U.S. company Meta removes largest Palestinian news page from Facebook

The U.S. internet company Meta has removed the largest Palestinian news page from its popular social media platform Facebook amid a brutal war launched by Israel against the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip.

The Quds News Network (QNN) said in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that its Arabic and English news pages had been deleted from Facebook in a move that it described as “complete alignment with the Israeli occupation government.”

The QNN also shared a picture on X with the title “Meta bows to Israel’s request and removes Quds News Network.”  It said its page on Facebook had 10 million followers and was the largest such Palestinian page running news content.

After operating for more than a decade on various social media platforms, the QNN has become increasingly popular since last week when Israel launched an offensive against Gaza in response to a brief but massive operation by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas that targeted the Israeli-occupied territories.

More than 2,260 people have been killed and thousands more injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, a besieged enclave on the Mediterranean that is home to 2.3 million Palestinian people.

The QNN said in its statement that before deleting its page, Facebook’s parent company had removed posts and issued warnings and restrictions to the news network despite the fact that it had been “fully complying with Meta’s defined media standards.”

It said deleting its page from Facebook showed how biased Meta is toward the demands of the Israeli regime, adding that the move was a clear example of suppressing freedom of opinion and expression, and deprived the Palestinians of their right to convey and cover events taking place in Gaza to the world.