Elon Musk's X has BANNED and then UNBANNED accounts critical of Israel

By ramontomeydw // 2024-01-11

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Elon Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter) has temporarily suspended several accounts critical of Israel without providing an explanation. According to Reclaim The Net, most of the accounts belonged to journalists and left-leaning commentators. Some of the banned journalists include the Texas Observer's Steven Monacelli, the Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Alan MacLeod from MintPress News. Podcaster Rob Rousseau and the @Zei_Squirrel account were also among those suspended. Journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that the "highly popular and polarizing" @Zei_Squirrel account focused on harshly criticizing the foreign policies of both the U.S. and the European Union. It survived the earlier censorship regime in place under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, but not under Musk. "Their recent focus has been on criticizing Israel and [billionaire hedge fund manager Bill] Ackman," Greenwald wrote. "[The account] just got banned with no explanation." Users who visit the profiles are met with a suspension notice, yet the reason for the suspension remains unclear. A generic message that reads "X suspends accounts which violate the X rules," was the only explanation given. Former British lawmaker-turned-political commentator George Galloway brought the suspensions to the attention of the X owner, who replied that he would "investigate the issue." The banned accounts were all soon reinstated, but there still was no reason given for their suspension in the first place. Incidentally, all of the involved accounts had been leveling criticism against Tel Aviv. (Related: THOU SHALT NOT CRITICIZE ISRAEL: Social media giants now CENSORING CONTENT that supports people of Gaza and opposes indiscriminate bombings by Israel.) "There are around 600 million active accounts on this platform. Mistakes are bound to be made at such a scale, but we try to fix them quickly," Musk wrote on X in response to the incident. "There will always be some false positives and false negatives, but we aspire to take corrective action rapidly."

Figures banned by Musk speak out

Despite their suspensions being lifted, some of the users banned by Musk did not take too kindly to the action. The owner of the @Zei_Squirrel account explained in a Substack post: "There is no possibility that anything I have posted rises to the level of being ban-worthy – but nothing that Zionists post constantly, explicit calls for genocide and mass killing of Palestinians isn't." They highlighted how users who post outright calls for violence against Muslims and Palestinians do not receive such bans. @Zei_Squirrel ultimately remarked: "If they don't unban me, it will prove beyond all doubt that Twitter and Elon Musk are just explicitly doing the bidding of the genocidal Israeli regime and its deranged supporters like Bill Ackman." Monacelli, a special investigative correspondent with the Observer, approached his ban with some humor. In a post on Mark Zuckerberg's Threads, he said he had to start using the rival platform "because Musk was awake at 3 a.m. thinking about me." Meanwhile, MacLeod took to Telegram to decry his suspension on X. "[The platform] suspended my account. They told me to check my email for a reason, but no reason has been forthcoming," he wrote. "I have never even remotely been involved in any controversy, reported [or] stuck in [X] jail before, so I assume the real reason is political." "Probably the only chance I have to get the account back is if enough people object to this, [or] kick up a stink. This should probably include messaging [or] tagging [X] support and telling them to unban us all." MacLeod said in a statement provided to The Libertarian Institute: "I’m deeply concerned about Twitter banning a host of influential anti-war accounts, including my own. It is a sign that Elon Musk's supposed passion for free speech might not be all that it seems." Watch Nick Fuentes explains online censorship and the selective targeting of "antisemitic speech" below. This video is from the Liberum Arbitrium channel on Brighteon.com.

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Figures banned by Musk speak out

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