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sanctions
YouTube Removed Hundreds of Videos of Israeli Human Rights Violations to Comply With Trump Sanctions
"YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian victims,” said a spokesperson for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose channel was deleted.
Nov 05, 2025
In compliance with a Trump administration effort to punish critics of Israel's genocide in Gaza, YouTube has deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian rights groups, wiping several hundred videos documenting Israeli human rights violations in the process.
According to The Intercept, the video hosting website, owned by Google, quietly removed the accounts of three groups, Al-Haq, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in October.
These are the same three groups that the State Department hit with sanctions in September because they helped to bring evidence before the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The court would issue arrest warrants for the pair in 2024.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said explicitly that the groups were sanctioned because they "directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
YouTube deleted the groups' channels, as well as their entire archives, which contained over 700 videos that documented acts of brutality by the Israeli military against Palestinians.
According to The Intercept, these included an investigative report about the killing of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli troops, the military's destruction of Palestinians' homes in the West Bank, and a documentary about mothers who'd survived Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Google confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the videos to comply with the State Department sanctions.
“Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws,” YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle said in a statement.
Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it was "outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view."
YouTube's censorship of content deemed too supportive of Palestinians predates President Donald Trump's return to power. In 2024, officials at YouTube and other social media companies were found to have cooperated through secretive back channels with a group of volunteers from Israel's tech sector to remove content critical of Israel.
Following news of the three human rights groups losing their channels, documentarian and journalist Robert Inlakesh wrote on social media that in 2024, YouTube removed his channel without warning, deleting all his content, including several documentaries he'd produced in the occupied territories.
"YouTube deleted all my coverage of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including children targeted on a live stream, along with my entire account," he said. "No community guidelines were violated, and three separate excuses were given to me. Then Google deleted my email and won’t respond to appeals."
Groups sanctioned by the US for supporting the ICC have previously received preliminary injunctions in two cases, in which courts said the State Department violated their First Amendment rights.
But even with the sanctions in place, Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said there was little legal reason for YouTube to capitulate.
"It’s really hard to imagine any serious argument that sharing information from these Palestinian human rights organizations would somehow violate sanctions," she said. "Succumbing to this arbitrary designation of these Palestinian organizations, to now censor them, is disappointing and pretty surprising.”
Basel al-Sourani, an international advocacy officer and legal advisor for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that YouTube has not made it clear what policies his group's channel violated.
“YouTube said that we were not following their policy on Community Guidelines, when all our work was basically presenting factual and evidence-based reporting on the crimes committed against the Palestinian people, especially since the start of the ongoing genocide on October 7," he said.
"By doing this," he added, "YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian victims."
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Snapback Sanctions on Iran Can't Be Allowed to Make Another War Inevitable
Despite the nascent peace in Gaza, it appears the stage is being set for renewed belligerence in the Middle East, unless the US can restrain Israel.
Oct 10, 2025
After two years of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, a ceasefire deal has officially been signed. President Donald Trump previously revealed his 20-point peace plan to end the conflict and, while it is not immediately clear if the plan will be implemented in its entirety, it seems that an initial phase is currently underway. Captives from both sides will be exchanged, and Israel will partially withdraw from Gaza.
As the war in Gaza hopefully draws to an end, an embattled Iran is now facing the reimposition of United Nations “snapback” sanctions that will wreak havoc on its oil trade, reinstate an arms embargo, and prohibit all uranium enrichment. Previously, the Iranian parliament was set to deliberate on a resolution to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a response to the sanctions being implemented. With sanctions now in effect, Iranian withdrawal from the NPT might be interpreted as a move toward nuclear weaponization and amplify Israeli and American calls for regime change. Despite the nascent peace in Gaza, it appears the stage is being set for renewed belligerence in the Middle East. Accordingly, the US must definitively restrain Israel to disentangle from a region where involvement has not provided any tangible benefits.
After the Iran-Israel War, Iran preconditioned resuming diplomacy on a good faith guarantee from the US that they would not be attacked while negotiating. From the Iranian perspective, it is evident that the US is unable to ensure Iran’s safety amid renewed nuclear negotiations. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has conducted offensive operations in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar. Israel’s unilateral bombing of Qatar, a US ally which hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East, represents a dangerous and unprecedented escalation. Qatar plays the role of a de facto regional mediator, and Israel’s brazen strike targeted Hamas representatives in Doha who were discussing President Trump’s ceasefire proposal to end the war in Gaza.
