ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the settler colonial state of Israel uses digital media as a mechanism of surveillance and policing of social justice and everyday resistance in Palestine. Using five case studies documented by online news media, and Israeli and Palestinian human and legal rights organizations, this chapter points to Israel’s criminalization of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, and more significantly to the criminalization of expressions of resistance and dissent against occupation and settler colonialism. Looking at these cases in relation to recent perspectives on the possibilities and limitations for digital media and social movements, this work also discusses the contradictory positions offered by social media as both a tool and space for social movements and for counter-insurgency, focusing primarily on literature dealing with Palestine and contemporary Arab revolutions. The chapter argues for further research into the logics of settler colonialism as they intersect with sociologies of surveillance and social movements.
