Twitter suspends Hamas armed wing account

PanARMENIAN.Net - A Twitter account of Hamas's armed wing has been suspended by administrators, the Palestinian Islamist movement said Thursday, Jan 23, accusing the social media site of censorship, AFP reports.

The account of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, @AlqassamBrigade, appeared to have been suspended several times over the past week, and was still inaccessible with a "suspended" notice on Thursday.

A spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, accused Twitter of suppressing freedom of speech and of pandering to the political agenda of Hamas's sworn enemy Israel.

"This is proof of the moral bankruptcy of the (Israeli) occupation in fighting any vocal resistance to it, and is an attempt to wipe out the truth and hide the crimes of the Zionist occupation against Palestinian civilians," spokesman Abu Obaida wrote to AFP.

"Twitter's administration are exercising double standards. They're giving credibility to the Zionist (Israeli) army, allowing it to practise its terrorism against the innocent and use its Twitter account to wage threats. But they're censoring the Qassam Brigades account, which exposes the hostilities of the terrorist Zionist army and shows the truth. This is a clear violation of Twitter's rules and regulations," he said.

A Twitter spokesperson refused to comment, telling AFP: "We do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons."

During the last full-scale conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Qassam Brigades and Israel's army engaged in a heated propaganda war on Twitter.

The Qassam Brigades also operate an Arabic-language account @Qassam_Arabic, and the Hebrew-language @qassamhebrew, both of which were working on Thursday, AFP says.