This is a glaring instantiation of the fact that the US is either unwilling or unable to restrain Israel. If US support for Israel remains unconditional despite bombing the mediator country in peace negotiations, which voices will be elevated in Tehran: the moderates open to resuming diplomacy or the hardliners asserting that the US cannot be trusted? Iran’s suspicions are reflected in Ayatollah Khamenei’s assertion that negotiations with the US would not serve Iran’s interests.
It is becoming impossible to ignore that Israeli and American interests are separate and distinct: Israel wants regional hegemony, while the US’ interests lie in diplomacy.
Moreover, the underlying strategic considerations remain relatively unchanged after the war in June. The US was unable to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, Israel failed to spur regime change, and Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is believed to have survived US strikes. While reattempting nuclear diplomacy is preferable to renewed hostilities, diplomatic efforts have reached an irreconcilable impasse. Israel and the US remain committed to imposing a policy of zero uranium enrichment on Iran while Iran remains steadfast on retaining their enrichment capability. Although President Trump proclaimed that Iran’s nuclear sites were totally "obliterated,” assessments from the US, Israel, Iran, and the International Atomic Energy Agency appear to contradict his rosy estimation. Subsequently, Israel reportedly is planning for additional strikes if Iran resumes enrichment and President Trump has asserted that he would be open to striking Iran again “without question” if enrichment continues. Why would Iran agree to suspend uranium enrichment and forfeit nuclear latency when their existential fears were reinforced by surprise bombings amid diplomatic talks?
The inconvenient truth is that Israel hopes to seize this unique opportunity to coordinate with the US to change the Middle East. Concerning Gaza, the expulsion of the Palestinian population and opposition to Palestinian statehood enjoy a national consensus that transcends partisan lines in Israeli society. Since the Gaza war began in 2023, the human cost has been enormous—Israel has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, an estimated 20,000 of which are children; starvation is rampant; and nearly all of Gaza’s educational and medical infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. Similarly, Israel’s primary strategic objective in Iran is regime change wherein Iran shares a fate similar to Iraq and Syria: a fracturing along ethnic and religious lines into smaller, manageable entities that pose no threat to Israel.
Realistically, Israel needs to drag the US into further hostilities with Iran due to Israel’s inability to adequately defend itself without US augmentation. Indeed, in the past two years alone, the US spent tens of billions on military aid to Israel. This figure pales in comparison with the fact that Israel has been the leading recipient of US aid for decades. Additionally, the war with Iran in June exposed glaring capacity insufficiencies with Israel’s missile defense systems and the US accounted for “almost half of all interceptions.” The US reportedly burned through about 25% of its THAAD missile interceptors defending Israel from Iranian retaliations. Israel could not execute their expansive agenda without unconditional, absolute, and unlimited guarantees from the US. Bewilderingly, the US continues to underwrite Israel’s ambitious foreign policy contrary to the US national interest. The US must first acknowledge this bizarre dynamic to ultimately divorce itself from it.
At the genesis of President Trump’s second term, he claimed the success of his administration would be measured “not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” Why Israel is allowed to continually derail the US’ “no new wars” agenda without fear of consequence defies credulity. It is becoming impossible to ignore that Israeli and American interests are separate and distinct: Israel wants regional hegemony, while the US’ interests lie in diplomacy.
If the Iranian regime is toppled, Israel will have achieved their goal of changing the strategic landscape of the Middle East. As the sole regional nuclear power with a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, unconditional US support, and no local competitors posing a threat, Israel will have ascended to the uncontested hegemon of a region that encompasses vital continental trade crossroads between Asia, Europe, and Africa. With diplomacy seemingly buried, the US must restrain their “greatest friend.” Facilitating regime change in Iran serves Israel, but leaves the US vulnerable to retaliations, blowback terrorism, or managing regional destabilization due to an ensuing refugee crisis. If there is to be a second Iran-Israel War, the US should make it clear that Israel will have to go it alone.
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Why the SanctionsKill Campaign Supports BDS
The BDS movement to end Zionist violence, and the SanctionsKill campaign to abolish US economic coercion, are not separate causes, but one movement for justice, sovereignty, and human dignity.
