Multiple members of Facebook parent Meta’s Oversight Board have exhibited a clear anti-Israel bias since the war with Hamas began last Oct. 7 – with one even referring to Israel as a “terrorist government” and “the most criminal army in history.”
At least four members of the 21-person advisory group – which sparked outrage Wednesday by determining the anti-Israel phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” doesn’t constitute hate speech – have published views critical of the Jewish state.
One of the most vocal has been Tawakkol Karman, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who has referred to the deaths of civilians in Gaza as an “ethnic cleansing” and a “war of extermination.”
In a June 7 post on X, Karman celebrated the United Nations’ move to place Israel’s military on a global list of entities that have committed harm against children – known as its “list of shame.” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were also added.
“The United Nations puts Israel, its terrorist government, and its most criminal army in history on the list of shame. I applaud this decision, which was long overdue,” Karman wrote, according to a Google translation.
Earlier in the year, Karman accused Israel of committing “genocide” during a controversial speech at the Vatican on March 11. She praised pro-Palestinian protests that cropped up on US college campuses while accusing the world of being “silent.”
“The students in America, a big salute to all those students who are not just fighting against the genocide in Gaza,” Karman said. “They are fighting for and sacrificing for putting America on the right side of history.”
Israel denounced her speech as “flagrantly anti-Semitic.”
Nighat Dad, an Oversight Board member and the director of the Pakistan-based Digital Rights Foundation, also has been publicly critical of Israel since Hamas’ surprise cross-border raid killed 1,200 in Israel.
In an X post last Oct. 16, three days after Israeli forces began their ground invasion of Gaza, Dad referred to the enclave as “the world’s open-air jail.”
She expressed solidarity with pro-Palestinian protesters in New York and London in other posts and captioned one video with the hashtag “Gaza under attack.”
In a Jan. 7 post on X, Dad decried the death of a Palestinian named “Hamza” who had been “martyred by an Israel strike.”
“How many more martyrs a world need to see to stop this massacre of Muslims in #Gaza?” Dad wrote.
In March, Dad posted the viral “All Eyes on Rafah” meme that was used an AI-generated image.
Representatives for Meta and its independent Oversight Board did not return The Post’s requests for comment.
As The Post previously reported, Oversight Board member Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of left-leaning UK news outlet The Guardian, penned a column earlier this year arguing that, while “real and vile antisemitism” does exist, the “horrors of 7 October most certainly did not happen in a vacuum.”
Endy Bayuni, an Oversight Board member and senior editor at the Jakarta Post, published a column last April that argued Indonesia “should be seen championing an independent Palestinian state and full membership of the United Nations.”
Just one member of the Oversight Board is Israeli.
A “majority” of the panel ruled users can use the phrase – which refers to the idea of a Palestinian state stretching across the land in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, the land currently controlled by Israel – as long as it is not used in a way that glorifies Hamas or calls for violence.
The Oversight Board has not released a breakdown of the vote results or detailed which of its members participated.
Instead, the board said its decisions are “made by panels of five Members and approved by a majority vote of the full Board” and noted that the decisions “do not necessarily represent the views of all members.”
A majority of members who voted determined the slogan “has multiple meanings and is used by people in various ways and with different intentions.”
Meanwhile, Meta’s approach to moderating posts that contain the controversial slogan remains murky at best.
In one example identified by The Post, a Facebook account titled “Palestine Liberation Group” shared a GIF in which a red arrow slowly erases the Star of David before morphing into a Palestinian flag alongside the phrase, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Several Jewish advocacy groups questioned whether Meta’s Oversight Board could reach an impartial decision on the “from the river to the sea” slogan,” given the past remarks of its members.
“The fact that multiple members of Meta’s Oversight Board have made statements to delegitimize the terror of October 7 and unjustly criticize Israel shows that there was clear bias in their decision to rule that “from the river to the sea” doesn’t constitute hate speech,” Combat Antisemitism Movement CEO Sacha Roytman told The Post.
“Instead of evaluating the context and history of the phrase as a direct call to violence, the board chose to hold Israel to an unfair double standard that will only lead to further online antisemitism,” he added.
An Anti-Defamation League spokesperson said: “We are concerned about the allegations of anti-Israel bias from some members of the Oversight board who may have been involved in the recent outrageous decision regarding the phrase ‘from the river to the sea.’ We will be investigating this further.”
The World Jewish Congress said the Oversight Board “has shown itself to be a biased body that ultimately fails to protect vulnerable communities from hate speech.”
“The Oversight Board lacks transparency and accountability,” the organization said in a statement. “The World Jewish Congress will continue to work closely with Meta to ensure that hate speech and calls for violence are removed from the platform.”
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