Ex-Meta engineer sues company, says he was fired due to Gaza content handling

By Serdar Dincel

ISTANBUL (AA) - A Palestinian-American software engineer filed a lawsuit this week against social media giant Meta, claiming the company dismissed him unlawfully.

Ferras Hamad says Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, discriminated against him and fired him after he investigated claims by users that the social media company was censoring Palestinian creators and activists.

NBC news in a report Thursday cited the lawsuit Hamad filed which said he “was scrutinized, interrogated and terminated because he was of Palestinian national origin and/or Muslim” and because he was investigating the censorship allegations.

According to the suit, he was fired even though the investigation was part of his job.

The lawsuit says Hamad “is simply the latest victim of Meta’s callus, chronic, and consistent anti-Palestinian bias.”

Meta released a statement arguing that Hamad was dismissed for violating its “data access policies, which we make clear to employees will result in immediate termination.”

The company said the dismissal did not take place due to bias.

Hamad's lawyers said he did not the violate policies.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7 despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire

Some 36,600 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,000 others injured, according to local health authorities

Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.