This story was originally published on Truthout on Jan. 29, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Well-known Gaza journalist Bisan Owda has been banned from TikTok, she says, just days after the finalization of the company’s sale to U.S. investors — including a firm headed by the notoriously pro-Israel Larry Ellison.
Owda announced the censorship of her account in a video on Instagram on Wednesday, saying that TikTok had banned her permanently. She had 1.4 million followers on the platform, she said, as a result of years of audience-building under Israeli occupation and genocide.
“I had 1.4 million followers there. I have been building that platform for four years now,” she said.
The account did appear to be banned on Wednesday and Thursday. However, late Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, Owda’s account appeared to be restored, but restricted. Some content seemed to not be available, and a banner appeared at the top of her feed that read: “Posts that some may find uncomfortable are unavailable.”
The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.
In her Instagram video, Owda said that the ban was “expected” due to pressure from high-powered figures to censor Palestinian voices from TikTok.
She overlaid a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he named TikTok as a “number one” priority of Israel.
She also shared a video with the company’s U.S. CEO, Adam Presser, saying that the company made a change to designate critically labelling someone as a “Zionist” as hate speech. “Over the course of 2024, we tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity,” Presser bragged at a conference last year.
Indeed, pro-Palestine advocates have said that TikTok’s role in exposing users to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the reason that lawmakers and world leaders have sought its censorship — stretching back to Congress’s original bill to force its sale from Chinese owners in 2024.
On Thursday, that campaign finally reached its endpoint as the transfer to U.S. leadership was finalized. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, still retains 20 percent ownership, while 80 percent is now owned by investors. This includes Oracle, a tech company co-founded and still led by Ellison, a vehement advocate for Israel and billionaire who has spent recent years amassing more and more power over the American mediascape.
The censorship of Owda’s account lends credence to accusations by users in recent days that the app’s owners began restricting activities on their accounts nearly immediately after the app’s transfer. Users have said that they are being restricted from uploading content critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in favor of Palestinian rights, or generally opposed to the Trump administration. The owners, however, have blamed bugs and a power outage at a U.S. data center.
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