New Delhi- YouTube has secretly deleted more than 700 videos documenting Israeli violations in Gaza and the West Bank after removing the accounts of three major Palestinian human rights organisations, a move widely condemned as an assault on free expression and accountability.

The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, media reports said.

The deleted content included a documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel's genocide in Gaza, a video investigation that uncovered Israel's role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, and footage revealing the destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank-all critical evidence of alleged Israeli crimes.

The move came in response to a US government campaign to stifle accountability for Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants and charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant with war crimes in Gaza, the Trump administration ramped up its defence of Israel's actions by sanctioning ICC officials and targeting people and organisations that work with the court.

“I'm pretty shocked that YouTube is showing such a little backbone,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.

“It's really hard to imagine any serious argument that sharing information from these Palestinian human rights organisations would somehow violate sanctions,” she added.

Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that it is“outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration's agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view.”

YouTube, which is owned by Google, confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups' accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review.

The Trump administration levelled the sanctions against the organisations in September over their work with the International Criminal Court in cases charging Israeli officials with war crimes.

“Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws,” YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the West Bank-based Al-Haq's channel said,“YouTube's removal of a human rights organisation's platform, carried out without prior warning, represents a serious failure of principle and an alarming setback for human rights and freedom of expression.”

“The US sanctions are being used to cripple accountability work on Palestine and silence Palestinian voices and victims, and this has a ripple effect on such platforms also acting under such measures to further silence Palestinian voices,” he added.

YouTube isn't the only US tech company blocking Palestinian rights groups from using its services.

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