Malaysian PM Slams Meta for Removing Posts about Haniyeh’s Assassination
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently shot and scorned full metaphoric at Meta, describing the social media outlet as ‘cowardice’ he said platform had deleted his post on Facebook about the assassination of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh.
Since 2014, Malaysia has been vociferously backing the Palestinian cause; Prime Minister Anwar has frequently lamented the situation in Gaza and the occupied territories. After Haniyeh’s killing in Iran, Anwar shared on the social site, Facebook posting his telephone conversation with a Hamas official to condole. This post was then deleted by Meta, a company owned by the American billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. In addition, Meta unpublished a similar post on Anwar’s Instagram account.
In response, Anwar publicly rebuked Meta, saying, “Let this serve as a clear and unequivocal message to Meta: This is one way of telling their’s to stop this display of cowardice and act as agents of the oppressive Zionist Israeli regime,” Bernama state news agency quoted them on Thursday.
Anwar was cautioned that Facebook had deleted his posts and noted that they had labeled them as related to ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations. ’ Meta has noted Hamas as a ‘dangerous organization,’ and it is not permitted to show sympathy for the group. Under this policy, identification and removal of such content are done manually and through the help of software.
Anwar, who met Haniyeh in Qatar in May and has good relations with the Hamas political bureau, claimed his contacts are not with the military side of this group. Haniyeh had paid many visits to Malaysia in his capacity as the political bureau chief of Hamas and, therefore, advanced the relations between Malaysia and the Palestinian issue.
Malaysia’s Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil has contacted Meta to learn more about Anwar’s posts being removed. It is not clear if the posts were deleted by the social media platform’s bots or following a report.
Meta was previously scrutinized by Malaysia for removing content associated with support for Palestinians. However, coverage favoring a meeting with Haniyeh was observed as censorship; the post was taken down but later posted again. Then, Meta claimed that it did not deliberately limit the presence of posts supporting the Palestinians on the platform.
Malaysia as a country has been vocal on the two-state solution when it comes to the Middle East conflict involving Palestine and Israel. The country is wholly committed to the matter through the diplomatic backing of the Palestinian Authority and manifestly expressed support for any military actions conducted by Israel in the region.
Thus, Anwar’s criticism of Meta corresponds to the constantly debated issue of social media regulation and freedom of speech in the contemporary global context, as well as tensions between global tech giants and political authorities of states, particularly on the modern international agenda.
