A video released Thursday featuring Israeli and Palestinian couples kissing each other is at the center of a debate about censorship — both online and in high school classrooms.

The video, published by Time Out Tel Aviv, was made in response to the Israeli education ministry's decision to remove Dorit Rabinyan’s Borderlife — a book detailing the forbidden love between a Jewish woman and an Arab man — from reading lists in high schools. The disqualification of the book incited anger among students, professors and liberal politicians, many of whom claimed it constituted censorship, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz.

An extra censorship wrinkle was introduced when the kissing video appeared to vanish from Facebook — but Facebook told Mashable that it did not remove the video.

See also: The truth about banned books is stranger than you think

Borderlife had reportedly been approved by a number of teachers and professionals who are responsible for curating reading lists for secular schools. But it was ultimately vetoed by two senior ministry officials, Eliraz Kraus, who is in charge of society and humanity studies, and the acting chair of the pedagogic secretariat, Dalia Fenig.

יהודים וערבים מתנשקים | Jews & Arabs Kiss | عرب ويهود يتباوسواלאחר שנעלם לכמה שעות, הסרטון (שהיה עם מעל 100,000 צפיות ואלפי שיתופים) חוזר לאוויר. התקשורת העולמית - הגרדיאן, וושינגטון פוסט ונוספים, מפרגנים. שתפו כדי שהטובים (שאוהבים ומתנשקים) ינצחולעוד צילומים מהפרויקט ופרטים על המשתתפים: http://bit.ly/1JuVZNN Posted by ‎טיים אאוט תל אביב Time Out Tel Aviv‎ on Thursday, January 7, 2016

"The story is based on a romantic motif of impossible prohibited/secret love," Fenig said in a statement to Haaretz. "Young people of adolescent age tend to romanticize and don’t, in many cases, have the systemic vision that includes considerations about preserving the identity of the nation and the significance of assimilation."

Inspired partly by Fenig's statements to the press, Time Out's video features six Israeli-Palestinian couples -– both straight and gay — embracing and kissing, some of them after meeting for the first time. The last scene in the video states: "Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies."

Within hours of its posting, the provocative clip garnered more than 100,000 likes and some 5,500 shares, according to the Washington Post.

But the video disappeared from Time Out's profile shortly thereafter. The magazine and Haaretz both reported that Facebook removed it due to receiving a high number of user complaints. It has since been reposted, and at time of writing has 25,000 likes.

Asked about the video's removal, a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable "We did not remove any content from [Time Out's] page."

We've reached out to both Time Out and Haaretz for further comment on Facebook's claim, and will update this story when we hear back.

Borderlife received critical praise upon its release in 2014 and was honored with Israel’s prestigious Bernstein literary prize in 2015. Rabinyan called its removal from high school reading lists a "scandal."

"I think that what happened with the education ministry is an unbelievable scandal that cannot be imagined." she told NBC. "The content of the book became the reason for its disqualification."