Hamas’s #AskHamas Twitter Campaign Mocked

Today’s Top Stories

1. Promising responses from the terror organization’s leadership, Hamas launched its #AskHamas Twitter campaign aimed at improving its global image. Things haven’t gone so well for Hamas, however.

According to AP:

According to the social media analytics website Topsy, the AskHamas hashtag generated 36,000 tweets in a single day.

 

Some tweeters asked Hamas about their use of suicide bombers in buses, cafes and other civilian areas during the Palestinian Intifada.

 

Journalist Jeffery Goldberg asked “Why did you murder 30 civilians, including 20 people over the age of 70, at a Passover Seder in Netanya in 2002?”

 

Pictures of Palestinian children at rallies where gunmen wore suicide bomber vests and waved guns were posted.

 

Some users made a point of mentioning how senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal spent the recent Gaza war in his hotel room in Doha. One wrote: “Are your brave billionaire ‘leaders’ still urging you and your children to martyrdom from the luxury of a 5-star hotel in Qatar?”

 

Others tweeters chose to take things in a humorous direction. An image of a gunman in a white face mask with militant headband was posted with the caption: “What happens if he sneezes?”

 

Another wrote: “When is the Gaza City gay pride parade this year?” Homosexuality is taboo in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

 

Another asked: “Will you be publicly executing the person that came up with the idea to #AskHamas?”

 

Most of the questions went unanswered.

2. YNet News publishes video footage purported showing Hamas preparing for the next round of fighting against Israel by building fortifications near the Israel-Gaza border.

3. Anti-Semitism becomes personal for Hollywood superstar Michael Douglas in the LA Times:

Last summer our family went to Southern Europe on holiday. During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset. A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him.

 

My first instinct was to ask, “Were you misbehaving?”

 

“No,” Dylan told me through his tears.

 

I stared at him. And suddenly I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man’s outrage: Dylan was wearing a Star of David.

 

After calming him down, I went to the pool and asked the attendants to point out the man who had yelled at him. We talked. It was not a pleasant discussion. Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: “Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism.”

Israel and the Palestinians

• Khaled Abu Toameh reports on grassroots Palestinian calls for elections of their own:

“We say all these bad things about Israel, but at least the people there have the right to vote and enjoy democracy,” remarked a veteran Palestinian journalist from Ramallah. “We really envy the Israelis. Our leaders don’t want elections. They want to remain in office forever.”

• The Wall Street Journal (access through Google News) reports from the Golan Heights on how the complexities of the Syrian war raging in the plains below are increasingly straining Israel’s ties with the U.S.:

To the south of this overlook, from which United Nations and Israeli officers observe the fighting, are the positions of the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda that the U.S. has targeted with airstrikes.

 

Nusra Front, however, hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer—and some of its severely wounded fighters are regularly taken across the frontier fence to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.

 

To the north of Mount Bental are the positions of the Syrian government forces and the pro-Iranian Shiite militias such as Hezbollah, along with Iranian advisers. Iran and these militias are indirectly allied with Washington in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq. But here in the Golan, they have been the target of a recent Israeli airstrike. Israel in recent months also shot down a Syrian warplane and attacked weapons convoys heading through Syria to Hezbollah.

 

It would be a stretch to say that the U.S. and Israel are backing different sides in this war. But there is clearly a growing divergence in U.S. and Israeli approaches over who represents the biggest danger—and who should be seen, if not as an ally, at least as a lesser evil in the regional crisis sparked by the dual implosion of Syria and Iraq.

• The Lebanese Daily Star also reports that Iran and Hezbollah are gaining a foothold on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

• Time Magazine claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to cancel a January briefing for U.S. Senators by his nation’s intelligence service that warned Congress could damage talks aimed at constraining Iran’s nuclear program.

• Amit Lang, director general of the Israeli Ministry of the Economy, tells the International Business Times that major investments by US billionaire Warren Buffett and tech giants Intel and IBM show the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is not persuading investors to shun Israel or Israeli companies.

It is making a lot of noise, it is in the media a lot – it is sexy. But at the end of the day if you have a good product, businessmen want to make money… I have not seen a deal that was [abandoned] because of the BDS. I see the numbers and they speak for themselves.

The Irish Times looks at the voting intentions of the French Israeli immigrant community, including recent newcomers fleeing anti-Semitism in France.

Around the World

• Reuters claims an exclusive, reporting that major world powers have begun talks about a United Nations Security Council resolution to lift U.N. sanctions on Iran if a nuclear agreement is struck with Tehran, a step that could make it harder for the U.S. Congress to undo a deal.

• Retired British military officer Colonel Richard Kemp’s lecture on the ethics of armed conflict at Sydney University was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters. Video footage can be seen here:

The Australian Jewish News reports that Professor Jake Lynch, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the university, shouted in the faces of students and screamed that attempts to remove the protesters was a violent attack on freedom of speech by security guards. He was also seen holding money to the face of a Jewish student and filmed students in attendance without their consent. Prof Lynch later explained to The AJN that a woman behind the student not visible in the frame was physically attacking him and he held out the money to illustrate that he would sue her if she did not stop.

Col. Kemp, in a letter to the university’s vice-chancellor, took another view:

At one point I observed Associate Professor Lynch waving money in the face of a Jewish student, a clearly aggressive and insulting act that seemed to invoke the stereotype of the ‘greedy Jew’. Although not Jewish myself, I found Associate Professor Lynch’s behaviour deeply shocking and offensive.

Commentary/Analysis

• Writing in the Washington Post, Joshua Muravchik asks what if force is the only way to block Iran from getting nuclear weapons:

Were Iran, which is already embroiled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, further emboldened by becoming a “nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars — with Israel, Arab states or both. The United States would probably be drawn in, just as we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof.

 

Yes, there are risks to military action. But Iran’s nuclear program and vaunting ambitions have made the world a more dangerous place. Its achievement of a bomb would magnify that danger manyfold. Alas, sanctions and deals will not prevent this.

Featured image: CC BY Frank Black Noir via flickr with modifications by HonestReporting

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