Majority of Israelis want censorship of social media posts sympathetic to Palestinians in Gaza
A new poll released by the Pew Research Center found that the majority of Israelis, 59 percent, are in favour of censoring social media posts that show sympathy to Palestinian civilians in Gaza amid Israel's war on the besieged enclave.
An even larger majority, 72 percent, of Israelis say posts that include videos or images of violence in the war should be censored.
Israel has been waging war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched an attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took another 240 as hostages back to Gaza.
Israel responded with full-scale war, and over the next few months, its military decimated the Gaza Strip, killing more than 40,000 Palestinians and laying waste to residential neighbourhoods, universities, schools, hospitals, and mosques.
In the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attacks and Israel's response, many Israeli leaders called for the Palestinian population of Gaza, including its civilians, to be punished.
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In October, one Israeli military veteran involved in the 1948 massacre of Palestinian children called on Israelis to "erase the memory of... families, mothers and children".
Now, eleven months into the war, a clip from a popular English-language Israeli podcast has gone viral. The clip shows hosts Naor Meningher and Eytan Weinstein discussing the idea of erasing all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
In an episode of Two Nice Jewish Boys, which aired three weeks ago, host Weinstein said: “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow. I would press it in a second.”
He claimed that “most Israelis” would do the same.
“Forgive us if we don’t give a shit if everybody there dies. It’s just the way we feel. It’s just the way Israelis feel,” Weinstein said.
An earlier poll by Pew taken in May showed that a majority of Israelis believe that the country's military was either taking the right response or it wasn't going far enough. Forty percent also said that Gaza should be left for Israel to govern.
There have been some major antiwar protests that have taken place throughout parts of Israel, but a majority support the country's war effort. The latest Pew poll found that half of Israelis believe social media posts critical of the country's government should be banned.
Dozens of Palestinian citizens inside Israel have been arrested over social media posts related to the war.
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