Social Media Execs To Gather For ‘Palestine Digital Activism Forum’ Hosted By Group With ‘Terror’ Ties

Representatives from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Clubhouse will gather next week for a forum on “digital rights” hosted by a pro-Palestine group with ties to terror-aligned groups.

The conference, which will occur May 17-19 and has been dubbed the “Palestine Digital Activism Forum,” will include speakers that have used social media to post anti-semitic content and even praise murderers as “heroes.” It will be hosted by 7amleh, a group that complained when tech platforms censored an event with a member of a terrorist organization who was convicted of hijacking a plane.

“The policies and practices of major tech companies are increasingly impacting human rights, in particular the right to freedom of expression and political association,” 7amleh said after Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was censored. The co-founder of 7amleh has called Khaled a “resistance icon.”

Even as mainstream American conservatives have faced trigger-happy censorship from top platforms – with Twitter notoriously blocking the election-eve story on Hunter Biden’s laptop despite it being true – Facebook parent Meta and Twitter are “partners” of the forum, and 7amleh says it holds “Trusted Partner” status with Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.

One event speaker, Hussein Hammad, an official with Al Mezan, shared a Facebook video in 2016 in which a speaker said that people should be taught that Jews control the world, NGO Monitor reported in 2020.

“We should tell them how America became a game in the hands of global Zionism… we should teach them… the truth told by Christian Congressman Herbert Spencer: …The Jews in our country control everything… all that is left is to change the name of New York to Jew York,” the video said. “Benjamin Franklin said: The undoing of America will be at the hand of the Jews.”

Hammad also posted a “picture celebrating the murder of Israeli civilian Michael Mark.” Years prior, the Al Mezan official posted to Facebook a photo lauding a PFLP terrorist who murdered one and injured two more in a ramming and stabbing attack. And in 2017, he received an award from a PFLP branch named after a militant who it brags “participated in many military operations that hurt the enemy.”

7amleh, which also goes by the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, focuses on “Palestinian digital rights” and has lamented Google’s treatment of Ghassan Kanfani, a PFLP spokesman.

In 2019, 7amleh launched the Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition (PDRC), comprised of itself and other groups including Alhaq and Addameer. In October, Israel designated Alhaq and Addameer as terror organizations that are “arms” of the PFLP. Diana Alzeer, an Alhaq official, will also be speaking at next week’s event.

Alhaq has participated in other meetings with 7amleh. According to a LinkedIn profile, Ahmad Qadi, 7amleh’s Monitoring and Documentation Coordinator, came to the group directly from a previous job as Databank Coordinator/Researcher for Alhaq.

According to another LinkedIn profile, 7amleh’s Digital Security Trainer is Ola Marshoud, who was sentenced in 2018 to seven months in prison for her activism with the Islamic Bloc on her college campus. The Islamic Bloc is a Hamas-aligned youth group. Hamas has congratulated student activists for taking over student councils.

Far-Left Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a member of the “squad” who has a history of anti-Semitic comments, will serve as “inspirational speaker” at the conference. In 2020, Tlaib used Twitter to amplify a post accusing Jews of throwing an eight-year old boy into a well. He actually drowned accidentally. Tlaib later deleted the tweet.

7amleh sits on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, which plays a role in moderation policies. Twitter did not return a Daily Wire request for comment.

7amleh, which did not return a request for comment either, is also a “Trusted Partner” of Meta, the parent company of Facebook. “Meta provides Trusted Partners with funding to support our shared goals of keeping harmful content off our platforms and helping to prevent risk offline. We partner with expert organizations that represent the voices and experiences of at-risk users around the globe,” Meta says.

7amleh said in 2021 that it “has continued to participate in Facebook’s ‘Trusted Partner’ program and to contribute to the development and evaluation of Facebook policies. This included policies about peaceful protests, focusing on how violence at public protests is moderated; a policy discussion on LGBTQ+, discussing whether products such as rainbow backgrounds, smileys etc. should be available globally; and participated in a roundtable on brigading and mass harassment.”

It has pressured Facebook to not consider “Zionist” to be anti-Semitic.

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