Israeli state to suppress Palestinian voices, social media giant Meta has permanently deleted the Instagram account of slain Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, just hours after he was shot and killed on Sunday by members of an Israeli-linked clan in the Sabra district of Gaza City.

Aljafarawi, 28, had spent the last two years documenting Israel’s relentless bombardment and alleged war crimes in Gaza for his 4.5-million-strong audience on Instagram, as well as various news outlets, including TRT World.

In one of his last and most widely circulated videos, posted on the day the latest ceasefire was declared, AlJafarawi filmed himself walking through the streets of Gaza, broadcasting the news to those cut off by the ongoing internet blackout.

Now, both he and his work have been wiped from the digital record, including archives such as the Wayback Machine.

According to Palestinian sources, Aljafarawi was killed during clashes on October 12 between Hamas security forces and members of a ‘militia’ that collaborated with Israeli forces. Multiple media reports indicate he was surrounded by armed men and shot seven times.

Israel’s ties with Hamas opponents

It is no secret that Israel has been arming groups opposed to Hamas in Gaza during its genocidal war that claimed the lives of over 67,000 people in the besieged enclave.

On June 5, 2025, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu openly admitted that Israel has “activated” some clans of Palestinians in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas, though at the time it was not immediately clear what role they would play.

His comments on social media were the first public acknowledgement of Israel’s backing of armed Palestinian groups within Gaza, based around powerful clans or extended families.

In a video posted to his X account, Netanyahu said the government made the move on the advice of “security officials,” in order to save the lives of Israeli soldiers.

Meta’s double kill

Meta justified its erasure of Aljafarawi’s account under its policy on “dangerous organisations and individuals,” a label it has repeatedly used to purge pro-Palestinian journalists and activists from its platforms.

The company provided no evidence for its assertion.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese condemned the move, likening the erasure of a killed journalist’s account to “killing them twice,” in a post shared on X.

“May the memory of the 250 journalists murdered in Gaza be honoured in the genocide museum that must be part of the reparations programme owed to the Palestinians, when the genocide actually ends,” she wrote.

Algorithmic apartheid

Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content is nothing new. An April 2025 investigation by Drop Site News found that the company honoured 94 percent of Israeli government takedown requests since the war began.

The whistleblower data show that Israel has become the world’s largest source of such requests, leading to the removal or suppression of over 90,000 posts, often within seconds, and the automated “actioning” of nearly 39 million more since late 2023.

According to the report, internal Meta communications confirmed that pro-Palestinian posts were frequently removed even when they didn’t violate any policies, sometimes resulting in full account suspensions after repeated “strikes.”

Another investigation by the news website revealed that other tech giants, including Nvidia, Meta, Google, Intel and Apple, employ dozens of former members of Israel’s controversial Unit 8200, while Microsoft alone employs around 250 veterans of the spy agency.

In the latest move, the sale of the US arm of TikTok to Oracle, led by pro-Israel CEO Safra Catz, has further fuelled concerns about the restriction of Palestinian voices, especially after Netanyahu signalled plans to expand Israel’s influence on the platform.

Human Rights Watch had already warned as early as 2023 that Meta was “systematically suppressing” pro-Palestinian content across its platforms.

In its report, the organisation revealed that between October and November 2023, there were more than 1,050 instances where Instagram and Facebook removed or restricted content shared by Palestinians or their supporters.

It found that 1,049 of the posts involved peaceful pro-Palestinian content that were censored or suppressed, while only one case involved the removal of a post supporting Israel.

Aljafarawi’s killing came less than two months after another prominent Gaza journalist, Anas Alsharif of Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City.

On the day he was shot, Israeli bombardments continued to pound Gaza despite a ceasefire brokered in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 9 under US President Donald Trump’s “lasting peace” initiative, which took effect the following day.

Israel has killed over 250 journalists since October 2023, a staggering number of casualties among professionals protected under international law.