By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss
Check out this stirring anthem to freedom in Gaza. It begins with a Palestinian child saying “We shall overcome” and an image of Martin Luther King Jr. and then in many still pictures of the “Great March of Return” conveys the strength of the unarmed resistance to the blockade–including the killing of Yaser Murtaja, the Palestinian journalist who was one of six Palestinian journalists shot by Israeli snipers on April 6.
The imagery is by Sana Kassem, and the video was posted by Norman Finkelstein yesterday on youtube. The song is “Wings to Fly,” by Susan Boyle. The copy accompanying the video was simply: “A video dedicated to the people of Gaza as they struggle to break out of Israel’s infernal prison.”
Then Youtube took it down today, Finkelstein says, and he and Kassem have posted it now on Vimeo.
May God Bless the People of Gaza from Sana Kassem on Vimeo
Youtube sent Finkelstein a notice that suggests that it regarded the video as a “sensational” and “shocking” incitement to “violence” or “dangerous activities.”
Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines. We’ve removed it from YouTube and assigned a Community Guidelines strike, or temporary penalty, to your account…
If a video contains violent or graphic content that appears to be posted in a shocking, sensational, or disrespectful manner, it’s less likely to be allowed on YouTube. We also don’t allow content that’s intended to incite violence or encourage dangerous activities.
Finkelstein comments on the removal on his own site, and satirizes Youtube’s policy:
However, Youtube will continue to post videos like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3iBVxLPqsc, [a stabbing attack in Rishon Lezion, evidently of a Jewish victim, in Nov. 2015]
and like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-u2mVStPRA, [the video concerns two Israelis killed by an Arab]
“Youtube wants visitors to know that this was not an easy decision to make. However, after many hours of agonizing reflection we concluded that, whereas all lives are worthy, some lives are more worthy than others.
Sana Kassem is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Lebanon and works as a Chemistry teacher in Athens. She has been working with Finkelstein for almost 10 years as his website master and administrator of all his social media. “I really hope that you use the story of this censorship to highlight the situation in Gaza. I feel that the international community (including myself) is not standing up enough to all the sacrifices of the brutally imprisoned people of Gaza,” she says.
For a time this video parodying Lorde’s song “Royals” to highlight Palestinian conditions was also barred by Youtube, a few weeks ago. Now it’s back up.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
SOURCE: MONDOWEISS— http://mondoweiss.net/2018/04/youtube-sensational-incitement/