Israel's official X account tweeted that they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists. So it is apparently incredibly easy to become the enemy of Israel without breaking any laws or hurting anyone. That should concern everyone.
That's because Likud has been unable to build a coalition with anyone but far right splinters. So there are now people in power that want the same kind of religious nationalist state as the furthest right depths of the GOP (or maybe not to deep, considering Project 2025).
This is not likely to last through the next election, looking at polls.
Are these U.S students? The prominent figure in the video has his face entirely covered and it is known that many non students went to these events.
I can't tell from that video whether these people supported terrorism or not, it's not quite clear. I would say that calling for 'freeing Palestine from the river to the sea' doesn't leave much room for non violence.
The quoted tweet mentions "videos", and is actually a thread of multiple posts. You have to be signed in to see them, or use a nitter proxy[1]. If you look at those videos, it's clear that they're not calling the protesters "terrorists" for merely protesting, they're calling them "terrorists" for engaging in behavior such as intimidating jewish students or praising the October 7th attacks. It's slightly misleading to round that off to "protesting Israel's actions in Gaza".
It's slightly misleading to round that off to "protesting Israel's actions in Gaza".
It's very misleading to round it off that way, and that's exactly why Israel crafted that retweet the way it did.
Even though the underlying tweet tells a different story, by truncating and framing the material in that way -- by juxtaposing the insipid "(a)-(b)-(c)" argument with a video of a perfectly nondescript protest scene -- it's very clear that the intent to convey a simple, visceral, 3-second emotional impression: "protesting Israel's actions in gaza == support for terrorists == terrorism".
>Even though the underlying tweet tells a different story, by truncating and framing the material the way they did
It seems like a stretch to argue they're "truncating" the material, when twitter doesn't provide a way to link threads besides quoting the first tweet.
>it's very clear that what they're trying to do is to convey a simple 3-second emotional impression: "protesting Israel's actions in gaza == support for terrorists == terrorism".
I certainly didn't get that impression when reading the tweet. I agree the video was nondescript, which was why I went out of my way to use a nitter instance to see whether there were more to that tweet. The standards around "well if you read between the lines..." accusations are seemingly so low that in any given argument you could use them on both sides. For instance, you could plausibly argue that by linking to a thread where the worst pro-palestinian protesters were called "terorrists", and describing that as "[israel] consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists", it gives the "emotional impression" that you can't denounce any aspect of pro-palestinian protesters without being accused of thinking the entire movement are terrorists.
Right -- if they dig into the context (which of takes infinitely more time, and then they have to be logged into Elon's hate machine to even see it) then they'll find the more "nuanced" information below it (for what in the hasbara world counts as "nuanced" anyway), which is at least somewhat less brainwash-y and does try to make some kind of point.
But the whole intent of the retweet's framing (its truncating) of the underlying tweet is to bypass all of that, and just get straight to the cortisol-spiking emotional imagery.
>But the whole intent of the retweet's framing (its truncating) of the underlying tweet is to bypass all of that, and just get straight to the cortisol-spiking emotional imagery.
Again, not being able to quote an entire thread is a platform limitation, so to claim that it was intentional is a stretch. I agree that the tweet would be better if it contained a footnote of "btw we're not saying all pro-palestinian protests are terrorists, just the ones in the video", but given that twitter isn't exactly known for nuanced takes, claiming that the lack of such footnote implies it was intentionally truncated is an isolated demand for rigor. Moreover, if you're against truncating and "cortisol-spiking emotional imagery", of @Israel's quote tweet, you should be against the same behavior of the OP, which rounded off the entire thread to be "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists".
I don't see the OP's framing as dishonest -- on the contrary, I see it as basically correct.
It's not the the Israel tweet was intending to literally say "protests == terrorists". The whole point is that was innuendo. It didn't have to be literally correct -- only to convey an insinuation and/or an emotional message.
And it seems pretty clear that emotional message was very much intentional in this case. It's also perfectly congruent with the number one insinuation / emotional message the hasbara folks have been repeating incessantly for decades (and in recent years, not merely as an insinuation but literally -- even so far as to have it successively encoded as legislation in multiple countries): "All protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy or narratives == anti-semitism".
And perhaps we can leave it at that? I mean you can respond of course, but I'm not sure I have much more energy for this. I guess it's pretty clear that I'm pretty fed up with that country's official (and unofficial) propaganda machine, and all the mindless crap it's been spewing for decades and decades. And so I'm kind of tired of looking for reasons to give it the benefit of the doubt.
