DayofPal- Meta has become the megaphone for the Israeli army, amplifying their calls and profiting from their ads which push their extremist and genocidal policies, Maen Hammad, a campaigner for Eko organization, told Middle East Eye.
His confession came after Eko, a US-based advocacy organization which Moeen campaigns for, identified 98 Facebook ads targeting audiences in Europe and the US to raise money for Israeli military equipment, including advanced thermal drones, assault rifle scopes, body armor, night vision goggles, and helmets.
Facebook has been running paid advertisements for charities raising funds for Israeli army battalions accused of war crimes, as well as for lawmakers promoting the resettlement of the Gaza Strip and Lebanon since the onset of the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
“Worse yet, the platform is also a hub for groups to fundraise for military equipment used by IDF units implicated in war crimes. This is far from an oversight – it’s another example of Meta’s profit-driven betrayal of human rights,” Moeen said.
The organization identified an advert that showed an Israeli soldier called Kobi, who is a “lead machine gunner” for the 551 Commando Brigade, making an appeal for night vision goggles in front of a destroyed mosque.
Other adverts identified by Eko include posts by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Religious Zionism party, and the Noam Party.
The campaigning group also identified a series of Hebrew language adverts targeting users in Israel paid for by Israeli members of parliament.
Some of the mentioned adverts described Palestinians as “savages” and “bloodthirsty” and called on the Israeli army to use the “dahiya” doctrine – the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure – against Palestinians.
One advert for Smotrich, which ran in October 2024, declared that his “life mission is to ensure that a Palestinian state will never be established. It’s taking Gaza and multiplying it 20 times”.
Eko’s report comes in the wake of a BBC investigation that revealed Facebook and Meta had imposed restrictions on content shared by Palestinian news outlets since the onset of the current war in Gaza.
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