I will admit at the President’s conference there were rather a few sniggers every time someone stood up and said they blog for the Times of Israel. And perhaps I sniggered a bit too. Well no more. I’ve joined in and requested a blog over there. I’m not leaving Israellycool but I’m expanding my options and the Times of Israel is developing a nice stable of bloggers.
When I asked for the blog at the Times of Israel I was thinking more along the lines of Better Place and environmental issues. However that was put aside for my first post as there was a war on. I opened up by expanding on this Israellycool post about the BBC trying to get the IDF Spokesperson thrown off Twitter for a “threat of violence”
Here’s the start of my post, read the rest at the Times of Israel:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the BBC in possession of a tweet must be in want of a way to demonise Israel. – Brian of London
A week ago, thinking to expand outlets for my writing, I asked the Times of Israel if they were interested in a blog about environmental issues and electric cars written by a anthropogenic climate change sceptic.
It took a few days and in the meantime we’ve started and finished a whole war. Talk about war for the ADD generation. Not now, but at some point I’ll start discussing what proportion of the world’s transport runs completely on crude oil (which pays for all the missiles that fell on us).*
So back to the real topic. As a former subject of the British Empire, I want to highlight what we can learn from one simple tweet from the BBC.
Right at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defence, the IDF Spokespersons office tweeted the following:
We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012
I didn’t like the message: I replied that it would be more sensible to tell Hamas’s people to give themselves and their weapons up.
The BBC, however, took a different approach and seriously implored Twitter to shut down the IDF’s primary information account for violating Twitter’s prohibition on “threats of violence”.
.@twitter bans “threats of violence”, but will it stop tweets by Hamas’s @alqassambrigade & Israel’s @idfspokesperson? bbc.in/Sso5cD
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 15, 2012
