May 12, 2021
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Sada Social, a Palestinian youth initiative aimed to confront challenges to the Palestinian cause on social media, has condemned Twitter for shutting down dozens of accounts of activists covering the attacks by the Israeli army in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The accounts were using the #SaveSheikhJarrah hashtag, in both English and Arabic. The May 6 statement demanded the reactivation of the 70 suspended accounts and for all users to be allowed to express solidarity on Twitter without discrimination.
On May 8, Sada Social also condemned Instagram for removing the hashtag #Al-Aqsa as many users were posting about it. The group also said the account of activist Muna al-Kurd was suspended.
The Old City, Gaza Strip – With years of war, humanitarian crises and a continuing Israeli blockade, the Gaza Strip’s rich cultural heritage has largely gone unnoticed.
But a few years ago, Nisma al-Sallaq, a local architect and a passionate advocate for the Palestinian enclave’s cultural history, set out to change that.
Along with a growing team, al-Sallaq, 27, set up Gaza’s first digital archive of historical buildings and heritage sites when she launched a multi-dimensional platform called Kanaan in 2019.
With a website, mobile application and Instagram page, the project provides visitors with information in text and video format in English and Arabic, and offers a virtual tour of Gaza’s centuries-old cultural history.