The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today commended the newly-founded social media platform UpScrolled for providing a space for young Americans and others facing a “censorship spree” under TikTok’s new anti-Palestinian ownership.
In a statement, Washington, D.C., based CAIR said:
“The pro-Israel extremists who now own TikTok in the United States have already gone on a predictable censorship spree, allegedly limiting posts critical of Israel, ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Trump administration.
“What the Ellisons do not realize is that young people censored on TikTok have no intention of giving up their activism. Young Americans have repeatedly shown that they will not allow politicians, corporations, or colleges to censor their speech.
“We applaud the young people speaking out against TikTok’s censorship spree and joining other platforms, including UpScrolled. We commend UpScrolled for pledging to protect the free flow of ideas on its platform, including both support for and opposition to the Israeli government’s human rights abuses.”
CAIR previously called the forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium of investors led by Oracle’s pro-Israel billionaires Larry Ellison and Safra Catz a “desperate and doomed” attempt to silence young Americans who used the platform to learn about and oppose the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
“The main reason for the forced sale of TikTok to a consortium of pro-Israel billionaires is a desire to prevent young Americans from using the platform to learn about and oppose the Israeli government’s human rights abuses,” CAIR said last year. “Everyone from Mitt Romney to Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted this obvious fact. The Israeli government and its supporters hope that TikTok’s new U.S. investors will build a ‘censorship moat’ that shadow bans or outright censors TikTok posts that criticize Israel’s crimes against humanity.”
Selling TikTok: The Anti-Palestinian Agenda
- Oracle board chair Larry Ellison is both a major donor to the Israeli military as well as a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Oracle board member and former CEO Safra Catz has stated, “I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren’t the right company for them.” The Israeli-American billionaire has also said, “Larry [Ellison] and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”
- U.S. Senator Mitt Romney stated in 2024, “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently described the sale of TikTok as “the most important purchase happening … I hope it goes through because it can be consequential.” Netanyahu, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza, sees control of TikTok as a part of Israel’s military strategy. “You have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield, and one of the most important ones is social media,” he said.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com