US Jewish Group to Twitter: Ban Hezbollah, Hamas-affiliated accounts

“These accounts should be removed for representing terrorist organizations, for glorifying violence and terrorist groups, and for spreading hate speech.”

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner 

A Tuesday letter from the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to end the presence of accounts on the social media platform linked to US-designated terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

“I write to you today to raise concerns about a gap in Twitter’s enforcement of its stated policies toward accounts linked to US-designated terrorist groups that exploit social media to incite antisemitism and deadly attacks,” wrote ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

“These accounts should be removed for representing terrorist organizations, for glorifying violence and terrorist groups, and for spreading hate speech or other harmful disinformation, all in violation of Twitter’s most basic stated policies on these issues,” he argued.

Greenblatt said that despite Twitter previously deleting the account of the Hezbollah affiliate Al-Manar, at the request of a bipartisan group of Members of Congress, it continued to host an account for Hamas’ al-Aqsa TV, which boasts over half a million followers.

He also flagged another Hezbollah media outlet, al-Nour Radio, and two accounts attributed to Palestine TV, which according to the State Department is run by Islamic Jihad terror group.

“These Twitter accounts are expressly for the purpose of promoting stories from media outlets serving terrorist organizations that propagate horrific antisemitism on their media platforms,” Greenblatt wrote.

The ADL said it first reported the offending accounts to Twitter on June 26, and that at a meeting on August 4, the company said the they had “not been found to violate Twitter’s guidelines.”