7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media released its annual report, "The 2024 Racism and Incitement Index," which reveals an alarming rise in hate speech and digital violence against Palestinians, particularly on X and Facebook.

According to data monitored by the report, 12,482,041 incitement and violent posts were monitored in Hebrew during 2024, at a rate of 23.6 posts per minute, reflecting a dangerous increase in the use of digital space as a tool for spreading hostility and incitement.

The report reveals a close connection between the rise in hate speech and political and military developments, particularly during the genocide targeting Palestinians in Gaza.

He explains that political, ethnic, and religious motives were the primary drivers behind the escalation of this discourse, which not only incites against Palestinians in general but also targets Palestinian Jerusalemites in particular. A total of 8,484 inflammatory and violent posts against Palestinian Jerusalemites were documented, most of them on the X platform, a dangerous indicator of the systematic targeting of this group.

The report also monitors the phenomenon of joy and schadenfreude over the killing and injury of Palestinians inside Israel, documenting 9,289 posts in which Israeli social media users expressed joy over the killing of Palestinians as a result of shelling.

This phenomenon reveals the growing normalization of digital violence in Israel, and the use of the digital space as a tool to promote racism and encourage incitement.

The report highlights a significant gap between digital platforms in dealing with inflammatory content, with 79% of inflammatory content documented on X, compared to 21% on Facebook.

Although the number of Israeli users on Facebook is much larger, X accounts for the largest share of violent content, reflecting the platform's failure to impose any censorship on hate speech published in Hebrew.

The report also warns of Meta's recent changes to its content moderation policies, whereby the company has decided to limit its monitoring to "extremely dangerous" violent content. This means that hate speech against Palestinians will continue to spread unchecked, contributing to its normalization and entrenchment in the digital space.

The report calls for "strict measures by social media platforms, the international community, and decision-makers to curb the escalation of hate speech against Palestinians by strengthening content moderation mechanisms, removing violent and inflammatory content in Hebrew at the same level as in other languages, conducting independent and public assessments of the impact of social media platforms on human rights, and allocating linguistic and technical resources to monitor Hebrew content to ensure that platforms are not exploited for incitement."

The report also emphasizes the need to ensure transparency and accountability in handling reports of digital rights violations, engage Palestinian civil society in developing oversight mechanisms, and prevent the use of digital technologies to incite violence or facilitate war crimes.

The 2024 Index of Racism and Incitement report emphasizes the urgent need to take practical and urgent steps to curb the rise of digital hostility against Palestinians and ensure that digital platforms are safe spaces for all, not environments for the production of violence and incitement.