If you have a different take, then that's fine for you of course.
>I don't see the OP's framing as dishonest -- on the contrary, I see it as basically correct.
"basically" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. At best the claim was directionally correct in the sense that Israel hates pro-palestinian protesters, but that's neither a secret nor controversial. The specific claim of "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists" is only true if you believe the highly subjective read-between-the-lines-and-consider-the-context interpretation.
>not merely as an insinuation but literally): "all protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy == anti-semitism".
literally?
Source?
Moreover, you don't see the irony here? You're accusing the israelis of pushing a message of "all protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy == anti-semitism", but here you are, rounding off a tweet thread where the worst pro-palestinian protesters were called terrorists as "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists"? I'm sure you find the latter to be more justified, but surely you can see the issue when someone who's vaguely skeptical of the pro-palestinian view is reading your comments?
Ok, you caught me violating my own rule with regard to "literally".
It's not literally "all". But there does seem to be strong, steady insinuation in their propaganda that much protest/critique/doubt of the State of Israel's actions/shenanigans is, ipso facto anti-semitic.
There's no source needed for this. It's been omnipresent in the environment of discourse (at least since the dawn of the ADL/Dershowitz era).
Though I do think it's quite fair cite both the Nakba Law within Israel itself, and the anti-BDS legislation adopted in certain countries as attempts to (at least partially) codify this omnipresent insinuation into law. More specifically the idea seems to be brand this visceral association (between strong critique and anti-semitism) as highly intrinsic -- to such a degree that can be called "close to literal" -- in people's minds.
It's both bizarre, and all too mundane and predictable somehow, the extent to which they've been able to keep pushing the envelope on (and reaping dividends from) this effort.
The OP is correct, since although the official Israel account is quote tweeting Shai Davidai, the most shameless zionist hasbarist on twitter, Israel's tweet is still self contained and is clearly trying to demonize and vilify the protestors as terrorists based on their "ideology" i.e. fighting back against your colonizer and oppressor is "terrorism" because any opposition to the racist colonial enterprise that is Israel has to be demonized and delegitimized by Zionists while they themselves engage in blatant terrorism. Israel's propaganda is so awful and lazy that it has become predictable. They will always hyperfocus on fringe cases, even manufacture such cases if they don't exist, in order to delegitimize the whole protest.
And anyone who actually followed the protests carefully has witnessed that Zionists were the aggressors trying to intimidate anyone who opposes Israel's actions in Gaza in any shape or form. Furthermore, the "they were intimidating jewish students" narrative has become so laughable at this point because zionists perceive any opposition to Israel as "intimidating" and so they are abusing the jewish identity as a shield to protect the israeli apartheid entity from criticism. People are sick and tired of this game because they have seen zionists playing these sick and twisted mind games for decades.
I never claimed that those videos are representative of all anti-israel protests, or that either accounts aren't engaging in bad faith argumentation, but at the end of the day, the linked tweet does not substantiate the object level question of "[israel] consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists". The examples might be cherry picked, but it's a stretch to claim that a thread calling the worst protesters "terrorists" actually means they think all anti-israel protesters are "terrorists". Cherry picking is bad, but two wrongs don't make a right.
It's not a stretch by any means - you are bending over backwards to sanitize the most obvious propaganda to vilify and demonize protesting students at columbia by hyperfocusing on the fringe and leveraging that to delegitimize the whole. It's a pattern of propaganda in which Israel engages in regularly, one of their favorite strategies in fact. Both Israel's official account and Shai applied their smears indiscriminately, so there is no reason why I would need to interpret either tweet charitably since they are both primarily engaged in propaganda.
Your rhetoric is so laughable it's insane, you clearly enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing but you will not succeed in this case. Both tweets indiscriminately smeared protestors as "terrorists" and Israel's official account just said "they[the protestors] are terrorists" merely based on "their ideology" but you want me to be so charitable towards a propaganda account that even engaged in propaganda against Palestinians that is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda!? (e.g. caricatures of Palestinians as cockroaches and rats)
>"well they don't say that explicitly, but if you take the other stuff they're doing into context then it's pretty clear think that and are engaging in propaganda"
this is a laughable straw-man. I'm saying, as it's tweeted, that they smeared the protestors indiscriminately as terrorists based on their ideology of supporting resistance to colonization, but you are bending over backwards to sanitize the tweet by arguing semantics like a Nazi who hides behind dog-whistles and ambivalent language to retain a small degree of plausible deniability. anyone who is not hell-bent on arguing for the sake of arguing knows exactly that the purpose of that rhetoric is the blanket vilification of all protestors like they have done consistently for the past year. it's documented how zionists have persistently tried to smear protestors as "antisemitic", "terrorists" or any other evil known to man. Such dishonest strategies are the bread and butter of zionist propaganda. I will no longer entertain your bad faith argumentation.
