NEW YORK: Meta’s oversight board on Tuesday called on the company to end its blanket ban on a common usage of the Arabic word “shaheed,” or “martyr” in English, after a year-long review found the Facebook owner’s approach was “overbroad” and had unnecessarily suppressed the speech of millions of users.
The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said the social media giant should remove posts containing the word “shaheed” only when they are linked to clear signs of violence or if they separately break other Meta rules.
The ruling comes after years of criticism of the company’s handling of content involving the Middle East, including in a 2021 study Meta itself commissioned that found its approach had an “adverse human rights impact” on Palestinians and other Arabic-speaking users of its services.
Those criticisms have escalated since the onset of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in October. Rights groups have accused Meta of suppressing content supportive of Palestinians on Facebook and Instagram against the backdrop of a war that has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza following Hamas’ deadly raids into Israel on Oct 7.
The Meta Oversight Board reached similar conclusions in its report on Tuesday, finding Meta’s rules on “shaheed” failed to account for the word’s variety of meanings and resulted in the removal of content not aimed at praising violent actions.
“Meta has been operating under the assumption that censorship can and will improve safety, but the evidence suggests that censorship can marginalize whole populations while not improving safety at all,” Oversight Board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said in a statement.
Meta currently removes any posts using “shaheed” in referring to people it designates on its list of “dangerous organizations and individuals,” which includes members of Islamist militant groups, drug cartels and white supremacist organizations.
The company says the word constitutes praise for those entities, which it bans, according to the board’s report. Hamas is among the groups the company designates as a “dangerous organization.”
Meta sought the board’s input on the topic last year, after starting a reassessment of the policy in 2020 but failing to reach consensus internally, the board said. It revealed in its request that “shaheed” accounted for more content removals on its platforms on than any other single word or phrase.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company would review the board’s feedback and respond within 60 days.
Meta oversight board urges company to end ban on Arabic word ‘shaheed’
https://arab.news/wpf99
Meta oversight board urges company to end ban on Arabic word ‘shaheed’
- Year-long review found Facebook approach was “overbroad,” unnecessarily suppressed speech of millions of users
- The ruling comes after years of criticism of the company’s handling of content involving the Middle East
Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji
- New flag is part of latest iOS, macOS updates
DUBAI: Apple has added the new flag of the Syrian Arab Republic to its emoji keyboard in the latest beta update to its operating system, replacing the one used by former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The new flag emoji is part of Apple’s iOS and macOS 18.4 beta 2 update and is therefore unavailable to those who have not signed up for beta updates.
Apple will roll out the new updates to users in April, according to a company statement.
The old flag featured three stripes: red at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with two green stars.
The new flag features green at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with three red stars.
For many Syrians the new flag represents freedom and independence from Assad’s dictatorial regime.
The country has a long history with the current flag, which was first adopted when Syria gained independence from France in 1946.
It was replaced in 1958 by the flag of the United Arab Republic to represent the political union between Egypt and Syria.
It was adopted again for a short time when Syria left the United Arab Republic in 1961, only to be replaced in 1963 when the Baath Party took control of the country.
Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime
- Media organization hails ‘victory for free journalism’
DUBAI: The Syrian newspaper Enab Baladi has resumed distribution in the streets of Damascus and its suburbs after more than a decade-long ban under Bashar Assad’s regime.
The newspaper, which dubs itself as “an independent Syrian media organization,” documented the Syrian regime’s violations during the revolution when it launched in 2012.
The newspaper’s distribution was limited to opposition-controlled northern areas until 2020 after Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
Its editorial stance led to the arrest of many staff members, while others were tortured to death in prisons or killed by shelling and military operations in Daraya.
The media organization said: “The first copies were printed through self-funding and the efforts of its founding staff using a home printer, distributed secretly by volunteers in the neighborhoods of Daraya and Damascus.”
The organization relied on expanding its digital and visual content to reach audiences online, or through printed copies that were smuggled within Syria.
With the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 8 last year after a 12-day blistering campaign led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Enab Baladi resumed distribution in Damascus after a newsroom was established in the capital.
It said the move was aimed at “ensuring freedom of expression during an ambiguous transitional phase.”
The media organization added: “The return of printing inside Syria represents a victory for free journalism and an opportunity to reconnect with the audience inside Syria.”
Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
- Tool being built by Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare unit
DUBAI: Israel’s military is developing an advanced artificial intelligence tool, similar to ChatGPT, by training it on Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians living under occupation.
These are the findings of a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
The tool is being built by the Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare Unit 8200. The division is programming the AI tool to understand colloquial Arabic by feeding it vast amounts of phone calls and text messages between Palestinians, obtained through surveillance.
Three Israeli security sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed the existence of the AI tool to the outlets conducting the investigation.
The model was still undergoing training last year and it is unclear if it has been deployed and to what end. However, sources said that the tool’s ability to rapidly process large quantities of surveillance material in order to “answer questions” about specific individuals would be a huge benefit to the Israeli army.
During the investigation, several sources highlighted that Unit 8200 had used smaller-scale machine learning models in recent years.
One source said: “AI amplifies power; it’s not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C (of the West Bank). I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to respond to The Guardian’s question about the new AI tool, but said the military “deploys various intelligence methods to identify and thwart terrorist activity by hostile organizations in the Middle East.”
Unit 8200’s previous AI tools, such as The Gospel and Lavender, were among those used during the war on Hamas. These tools played a key role in identifying potential targets for strikes and bombardments.
