Israeli NGO to Youtube: Remove Arabic war propaganda with 53 million views
Mattot Arim, an Israeli peace-for-peace NGO, filed an urgent complaint to Youtube this evening.
The complaint is against a shocking Arabic-language clip, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIinh_VA9lc
in which a singer exhorts his 53 million Arab-speaking viewers, to violence.
The video was posted last year but has many recent views and feedbacks, apparently on the backdrop of Hamas's recent unprovoked attack on Israel's citizenry.
The singer exhorts, "The machine gun is ready. Attend the shrouds, the funerals...I announce an alert with the sound of the guns". "The time has come for a fierce war", he sings, adding that "the smell of gunpowder is more pleasant than perfume". Visually, the singer brandishes a gun and also loads a case of automatic weapons into his car. He draws his finger across his throat threateningly, at minute 3.50.
See below for examples of appalling user feedback (machine-translated from Arabic), most of them from this past week, which clearly demonstrate how dangerous this content is.
The Mattot Arim complaint, shown below, was under the category of "Hateful or abusive content" which "Promotes hatred or violence". Only a very short message to youtube is permitted. Our message, which was of the maximum length, said:
"This clip with 53M views exhorts, "the machine gun is ready. Attend the shrouds, the funerals...I announce an alert with the sound of the guns". The singer brandishes a gun and loads automatic weapons into his car. He draws a finger across his throat. "The time has come for a fierce war", he sings, adding that "the smell of gunpowder is more pleasant than perfume". User responses urge "liberate Jerusalem", "confront Zionists", "burn the govt", "bombing Tel-Aviv", "against normalization", etc."
The Youtube standard automated response to the complaint was: " If we find this content to be in violation of our Community Guidelines, we will remove it."
Wikihow stresses that "the reality of the situation is that there is no reliable way to contact YouTube and receive a response. Keep in mind that YouTube doesn't have an email address or phone number you can use to contact them directly". However,
Our complaint:
Examples of appalling user feedback (machine-translated from Arabic), most of them from this past week:
饾悓饾悁饾悥饾悁饾悆饾悁