YouTube has deleted hundreds of videos which evidence Israeli war crimes against Palestinians since October 2025. The NGOs affected warn that this is part of an assault on truth. They also highlighted how Donald Trump has taken an increasingly aggressive stance against accountability for Israel.
Three Palestinian human rights groups had their accounts terminated in October. Between them Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights had posted over 700 videos.
The videos included investigations into killings and torture by Israel and a documentary about children murdered in an airstrike on a Gaza beach.
A YouTube spokesman gave an obtuse response, claiming that:
Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws.
The Palestinian groups, and others, say the tech firm is destroying the truth. The Trump regime sanctioned the groups in September due to their work with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC is investigating Israel for genocide.
YouTube is destroying the truth
Gazan group Al Mezan had their account deleted on 7 October. A spokesperson said:
Terminating the channel deprives us from reaching what we aspire to convey our message to, and fulfill our mission and prevents us from achieving our goals and limits our ability to reach the audience we aspire to share our message with.
Al-Haq are based in the West Bank. A spokesperson said:
The U.S. Sanctions are being used to cripple accountability work on Palestine and silence Palestinian voices and victims, and this has a ripple effect on such platforms also acting under such measures to further silence Palestinian voices.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) said:
YouTube said that we were not following their policy on Community Guidelines, when all our work was basically presenting factual and evidence-based reporting on the crimes committed against the Palestinian people especially since the start of the ongoing genocide on 7 October.
By doing this, YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian victims.
Trump’s war on justice
Trump has made it his business to attack the ICC in behalf of Israel. But it didn’t start with him. In 2002, George W. Bush created a law by which the US could use military force to rescue war criminals in ICC custody.
As the Intercept reported in 2024:
While no president has yet made good on this military threat, it serves as shorthand for the U.S. relationship to the international institution of justice.
That law was made in the context of the War on Terror but US leaders always had one eye on their apartheid colony, Israel:
The law was meant to fend off the specter of American troops standing trial for atrocities committed during the fledgling “war on terror,” but the U.S. horror of The Hague has its roots in the longstanding policy of unconditional support for Israel.
Digital evidence is very fragile
The Accountability Archive describes itself as a “crowdsourced record of journalists, politicians, and public figures endorsing or encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and/or defaming pro-Palestinian activists”.
Alex Foley, co-founder, told the Canary digital evidence was very fragile:
The Internet is not durable for storing evidence. In reality, digital evidence is incredibly fragile, more so than real evidence. We don’t have bundles of letters laying around… like when you finish a job and your email date gets wiped.
In the space of war crimes evidence, the ICC, and the being videos erased, what we see is that terms of use and service for big social media companies… we think they’re there to promote connection. In reality, these firms aren’t pro freedom. If something falls afoul of their terms of service it gets black-boxed, unless law enforcement requires it.
Foley gave the example of evidence of Libyan war crimes from 2017 which had been posted online:
The Libyan evidence got scrubbed because it was considered too violent. It took an extremely lengthy legal process to recover it. It was very contentious.
On Trump’s assault on the ICC, Foley added:
This move highlights the ‘why’ around the [ICC] sanctions, this is the intended effect, this is what was meant to happen… a broader chilling effect. It says “you might be next” to organisations. This is intended.
The Intercept reported that some of the videos are still available where they’ve been reproduced. Trump and the Israeli war criminal’s can run from justice and hide from accountability, but the dawn is coming.
Featured image via the Canary