Moreover, for nearly a decade, the unit has used AI to analyze the communications it intercepts and stores, sort information into categories, learn to recognize patterns and make predictions.
When ChatGPT’s large language model was made available to the public in November 2022, the Israeli army set up a dedicated intelligence team to explore how generative AI could be adapted for military purposes, according to former intelligence officer Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff.
However, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI rejected Unit 8200’s request for direct access to its LLM and refused to allow its integration into the unit’s system.
Sayedoff highlighted another problem: existing language models could only process standard Arabic, not spoken Arabic in different dialects, resulting in Unit 8200 needing to develop its own program.
One source said: “There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model.”
Unit 8200 started recruiting experts from private tech companies in October 2023 as reservists. Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of the Israeli tech company AI21 Labs, confirmed that his employees participated in the project during their reserve duty.
The challenge for Unit 8200 was to “collect all the (spoken Arabic) text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralized place,” a source said, adding that the model’s training data eventually consisted of about 100 billion words.
Another source familiar with the project said the communications analyzed and fed to the training model included conversations in Lebanese and Palestinian dialects.
Goshen explained the benefits of LLMs for intelligence agencies but added that “these are probabilistic models — you give them a prompt or a question, and they generate something that looks like magic, but often the answer makes no sense.”
Zach Campbell, a senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch, called such AI tools “guessing machines.”
He said: “Ultimately, these guesses can end up being used to incriminate people.”
Campbell and Nadim Nashif, director and founder of the Palestinian digital rights and advocacy group 7amleh, also raised concerns about the collection of data and its use in training the AI tool.
Campbell said: “We are talking about highly personal information, taken from people who are not suspected of any crime, to train a tool that could later help establish suspicion.”
Nashif said: “Palestinians have become subjects in Israel’s laboratory to develop these techniques and weaponize AI, all for the purpose of maintaining (an) apartheid and occupation regime where these technologies are being used to dominate a people, to control their lives.
“This is a grave and continuous violation of Palestinian digital rights, which are human rights.”
IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts
- Move comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Turkiye sparking speculation about the former’s motive
DUBAI: The Israeli army has created new Turkish-language accounts on social media platforms X and Telegram.
Israeli military official Arye Sharuz Shalicar acted as the spokesperson of the account on X welcoming Turkish users.
Israil Savunma Kuvvetleri’nin resmi X hesabına hoş geldiniz! Bu platform, ISK ile ilgili gelişmeler hakkında güvenilir ve anlık güncellemeler sağlamak amacıyla kullanılacaktır. pic.twitter.com/EknF0c6xno
— IDF Türkçe (@TurkishIDF) March 4, 2025
The account on X has drawn criticism and speculation about Israel’s motives and Shalicar’s history as a gang member in Germany.
Media reports suggest that the decision to open Turkish-language accounts comes after Turkiye’s emergence as a key player in the region, particularly in Syria.
“Israel has identified Turkiye as becoming a stronger player in the region, following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,” said a report by The Times of Israel.
In January, the Nagel Committee, formed by the Israeli government, said that the country must prepare for a potential war with Turkiye.
It released a report saying that “the threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat” and that Turkish-backed forces could act as proxies further threatening Israel’s “security,” according to Israeli media reports.
Following Israel’s attacks in southwestern Syria, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement on Monday.
Although he did not name Israel, he said: “Those seeking to benefit from Syria’s instability will not succeed. We will not allow them to divide Syria as they imagine.”
Israeli authorities extend detention of Palestinian sports journalist over alleged Hamas support in TV interview
- Saeed Hasanein was detained after appearing on Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV
- His lawyers say court ruling is politically motivated and part of broader crackdown on critics
LONDON: Israeli authorities on Tuesday extended the detention of Palestinian sports journalist and announcer Saeed Hasanein, who was accused of expressing support for Hamas during a televised interview in February.
Hasanein has been in custody for about a week and faces charges from Israeli police, including “incitement,” “supporting terrorism” and “communicating with a foreign agent.”
The Magistrate’s Court in Acre ruled to extend his detention until Sunday — the third extension in the case — after prosecutors alleged that Hasanein appeared on Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV.
“He who only thinks about joining the occupation army must think a million times where he is going and how he is selling his conscience, his moral compass and his religion on this immoral path,” Hasanein said in an interview obtained and aired by Israel’s Channel 14.
During the interview, he added that the way Hamas treated female hostages in Gaza “proves conclusively who is the barbarian and who is the humane one” in the Israel-Hamas war.
A longtime sports commentator, Hasanein was also dismissed from his role as an announcer for Bnei Sakhnin F.C., one of Israel’s most successful Arab clubs.
Following the court’s ruling, Hasanein’s lawyer, Alaa Mahajneh, denounced the case as politically motivated, describing his client’s detention as part of a broader crackdown on Palestinian activists and voices critical of the war.
“It is ultimately up to the police whether to press charges, but we are being realistic,” Mahajneh said, adding that members of Hasanein's family were also interrogated by Israeli police.
“Given the Israeli media’s incitement and how the case has become a public issue, an indictment is possible. Right now, our focus is on ending the detention, as arrests should be based on legal grounds, not punishment or sending political messages to the Arab community.”
The extension of Hasanein’s detention comes amid increasing restrictions on Palestinian public expression. Recently, Israeli authorities raided a bookstore in East Jerusalem, detaining two of its owners on suspicion of “violating public order.”
The booksellers were released after five days, following mounting pressure from rights groups and international figures. They accused Israeli authorities of attempting to suppress Palestinian culture and “creating a climate of fear” for local residents.
