Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle

This groundbreaking book documents how digital platforms and technology companies based in the United States support the Israeli settler-colonial project through censorship. Terms of Servitude demonstrates how social media has become a new tool of anti-Palestinian suppression even though these platforms were initially instrumental in advancing the Palestinian struggle. Features an introduction by Steven Salaita, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Terms of Servitude is a joint production of The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. This groundbreaking book documents how digital platforms and technology companies based in the United States support the Israeli settler-colonial project through censorship. Terms of Servitude demonstrates how social media has become a new tool of anti-Palestinian suppression even though these platforms were initially instrumental in advancing the Palestinian struggle. Features an introduction by Steven Salaita, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Terms of Servitude is a joint production of The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. Terms of Servitude explores the paradox whereby prominent digital platforms like Meta, Google, and X that initially facilitated the expression of activism and advocacy for Palestinian liberation have come to fortify Zionist settler-colonialism. Through anti-Palestinian censorship and erasure often justified by so-called "terms of service" or "community standards" violations, these Big Tech companies provide the Israeli occupation forces with AI technology and metadata used to streamline genocidal colonial violence against Palestinians. Through original analysis and careful documentation, Omar Zahzah, Assistant Professor of Arab, Muslim, Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University, traces the timeline from the Sheikh Jarrah uprisings of 2021 to the beginning of October 2023 to the most current developments to explain social media's role in advancing and suppressing Palestinian narratives. This revealing and alarming book explores what makes anti-colonial counter-narratives across digital platforms so urgent, and what resistance can and must mean in light of the consolidation of Big Tech with Israeli colonialism and genocide.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
 
A Note On Process
 
Foreword by Steven Salaita
 
UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL/SETTLER-COLONIALISM
 
Preface: Locating Palestine
 
Rejecting the Language of Silence
 
Formative Years: My Introduction to Digital/Settler-Colonialism
 
Breeding Trolls for the Start Up Colony: Cyber Warfare in the Age of Hasbara 2.0
 
Meta’s Community Standards as a Tool of Digital/Settler-Colonialism
 
Kidnapped Posters Serve Genocidal Sentiment

X Marks the Spot: Digital/Settler-Colonialism and Musk’s Meeting with Netanyahu
 
PARADIGMS OF SUPRESSION, NARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE
 
E-Racing Palestine
 
Narrative Shifts and Digital Muzzling: Anti-Colonial Resistance And the Internet Post-Oslo
 
“We Battled the Algorithm and Won”
 
Digital/Settler-Colonialism Goes Global: Zionism and Colonial Humanity in International Culture
 
 
FIGHTING BACK
 
Tech Giants Censor Palestinian Content
 
TikTok Ban Sign of US Imperial Anxiety

Campaign against Project Nimbus gathers steam and supportersWhy Big Tech’s Control of Social Media cannot stop Anti-Colonial Resistance
 
“It’s Never Been about Community Standards:” Samidoun Faces Repression on Social Media
 
Conclusion: Virtual Palestine

About the Author :
OMAR ZAHZAH is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar has covered digital repression in relation to Palestine as a freelance journalist since May 2021, with work appearing in such outlets as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and more. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA. STEVEN SALAITA is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. His most recent books are a memoir, An Honest Living, and a novel, Daughter, Son, Assassin. He writes at stevesalaita.com.

Review :
​"Terms of Servitude is a blistering, timely testament to the unyielding power of Palestinian resistance in the age of digital empire. With eloquence and rigor, Omar Zahzah exposes how Silicon Valley’s so-called “neutral” technologies collude in Israel’s settler-colonial violence, demonstrating that censorship, algorithmic bias, and surveillance are not glitches but blueprints for silencing Indigenous struggles. Written in the midst of ongoing genocide yet unwavering in its vision, the book slices through corporate euphemisms to reveal how Big Tech encodes the brutality of occupation into pixels and code. It insists on situating Palestine at the center of any decolonial project seeking to reclaim the digital commons." —Laila Shereen Sakr, author of Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives

"From social media censorship to the pernicious surveillance of Palestinians and their supporters, Omar Zahzah chronicles the intimate involvement of American Big Tech corporations in Israel’s unrelenting settler-colonial project. Terms of Servitude provides a guide to understanding and resisting digital settler colonialism. It is a timely and urgent read for everyone concerned with the fate of Palestine."—Michael Kwet, author of Digital Degrowth: Technology in the Age of Survival

​"A bold and utterly captivating exposé, Terms of Servitude delivers the most powerful indictment yet of Silicon Valley's pervasive use of surveillance, egregious censorship, and other digital tools not only to facilitate Israeli violence but to aggressively stifle Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices that dare to expose it. Omar Zahzah's brilliant, meticulously-researched, and irrefutable arguments unequivocally demonstrate that digital technology is being actively weaponized to fuel settler colonialism in Palestine. This book is absolutely critical, not merely for a profound understanding of the sinister alliance between Big Tech and the Israeli occupation, but as a chilling, prescient warning of how such technology can fundamentally deepen oppression against marginalized communities worldwide."—Ramzy Baroud, author of These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons

“Zahzah reveals—in damning clarity—the paradoxical use of technology to both suppress and amplify the Palestinian liberation struggle, offering us a meticulous yet accessible articulation of the digital resistance to Zionism and why, ultimately, Big Tech is failing to silence it. Terms of Servitude is a masterful and essential record of this pivotal moment in history.” —Nora Barrows-Friedman, associate editor ​of The Electronic Intifada