A video advocating for Canadians to support Israel in the war against Hamas was flagged for inciting hatred on YouTube and blocked from paid promotion, the creators say.
The 18-minute video, created by the Aristotle Foundation, outlines landmark events in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and accuses Canadians of understanding the situation “exactly backwards.”
“Some Canadians are wrongly critical of Israel in its war with Hamas and Hezbollah,” the video description reads online. “Since the October 7th, 2023 massacre when 6,000 terrorists invaded Israel and murdered over 1,200 people, some have called for an end to the ‘genocide.’ Except these people aren’t referring to the victims of the October 7th massacre. They’re accusing Israel of genocide when Hamas and Hezbollah are to blame.”
The video opens with a brief look at Canadian history and national leaders who opposed slavery, Nazi Germany, civil rights and South African apartheid to make the case for why Israel should be supported in its war against Hamas.
This brief opening discussion springboards into a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorism, the peace process and the two-state solution. The video, narrated by Aristotle Foundation President Mark Milke, also references terrorism used by Jews before the establishment of Israel and ethnic cleansing that occurred during the 1948 Arab-Israel War.
“Israel is not perfect; no nation-state is,” Milke says near the halfway point. “Just before its founding, Jewish terrorism against Arabs and the British were common, including at a coffee shop in Jaffa and the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in January 1948. Also, many Arab evacuations were forced and with tragic consequences. That included forced ethnic cleansing, recounted later by Yitzhak Rabin in his 1978 account of the battles at Ramle and Lydda, accounts initially censored by the Israeli government.”
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After publishing the clip last Friday, the think tank attempted to pay YouTube to promote the video to increase its viewership and reach. However, the California-based tech giant declined payment, according to screenshots shared with National Post, and allegedly said that the content “incites hatred against, promotes discrimination” across a spectrum of identity groups, including race, religion, or nationality.
“Content promoting hate groups or hate group paraphernalia; content that encourages others to believe that a person or group is inhuman, inferior, or worthy of being hated” was an example YouTube underscored in their written response to the Aristotle Foundation. Another disqualifying element of the video, according to the platform, was that it was deemed to harass or intimate “an individual or group of individuals.”
Google, the parent company of YouTube acknowledged receipt of a request for comment on Friday, but did not respond before deadline.
Milke was unswayed by such reasoning, saying the clip “explains the nuances, challenges and history of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute with an eye to proper cause-and-effect.”
“The quasi-censors at YouTube may not agree with my analysis — Palestinians are primarily victims of their own, poor leadership over the decades including the late Yasser Arafat and now Hamas — but they should allow for free and open debate, including advertising the same,” Milke wrote the Post in a statement. “Instead, YouTube asserts our video on Why Canadians Should Support Israel ‘incites hate.’ No, it incites people to think.”
The Aristotle Foundation leader noted that the think-tank plans to spend money promoting the video on the social media platform X instead.