Month: August 2024

Turkey has banned Instagram following a row over the site’s alleged crackdown on users sharing condolences for late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The country’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) published the decision on its website on Friday, but gave no official reason for the ban.

“Instagram.com has been blocked by the decision of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority dated 02/08/2024 and numbered 490.05.01.2024.-608983,” the site said.

Turkish officials have offered their condolences following Haniyeh’s death, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declaring 2 August a national day of mourning.

“May God have mercy on my brother Ismail Haniyeh, fallen in martyrdom after this odious attack,” Erdogan wrote on social media on Thursday, further denouncing “Zionist barbarity.”

On Wednesday, the Turkish presidency’s director of communications Fahrettin Altun slammed Instagram, claiming it was “impeding people from publishing messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh.”

“This is censorship, pure and simple,” he said on X (formerly Twitter).

Turkey regularly blocks social media platforms, usually in the wake of disasters such as earthquakes or terror attacks, citing either national security or the spread of misinformation.

Critics usually accuse the authorities of trying to stifle criticism of the government.

Turkish digital rights expert Yaman Akdeniz condemned the Instagram ban as “arbitrary” and said it needed court approval to be legal.

“No judge should approve such a request,” he wrote.

Middle East Eye contacted Instagram’s parent company Meta for a comment but had received no response at the time of publication.

According to a report in the New York Times on Thursday, Haniyeh was assassinated by an explosive device that was secretly smuggled into Tehran weeks ago.

Citing seven Middle Eastern officials and a US official, the report said a bomb had been hidden in a guesthouse in the capital run by Iran‘s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) around two months ago. 

Haniyeh had stayed in the guesthouse on several occasions while visiting Tehran, according to the sources. The explosion also killed the Hamas political leader’s bodyguard.

Iranian sources, however, have dismissed the claim that a bomb was used as false.

The Israeli military’s attack on an aid convoy in April that killed seven workers in Gaza resulted from “serious military failures”, an Australian inquiry revealed on Friday.

On 1 April, Israeli strikes on three World Central Kitchen vehicles that had delivered 100 tonnes of food aid to a Deir al-Balah warehouse killed aid workers from Australia, Canada, Poland, the UK, the US and Palestine.

The government review examining Israel’s response to the fatal strikes attributed the attack to a failure by Israeli forces to follow procedures, citing “mistaken identification and decision-making errors, likely compounded by a level of confirmation bias”.

Former Australian Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, appointed special adviser on the matter, said he did not believe Israeli forces “knowingly or deliberately directed against the WCK”.

He concluded that this was the primary factor behind a “significant breakdown in situational awareness” and urged the Israeli government to issue an “appropriate apology” to the victims’ families.

Binskin added that the victims’ families do not consider the public apology issued by the Israeli government to be sufficient.

The family of Zomi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker killed in the attack, called for “further investigations” and described the report as “only the first step”.

Foreign minister Penny Wong said that the attack was not “a one-off incident,” citing a UN report which found that over 250 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October.

“Gaza remains the deadliest place on earth to be an aid worker,” she said, urging for stronger protections for workers in the war-torn enclave.

Binskin’s report follows an internal investigation by Israeli forces that resulted in the dismissal of two officers and the reprimanding of three others.  

Following the internal inquiry, Wong said that Frankom’s family felt the disciplinary action was insufficient.

The Australian inquiry was set up shortly after the foreign minister condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments on the attack as “deeply insensitive”.

‘Whitewashing’

The conclusions of the review roughly align with the Israeli military investigation, which also found that the attack was due to a series of errors.

Mehreen Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, condemned Binskin’s report as “a complete whitewashing” because he had to “rely significantly” on Israel’s internal investigation into the attack.

An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification agency, based on open-source information, witness testimonies and images of the site, revealed that the convoy attack was intentional.

The WCK said that their convoy was hit “despite coordinating movements” with the Israeli army.

WCK founder Jose Andres told reporters in April that Israeli forces had targeted the convoy “systematically, car by car”. 

Middle East Eye reported that at least 357 humanitarian-run sites and convoys in Gaza, whose coordinates had been shared in advance, were hit before the WCK attack.

UN officials and aid workers, many speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE it had been clear for months that the humanitarian notification system in Gaza was broken.

The Israeli military’s attack on an aid convoy in April that killed seven workers in Gaza resulted from “serious military failures”, an Australian inquiry revealed on Friday.

On 1 April, Israeli strikes on three World Central Kitchen vehicles that had delivered 100 tonnes of food aid to a Deir al-Balah warehouse killed aid workers from Australia, Canada, Poland, the UK, the US and Palestine.

The government review examining Israel’s response to the fatal strikes attributed the attack to a failure by Israeli forces to follow procedures, citing “mistaken identification and decision-making errors, likely compounded by a level of confirmation bias”.

Former Australian Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, appointed special adviser on the matter, said he did not believe Israeli forces “knowingly or deliberately directed against the WCK”.

He concluded that this was the primary factor behind a “significant breakdown in situational awareness” and urged the Israeli government to issue an “appropriate apology” to the victims’ families.

Binskin added that the victims’ families do not consider the public apology issued by the Israeli government to be sufficient.

The family of Zomi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker killed in the attack, called for “further investigations” and described the report as “only the first step”.

Foreign minister Penny Wong said that the attack was not “a one-off incident,” citing a UN report which found that over 250 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October.

“Gaza remains the deadliest place on earth to be an aid worker,” she said, urging for stronger protections for workers in the war-torn enclave.

Binskin’s report follows an internal investigation by Israeli forces that resulted in the dismissal of two officers and the reprimanding of three others.  

Following the internal inquiry, Wong said that Frankom’s family felt the disciplinary action was insufficient.

The Australian inquiry was set up shortly after the foreign minister condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments on the attack as “deeply insensitive”.

‘Whitewashing’

The conclusions of the review roughly align with the Israeli military investigation, which also found that the attack was due to a series of errors.

Mehreen Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, condemned Binskin’s report as “a complete whitewashing” because he had to “rely significantly” on Israel’s internal investigation into the attack.

An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification agency, based on open-source information, witness testimonies and images of the site, revealed that the convoy attack was intentional.

The WCK said that their convoy was hit “despite coordinating movements” with the Israeli army.

WCK founder Jose Andres told reporters in April that Israeli forces had targeted the convoy “systematically, car by car”. 

Middle East Eye reported that at least 357 humanitarian-run sites and convoys in Gaza, whose coordinates had been shared in advance, were hit before the WCK attack.

UN officials and aid workers, many speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE it had been clear for months that the humanitarian notification system in Gaza was broken.