Sep 21, 2025
The SanctionsKill campaign was formed in 2019 to raise awareness of the human cost of the “sanctions”—actually economic coercive measures—imposed by the United States and its allies on over 40 countries, in which one-third of humanity lives. Our coalition of grassroots activists has exposed the suffering and death caused to populations targeted with these measures, particularly among children, the elderly, and people with health conditions.
We also strongly support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement advanced by Palestinian civil society as a legitimate way for grassroots activists around the world to pressure the settler-colonial state of Israel to comply with international law and recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
It is important to understand the distinction between BDS and imperialist economic coercive measures. While this includes legal differences, the most salient feature is that BDS is the peoples’ effort to end their governments’ complicity with Zionist colonial crimes, whereas US “sanctions” maintain imperialist hegemony by forcing countries to submit to US economic and political interests. The BDS movement comes from over a century of struggle for Palestinian liberation, with a global consensus of the world’s people that Zionist apartheid must end, while US-imposed “sanctions” are based on specious accusations of human rights violations to “continue the theft of wealth from the Global South, and preserve racial hierarchy in the international system.”
Some definitions and a bit of history can help to better understand the complementarity of BDS and SanctionsKill.
A Definition of Sanctions and Their Legality
The United Nations describes sanctions as restrictive measures imposed by the UN Security Council to enforce international law and maintain or restore peace and security, which may include “complete or partial interruption of economic, communications, or diplomatic relations.” Sanctions imposed unilaterally (without the UN Security Council) violate the UN Charter, and UN bodies are calling for the elimination of “unilateral coercive measures” such as those imposed by the US government.
This global consensus is shown in the fact that for over 30 consecutive years, the UN General Assembly has voted almost unanimously to eliminate the US blockade of Cuba; the usual dissenting votes are only those of the US and Israel. Even UN Security Council sanctions are often manipulated by the US to impose collective punishment on civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
What Is BDS and How Does It Work?
BDS for Palestine is but one expression of a national liberation struggle that has been ongoing since the first Zionist settlement was established in 1878. Evoking the Great Revolt of 1936-39, the decades-long Arab Boycott initiated in 1945, the 1975 UN resolution that declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” the 1975 Organization of African Unity resolution that called for support of Palestine against “Zionist racist colonialism,” and the Intifadas, the international divestment movement started in 2000 and was relaunched as boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) in 2005.
It derives inspiration from the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) of South Africa which led hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens around the world to boycott goods from the apartheid state from the 1950s to 1994. Students, churches, trade unions, and local groups pushed governments and businesses to divest. There was a cultural boycott, and South Africa was banned from the Olympics and from FIFA competition between 1964 and 1992. "The strength of the international solidarity campaign was that it spoke directly to the ordinary citizen and challenged each one singly, and communities collectively, to take action.”
While the genocide takes the form of forced starvation, the world’s people are sickened to see that governments and international organizations are incapable of or unwilling to stop atrocities committed in plain sight.
UN sanctions were also imposed on South Africa (including an arms embargo undermined by Israel), and the country was suspended from the UN General Assembly from 1974 to 1994. By the 1980s individual countries, including the US, were imposing sanctions. However, it seems that the boycott movement was more impactful than official sanctions, causing a “privately induced financial crisis—the repercussions of which were substantially greater than any of the public sanctions that ensued.” BDS against apartheid South Africa was a complement to the most important factor in bringing down the apartheid regime—the resistance of Black South Africans on the ground, including armed struggle.
The movement for BDS against Israeli apartheid has been accelerating since the start of the live-streamed genocide in October of 2023. This grassroots movement, led by Palestinians in Palestine and in the diaspora, is inspiring millions to boycott consumer goods made in Israel and demand that Israeli weapons and surveillance companies be removed from their local economies, governments, and pension funds. Similar to the AAM of South Africa, billions of dollars have now been divested from the Zionist economy. Campaigns such as “Apartheid Free Communities” have moved public discourse toward an acknowledgement of the unjust, racist treatment of the Palestinian people. Divestment is again the rallying cry of students demanding an end to their universities’ complicity in human rights abuses, and there is an academic and intellectual boycott and call to ban the Israeli settler-colonial state from the Olympics and FIFA competition.
While the genocide takes the form of forced starvation, the world’s people are sickened to see that governments and international organizations are incapable of or unwilling to stop atrocities committed in plain sight. In response, many have taken matters into their own hands through boycott and divestment. And as in South Africa, BDS is a complement to the main struggle on the ground in Palestine.
