Some guy by the name of Haidar Sumeri tweeted the following yesterday:
The implication is clear: we are celebrating the murder of innocent Syrian people, despite claiming to be outraged by it.
As of the time of this post, it has been retweeted 167 times, including by the Electronic Intifada’s Rania Khalek.
It is an outright libel, as anyone who knows Hebrew can attest.
The translation of Tzipi Hotovely’s tweet is:
A toast for the festival in the MFA office this morning. Israel has a moral responsibility to a act in the diplomatic arena against the atrocities of the Syrian regime.
Toasting before an upcoming festival – in this case Passover – is a tradition in the Israeli workplace. The toast has nothing to do with events in Syria which here, were only mentioned by Hotovely in the context of reminding us of our moral responsibility to do something. So not only is Sumeri’s tweet horribly wrong, but it is actually the exact opposite of what is going on in the photo.
You’d think anyone retweeting something in a foreign language would bother checking the translation. This does not seem to apply to those determined to libel the Jewish state and Jewish people (in Khalek’s case, her buddy and boss Ali Abunimah apparently does speak and understand Hebrew, so could easily have provided the correct translation – assuming either of them had an interest in seeking it. Which is highly doubtful).
Interestingly, Sumeri himself has tweeted against fake things.
But when it comes to those consumed with hatred for us, the usual rules do not seem to apply.
