Israel's Foreign Ministry said Monday that YouTube had removed several Palestinian videos it considered to be inciting Palestinians to launch attacks on Israelis amid the increasing violence in the last couple of weeks.
Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told AFP that the videos in question were inciting "violence, hate and the murder of Israelis and Jews" and that they were "quickly erased" from YouTube following Israel's request.
This request was made public last Thursday when Nahshon, who also contacted Facebook concerning similar videos, shared an excerpt from the letter that was sent to Google Israel, whose parent company Google owns YouTube.
"The videos depict recent terror attacks, praise the assailants and present Jews and Israelis in a hateful and racist manner, and since their publishing, three more attacks have taken place so far," the excerpt said.
Following the Al-Aqsa Mosque clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in September, the month of October has seen an increasing climate of fresh violence engulf the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and occupied Jerusalem.
The number of Palestinian casualties has reached 29 since the start of October, with thousands of others injured, according to a Palestinian Health Ministry statement posted Tuesday . In addition, four Israelis were killed and 70 others were injured.
One of the removed YouTube videos was a fictionalized account that portrayed two Jews who were bullying Palestinian children in a Jerusalem neighborhood that looked like the Old City, being killed by a Palestinian bystander, according to Israeli Daily Haaretz .
Another removed video was reportedly an animation of a non-fictional account that portrayed the shooting of Eitam and Naama Henkin, an Israeli couple killed in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank earlier this month.
The violence that has erupted since the start of October has had many on both sides of the conflict concerned about the rise of a "third intifada."
Moreover, many Palestinians have taken to social media over the past two weeks to share their accounts, sparking the launch of multiple active Arabic hashtags about an impending uprising such as "the intifada has begun" and "the third Palestinian intifada."