This article provides an ethnographic account of how young Palestinian Jerusalemites responded to Israeli state surveillance during the summer and fall of 2021. Threading between interviews with social media influencers, long-time activists, and everyday users who broadcast the historic uprising on the internet, the author chronicles how these youth made use of digital platforms to draw unprecedented attention to settler violence in their city in spite of intrusive monitoring and censorship by Israeli authorities. Reviewing a long history of Israeli surveillance and extending ethnographic accounts of political cynicism in Palestine, the author argues that the suspicion many Palestinians exhibit toward social media platforms is an asset. Heightened awareness of how new technologies facilitated dragnet surveillance by Israeli authorities did not silence young Jerusalemites into acquiescence to a repressive status quo. Instead, it inspired them to speak out on their own terms, safeguarding their city while dramatizing the limits of surveillance.