The BDS movement says that boycott and divestment necessarily come before sanctions, in order to build “a crucial mass of people power to make policymakers fulfill their obligations under international law.” It is an effort to move toward binding UN Security Council sanctions to oblige Israel to comply with the many General Assembly resolutions and International Court of Justice rulings demanding an end to Israel’s apartheid and genocide.
How Do US “Sanctions” Work?
In contrast, the unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) promoted by the US are not intended to uphold international law or support peace and security, but rather to deliberately impose collective punishment on civilian populations in order to bring about regime change. This was revealed in a 1960 memo by a US diplomat explaining that a blockade of Cuba would “bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.” The United States government imposes these measures on countries that try to develop economic or political systems independent of US domination. And given the US’ “exorbitant power to sanction” due to the dominant role of its dollar in international trade and banking transactions, these measures are very impactful.
Economic coercive measures punish populations by impacting global trade, thus making it hard to import food, fuel, medicines, and parts to maintain civilian infrastructure. One consequence is the inability to import chemicals and parts to maintain water supply systems, causing severe shortages of clean drinking water, leading to massive child deaths.
Even UN sanctions can be manipulated for imperialist purposes. As Doa Ali said in How to Kill an Entire Country, “Iraq is a case in point of how the US has captured the UN Security Council’s sanctioning capacity using it to impose its own ‘rules-based global order’ and further its imperialist interests, regardless of the human cost.” In 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the US was able to engineer and oversee the imposition of severe UN sanctions on Iraq. These led to the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children from water-borne illnesses, vaccine-preventable diseases, and hunger—in a country that had achieved one of the highest per capita food production rates in the region. In the US-controlled committee that oversaw enforcement of the sanctions, the US ensured that “humanitarian exceptions” were denied and that “food itself was not considered a humanitarian necessity.”
US-promoted sanctions have killed over 100,000 Venezuelans since 2017, and 12% of child deaths in Palestine prior to October 2023 were from lack of clean drinking water due to the US-supported Israeli blockade. Further evidence that sanctions kill is the new report in the medical journal The Lancet, which found that sanctions cause some 564,000 deaths annually—similar to global mortality from armed conflict—with 51% of the victims under age 5.
US-imposed coercive measures are based on extractive interests, dubious accusations of deficient democracy, and spurious charges of human rights violations, such as the allegation that Cuba is “trafficking” its doctors (they are actually proud participants in a renowned humanitarian project) and that Cuba is a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) because it hosted peace talks for Colombia. The SSOT allegation makes it extremely hard for a country to conduct any banking transactions, and together with the 63-year blockade, has caused a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Such sanctions supposedly imposed to protect human rights are in fact the worst violators of human rights.
Conclusion
As hope grows for a Free Palestine sooner rather than later, it is time to lift the siege on Gaza that has been blocking desperately needed supplies since 2007. The “exorbitant sanctioning power of the US” on all the countries of the region—including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Libya—will also end as these countries find alternative trade and financial arrangements, such as the BRICS, and a new multipolar order emerges.
The BDS movement to end Zionist violence, and the SanctionsKill campaign to abolish US economic coercion, are not separate causes, but one movement for justice, sovereignty, and human dignity. Together they embody grassroots power against imperialist violence. They are people-led projects of hope and liberation, demanding a future free from the economic coercion that results in genocide, collective punishment, and colonial domination.
Differences Between Imperialist Economic Coercive Measures and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
IMPERIALIST ECONOMIC COERCIVE MEASURES | BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, AND SANCTIONS |
Seek to coerce other countries to succumb to US interests. | Called for by the grassroots in the targeted country to end the world’s complicity with an apartheid, settler-colonial regime. |
Based on spurious accusations of human rights violations. | Based on a consensus of the world’s people about grave human rights violations. |
Cause as many deaths as armed conflict. | Seeks to end deaths from Zionist genocide. |
Illegal under international law if unilateral or if they impose collective punishment. | A grassroots response to demand compliance with international law. |
Produces net transfer of wealth from Global South, consolidating US and Western capitalist hegemony. | Seeks to end settler colonial, white supremacist Zionist project that upholds US-Western capitalist hegemony. |
A tool of US imperialism. | Confronts US imperialism. |
Undermines national sovereignty. | Anti-colonialist movement for democratic-national liberation. |
A project of death. | A project of liberation and hope for the future. |
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