It is hard to argue with YouTube for shutting down an account that featured a small girl reading a poem on a government channel which calls for “war that will smash” a legitimate government.
Except when exposure of that incitement is what gets shut down, which will lead to more incitement, not less.
Which is what happened late last week.
On Thursday, March 3, YouTube terminated the account of Palestinian Media Watch. PMW was shut down after it released a video of a Palestinian Arab girl reading a poem on official Palestinian Authority television glorifying the brutal murder of Israelis and the end of the Jewish State.
The PMW video showed a young girl named Minas, who is roughly eight years old, on the Palestinian Authority television program, “Children’s Talk.”
The host of the program asks Minas to recite a poem, and Minas responds that she will recite the poem, “I am a Palestinian.” And this is what she recites:
All my Arabness calls me to vengeance and liberation… Thousands of prisoners… say: To Jerusalem, the [first] direction of prayer in the faith [Islam] To war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist’s soul and raise the Palestinian banner in the world’s sky and strengthen my word that goes on: Palestinian, Palestinian, Palestinian.
When Minas concludes her poem, the program host tells her she is “superb” and “very talented.”
YouTube justified terminating PMW’s account for “violating their ‘terms of service,’ which includes hate speech.”
In other words, PMW’s YouTube account was shut down as if it was PMW that was urging a “war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist’s soul.” What PMW actually did was to expose this promotion of violence and murder and a grotesque form of child abuse committed by the Palestinian Authority, which was responsible for the television segment.
Rather than stopping the incitement, YouTube’s action enabled the incitement by shutting down the whistle-blower.
As the result of this wrongheaded action by YouTube, nearly all of PMW’s dozens and dozens of videos – the result of many months of work – have been shut down.
People have begun responding to YouTube, asking it to reinstate PMW’s account by clicking the “send feedback” link at the very bottom (scroll all the way down) of YouTube’s homepage.
As Palestinian Media Watch pointed out, parliaments and governments the world over use PMW’s exposure of Palestinian Arab incitement and hate speech. “On Friday, a 25-minute debate took place in Swedish Parliament in which the PA’s support for the current terror was discussed, and the proof was based entirely on PMW documentation – most of which is no longer available,” thanks to YouTube’s action.