A Twitter spokeswoman defended the company’s decision to block and restrict President Trump’s tweets, but not those of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for the genocide of the Israeli people.
The reason? Because the Iranian dictator’s tweets pass as “comments on the political issues of the day,” while Trump’s may “inspire harm,” Twitter says.
During a hearing on anti-Semitism in front of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem, lawmakers questioned a Twitter representative about why the platform monitored Trump’s missives, but not other world leaders like Khamenei who called Israel “growth cancerous”.
“He recently started pointing to President Trump’s tweets,” said Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Israeli Jewish Congress.
“Why haven’t they tweeted from Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has literally called for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people?” I ask.
In an astonishing response, the Twitter spokeswoman said the tweets by the Iranian leader, where he has publicly called for the “elimination” of Israel, amounted to little more than “saber rattling of foreign policy.”
“We have an approach to world leaders who currently say that direct interactions with other public figures, comments on political issues of the time or the noise of foreign policy on military and economic issues generally do not violate our Twitter rules,” he added. . The spokeswoman replied.
Stunned legislator Michal Cotler-Wunsh interrupted: “So is it okay to ask for genocide?”
“Calling genocide on Twitter is fine, but isn’t it okay to comment on political situations in certain countries?” She continued.
A clip of the exchange was shared on Twitter Wednesday by former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who wrote: “This should be something reported by the US media. Wow.”
The Iranian leader has repeatedly shared tweets calling Israel “deadly and cancerous growth” to be “uprooted and destroyed,” all without being controlled by Twitter.
“The enduring virus of Zionism will be uprooted thanks to the determination and faith of young people,” Khamenei wrote in May.
The Twitter spokeswoman worked on a knot as she declined to answer why the platform had started restricting the president’s tweets, but not Khamenei’s, leading to “double-standards” accusations.
“If a world leader violates our rules, but it is a clear interest to keep that on the servers, we can put it behind a notice that provides more context on the violation,” said the Twitter representative.
“What happened to Trump’s tweet, that tweet was violating our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line of that tweet and the risk that it may inspire damage and similar actions,” he continued.
In May, Twitter posted a “public interest notice” in the president’s tweet amid violence in Minneapolis that read: “When the looting begins, the shooting begins,” leading to allegations of censorship and political prejudice.
Just days earlier, The Post revealed on a front page how the head of integrity for the Twitter site had a history of making politically charged anti-Trump comments on the platform, writing that there were “real Nazis in the White House.”
The big tech CEOs were brought before Congress on Wednesday as part of an antitrust hearing in which Republican lawmakers accused sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google of being “out to get conservatives.”
“I’ll just get to the point: Big Tech is looking for conservatives,” said Ohio Republican Jim Jordan. “That is not a suspicion, it is not a hunch. It is a fact.”
.