>You accuse them of "indiscriminately smeared protestors", but so far as I can tell, neither @Isarel tweet nor the @ShaiDavidai thread said that all protesters were terrorists
LOL so according to your logic, although they both systematically vilified ALL protestors for months but haven't explicitly used the word "all" that is enough plausible deniability tho the smear is indiscriminate? So then we can also go through Nazi propaganda and every time it fails to include the word "all" we can assume that the Nazis didn't mean the peaceful jews, just some specific jews!? You simply want to argue for the sake of it, any sane person sees it for what it is - an attempt to vilify ALL protestors, like they have done consistently for decades.
Zionists systematically vilified ALL protestors and pro-israel media explicitly described peaceful marches as "hate marches". You're playing devil's advocate but you are doing a terrible job at it and I don't even need to take into account the history of both accounts to prove my point because it's so obvious to anybody who isn't hell-bent on denying the obvious.
>Source for they "systematically vilified ALL protestors"?
smearing peaceful marches as "hate marches", the tweet itself which explicitly states that the ideology of protestors i.e. supporting resistance against occupation makes them "terrorists", smearing protestors as "antisemites", this one is an all time classic, any resistance to the racist colonial project will lead zionists to smear you as an "antisemite" any chance they get
>Is this going to be the same thing as the original tweet, where they don't actually say all protesters are bad
So you would accept it when people would say that jews are pro-genocide and land theft but when accused of antisemitism you would say "no thats actually not antisemitism since he clearly didnt say ALL jews" - Ofc you wouldn't, that's where you would flip-flop on your logic and pretend like you never made the opposing argument. You engage in weaselly dishonest quarreling and you know it.
>In the case of the nazis, we know that's not the case because of what they did afterwards, but that doesn't give you license to extrapolate in every case. You can't extrapolate "I hate billionaires who don't pay their fair share of taxes" to "I hate all billionaires".
Ah ok, so in case of Nazis we can extrapolate because of their actions, but in case of these Zionists who systematically and persistently engaged in vilification of all protestors and justified genocide for almost a year we somehow can't, lol. The dishonesty is so glaring.
>Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible to paint the other side as a monolith?
Israeli propaganda couldn't even function without painting the other side as a monolith, their propaganda is that crude and dishonest. I mean it's funny how you once again turn the issue on its head where the propagandist vilifying peaceful protests as "hate marches" is somehow the victim. You are not a serious person and you've already wasted my time with incoherent denial hell-bent on denying the obvious.
The word "terrorist" is very overloaded in Israeli politics. To anyone right of Likud (or even Likud itself) it can even include opposition leaders and arab citizens.
Israel would 100% "blow up Columbia students" if they happens to be in the wrong side of the border at the wrong time. That's exactly the problem, Israel murdering wholesale students so other students are standing up tonight them while people like you ignore and defer.
Are there many instances of American citizens (students or non students) being killed by Israel? I would say no. I know of a few and they are very famous because its quite rare to happen.
I'd even guess there are more American Israelis that got killed by Palestinians.
- Mar 16 2003: Rachel Corrie
- May 11 2022: Shireen Abu Akleh killed, very in a likely targeted attack
- Sep 6 2024: Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, also likely targeted
And 2 American teenagers recently killed by settlers (who act as an extension of the Israeli government):
- Jan 19 2024 - Tawfic Hafeth Abdel Jabbar, 17 - [0]
- Feb 10 2024 - Mohammad Khdour, 17 - [1]
Meanwhile we have some 31 American citizens killed by Hamas since Oct 7 - [2]
The numbers are quite different. However it is deeply significant that Israel is supposed to be one of America's top allies (and the US is definitely Israel's "bestie" by far), yet its government has obfuscated and/or outright lied about a 5 incidents above. And except for Corrie, all 4 were shot in the head.
Yes, of course Israel has killed American citizens as well, can you not use Google?
You likely know who Rachel Corrie, an American student and peace activist is, but are forgetting on purpose. She was killed on March 16, 2003, in the Gaza Strip while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Corrie was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer while attempting to block its path.
Israel doesn't care, they will murder anyone standing in the way of all the free land land god gave them 3000 years ago.
edit for source: https://x.com/Israel/status/1781951509070012435