Ramallah, March 10 (RHC)-- A new report has revealed that anti-Palestinian racism and incitement by Israelis on social media increased by 16 percent in 2020 compared to 2019.

7amleh-The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, which monitors and documents racist and discriminatory speech online, said in a report that about 574,000 posts in Israeli social media networks in 2020 included violent anti-Palestinian text, which shows a further 79,000 posts compared to 2019, during which 495,000 violent posts were published, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported on Monday.

The results of the center’s index of racism and incitement in Israeli social media networks also showed that due to the coronavirs pandemic, racist posts towards Palestinians have increased by 21 percent, while insults constituted 29 percent of the posts.  Incitement speech constituted 7 percent.

Twitter is the main platform where 61 percent of violent posts were published, which is more than doubled compared to 2019, the report said, while Facebook platform came second this year and had 19 percent of the post, a decrease of 20 percent compared to 2019.

7amleh-The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement is a non-profit organisation aimed at enabling Palestinian and Arab civil society to effectively utilise the tools of digital advocacy through professional capacity building, defending digital rights and building influential digital media campaigns.

Last April, the center found out that the US-based online video-sharing platform, YouTube, is grossly violating Palestinians’ rights, and is repeatedly and systematically discriminating against them.

Palestinian activists say there is a double standard regarding the enforcement of social media platforms' policies.   Back in September 2017, three Palestinian journalists launched a group called Sada Social, which aims to document “violations against Palestinian content” on social networks such as Facebook and YouTube, and to communicate with its executives to restore some of the pages and accounts that have been shut down.

According to 7amleh, the Israeli regime has more than 200 criminal files against Arab and Palestinian activists, charging them with incitement on the internet, while “almost not a single case” has been opened against Israeli instigators.