YouTube has reportedly removed in October over 700 videos that documented alleged violations by Israeli forces in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, according to reporting by The Intercept.
The accouunts belonged to three Palestinian human rights group: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The sweeping removal of content on YouTube — operated by Google LLC — has sparked major concerns about digital censorship and the erosion of human-rights documentation of the Isreali war crimes.
The deleted content included investigations into home demolitions, killings of civilians, and the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Google/YouTube attributed the removals to compliance with U.S. sanctions law, particularly relating to cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations into alleged war crimes by Israeli officials.
The removal of these archives and testimonies is raising alarms among rights groups and digital-freedom advocates. The argument is that by deleting or blocking platforms that document alleged abuses, large tech companies may be obstructing accountability and transparency.
A spokesperson for Al-Haq said the removal “without prior warning … represents a serious failure of principle and an alarming setback for human rights and freedom of expression.”
While, PCHR stated that YouTube’s action “protects perpetrators of violations from accountability.”
Legal experts suggest that such measures amount to digital infrastructure complicit in silencing documentation of potential war crimes.
The incident, however, highlights how sanctions, platform policy enforcement, and automated moderation tools can intersect in ways that affect human-rights documentation. It underscores the vulnerability of civil-society archives and the fragility of digital platforms for preserving evidence when they are subject to removal. The case raises questions about how large platforms interpret “community rules” and sanctions law, especially when the content in question is factual reporting of alleged abuses.
