ROBERT INLAKESH, [email protected]
Inlakesh is an independent journalist and is the subject of a just-published piece in The Intercept about Google/YouTube deleting all his accounts, including Gmail. His latest pieces for the Palestine Chronicle include “Western Media Mourns Abu Shabab, Its Favourite ISIS-Linked Militia Leader in Gaza” and “Understanding the Weaknesses of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine’s Leadership.” He was just on “Flashpoints.”
Reporters Jonah Valdez and Nikita Mazurov (listed below) write for The Intercept: “In February 2024, without warning, YouTube deleted the account of independent British journalist Robert Inlakesh.
“His YouTube page featured dozens of videos, including numerous livestreams documenting Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. In a decade covering Palestine and Israel, he had captured video of Israeli authorities demolishing Palestinian homes, police harassing Palestinian drivers, and Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian civilians and journalists during protests in front of illegal Israeli settlements. In an instant, all of that footage was gone.
“In July, YouTube deleted Inlakesh’s private backup account. And in August, Google, YouTube’s parent company, deleted his Google account, including his Gmail and his archive of documents and writings.
“The tech giant initially claimed Inlakesh’s account violated YouTube’s community guidelines. Months later, the company justified his account termination by alleging his page contained spam or scam content.
“However, when The Intercept inquired further about Inlakesh’s case, nearly two years after his account was deleted, YouTube provided a separate and wholly different explanation for the termination: a connection to an Iranian influence campaign.
“YouTube declined to provide evidence to support this claim, stating that the company doesn’t discuss how it detects influence operations. Inlakesh remains unable to make new Google accounts, preventing him from sharing his video journalism on the largest English language video platform. …
“Marc Cohen, who resigned from Google … over its support of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza, said had he not gotten involved, Inlakesh would have been left with even less information.
“‘They get away with that because they’re Google,’ Cohen said. ‘What are you going to do? Go hire a lawyer and sue Google? You have no choice.’”
JONAH VALDEZ, [email protected]
NIKITA MAZUROV, Signal: greenhippo.33
In their piece, Valdez and Mazurov also report: “The scale of content deleted specifically due to U.S. sanctions is also difficult to quantify since such decisions happen without transparency. A recent investigation by The Intercept revealed that YouTube quietly deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations due to the Trump administration’s sanctions against the groups for assisting the International Criminal Court’s war crimes case against Israeli officials. The terminated pages accounted for at least 700 videos erased, many of which spotlighted alleged human rights abuses by the Israeli government.” See their piece “YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violation.”