Social media giant YouTube has quietly removed hundreds of videos documenting Israeli rights violations in Palestinian territories and shuttered the channels of three prominent Palestinian human-rights organizations.
The deletion of more than 700 videos, first reported by The Intercept, has raised concerns about censorship and accountability amid Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and rights abuses in the occupied West Bank.
Apart from rights violations, the videos also covered testimonies from survivors, investigations into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shirin Abu Akleh and documentation of home demolitions by Israeli forces.
Among the accounts deleted were those of Al‑Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).
YouTube attributed the removals to compliance with U.S. sanctions that target entities collaborating with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged war crimes by Israeli leaders.
A Google spokesperson, Boot Bullwinkle, told The Intercept that the company was "committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws."
Human-rights defenders slammed the move, arguing it shields perpetrators by eroding public access to evidence of abuse.
"YouTube’s removal of a human-rights organization’s platform, carried out without prior warning ... represents a serious failure of principle and an alarming setback for human rights and freedom of expression," said an Al-Haq spokesperson.
For PCHR, the deletions signaled an erosion of accountability. Basel al-Sourani, the group’s international advocacy officer, criticized the decision, saying: “YouTube ... told us we violated community-rules policy, yet all our work is fact-based reporting on crimes against the Palestinian people."
Sarah Leah Whitson of Democracy for the Arab World Now called the actions "censorship," noting the difficulty of finding serious grounds to justify deleting content from Palestinian rights organizations. "It’s both disappointing and surprising," she added.
Katherine Gallagher, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said YouTube’s compliance amounts to "supporting an agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view."
The timing followed U.S. sanctions announced in September targeting the three rights groups for their cooperation with the ICC’s investigation into Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This crackdown occurs amid mounting allegations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza and at a moment when documenting abuses and sharing eyewitness evidence are seen as crucial for accountability.
As of now, the channels of the three Palestinian organizations remain offline and advocates are seeking alternative platforms to archive and share their work. Al-Haq, for instance, said it was exploring non-U.S.–based services to preserve its documentation.
