Ramallah, November 11 – Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat lambasted Google today, criticizing the internet giant for promoting “normalization” with Israel by allowing the country’s name to appear in search results.
Erekat held a press conference at the Muqata, where he had met with President Mahmoud Abbas. He used the conference as venue for criticizing Google, which, he charged, offends Palestinian sensibilities and strengthens the “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands” by not filtering out mentions of the Occupier from its search engine display.
“By allowing the word ‘Israel’ to appear in its search results, Google endorses, or at least condones, the unacceptable Occupation. Having the Occupier’s name featured by default creates the impression that the situation is one of business as usual, as opposed to the horrific reality,” asserted Erekat.
For years, Palestinians and their supporters have sought to refrain from and prevent behavior indicative of acceptance of Israeli control over certain areas, including basic behaviors that would benefit both Israelis and Palestinians. In recent years this approach has extended to avoidance of appearing at events intended to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, and of allying with BDS activists to pressure Israel economically, politically, culturally, and academically.
The latest outburst comes amid a spate of violence and a stalemate of negotiations. In the absence of any progress toward a final status agreement, Palestinian leaders have attempted to pressure Israel by other means, including incitement to violence and unilateral moves in international forums. Erekat’s mentioning of Google searches occurred as two Palestinian attackers killed two Israelis in separate incidents yesterday, one in Tel Aviv and one south of Jerusalem.
Technology experts disagree over the wisdom of Erekat’s critique. “It’s not unreasonable to ask that Google adapt its algorithm and infrastructure to the political sensibilities of a certain geographic audience,” says Northko Rhea of Wired magazine. “Google went much farther than that in China, for example, so there’s no reason they can’t do something similar for google.pn, at least, and that way no Palestinian ever has to worry that their computer or phone screen will be sullied by the appearance of the world ‘Israel.'”
Others question whether such a drastic top-down approach is necessary. “Even novice users can quickly discover ways to filter out specific words, so I don’t see why this is Google’s problem,” says TechCrunch’s Vidkun Quisling, “though I would understand if Google added ‘Israel’ as a key word to trip its SafeSearch function.”
A spokesman for Google, who was visiting the company’s campus in Israel, declined to comment.
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