Mara Cavallaro on The Digital Occupation of Palestine

For Syntax, Mara Cavallaro wrote an insightful essay on the digital occupation of Palestine and what digital resistance really means. This section refers to censoring of terms to avoid posts and comments from getting erased: Across social media, even original videos, stories, reels, posts, and captions about Gaza are distorted. In fact, this is the norm. Pro-Palestine becomes “pro-[watermelon emoji],” Israel becomes “Isr@el,” Gaza is referred to as “Watermelon City,” Palestine is censored with asterisks between its letters, genocide is “g-cide,” and so on. Creators begin videos and tweets with celebrity gossip only to launch into critiques of US complicity in genocide. Some pro-Palestine Instagram accounts, Wired reported late last year, have taken to posting with the hashtag #IStandWithIsrael. Others use selfies to break up their Palestine content, posting smiling, dolled-up photos with captions requesting eSIM donations or petition signatures. On my own feeds and For You pages, I…