After pressure, YouTube finally removes channel that allegedly inspired Texas hostage-taker as platform accused of ignoring warnings by moderator

YouTube has bowed to pressure and finally removed a channel from its platform that allegedly inspired the Texas hostage-taker, as the platform is accused by a moderator of ignoring his warnings.

After weeks of pressure, including in particular from the JC, the social media network has removed the channels belonging to Israr Ahmed and Wagdy Ghoniem, which boasted 3.5 million subscribers between them.

Malik Faisal Akram, the Briton who took four hostages at the Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville before being shot dead by the FBI, was reportedly obsessed with two hardline Pakistani clerics popular on YouTube, one of whom was Israr Ahmed. Mr Ahmed had 2.7 million subscribers on the social media network and was particularly popular with Mr Akram, according to the JC. On his videos, he reportedly called Jews “the ultimate source of evil [and] the biggest agents of Satan”, adding that they “control the banking system of the world.” In another video, entitled “History of the Jews”, Dr Ahmed claimed that Jews had been acting against humanity for over 2,000 years. “The name of Jews became an expletive,” he said. “They became akin to pigs.”

Testimony from moderator-turned-whistleblower and counter-terrorism expert, Khaled Hassan, reportedly prompted the company to act. Mr Hassan, who worked for Crisp, a content moderation firm contracted to YouTube, repeatedly raised the issue of antisemitism on YouTube, according to the JC. This included flagging Mr Ahmed’s channel and that of the Egyptian Jihadist and Muslim Brotherhood leader Wagdy Ghoniem, who is banned in the UK.

Mr Hassan’s report to YouTube warned that Mr Ahmed’s videos “pose[d] a serious risk of inciting hatred against Jews [and] a realistic possibility of leading to real-world violence” and was submitted in October last year, but was reportedly ignored. In January, Mr Akram targeted the Colleyville synagogue after watching Mr Ahmed’s videos, according to his friends and acquaintances.

YouTube reportedly said that, “upon review, we removed the channels belonging…to Israr Ahmad for violating our hate speech policies, and a further eleven videos have been removed as either a result of this circumvention or for violating our Violent Extremism and hate speech policies.”

Mr Ghoniem’s channel had been taken down “for circumvention of our terms of service,” according to the technology company. This came after Mr Hassan’s report had pointed out that he “has been on the list of extremists banned from entering the UK for inciting terrorism since 2009,” has been wanted on terrorism charges in America since 2004, and an Egyptian court had convicted him for leading a terrorist cell in 2014.

Mr Hassan’s report recounted how Mr Ghoneim had falsely claimed that Egypt’s President “is secretly a Jewish person working on advancing the interests of Israel while causing harm to Egypt’s economy and national security”. Mr Hassan claimed that the failure to remove Mr Ghoneim’s videos amounted to “promoting radical ideologies and enabling radical/terrorist groups to recruit members into their ranks.”

Although YouTube’s publicly-stated policy is that all “hate speech” that promotes “violence or hatred against individuals or groups” based on race or religion “is not allowed” and will be “removed,” Mr Hassan told that JC that he believed this policy to be a “sham”.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has long called for tougher regulations on social media sites and that social networks proactively search for and remove hate speech from their platforms.