TEHRAN – The Tehran Times ran a fully black front page on Thursday to mourn the Israeli barbaric attack on a hospital in central Gaza. The paper however has been prevented from posting a picture of the front page on Instagram.

“This indicates different media platforms’ full support for Israeli crimes against Palestinians. Instagram and similar platforms are preventing the dissemination of truth, particularly on the oppressed in Palestine,” said Tehran Times editor-in-chief Mohammad Sarfi.

Israel attacked the Al-Ahra Arab hospital on Tuesday night, killing at least 500 hundred civilians and injuring hundreds more. Women and children make up the majority of the casualties.

This is not the first time that Instagram has tried to suppress posts that are not in line with Israeli interests. The platform has been deleting pictures of General Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian commander who spearheaded the country’s fight against the Daesh terror group in the 2010s. He was assassinated during a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad. It is believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the main proponent of the attack.

Meta which owns Instagram and Facebook has particularly been active in promoting Israel’s anti-Palestine narrative in recent days. On Friday the company apologized for adding the word “terrorist” to the bios of users who had “Palestinian” written on their profiles.

Meta blamed the situation on a “bug” that caused “inappropriate Arabic translations”. The company has also been accused of shadow-banning pro-Palestinian content in recent days.

MHA/PA