Twitter’s Speech Police Make It Personal.
Posted by Ed Folsom, April 28, 2024.
Several days ago, during the ongoing anti-Israel, anti-Jew, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas rallies across the country, I happened across an anti-Israel Tweet on Twitter. In substance, it stated that the only answer to the Israeli/Palestinian problem is for Israel to go away. I would quote the Tweet directly, but I can’t see it any longer.
I responded to the Tweet by mocking it. Nearly immediately, Twitter’s speech police locked my account for what they labeled “violent speech.” Here’s what I said:
“If you live in a neighborhood surrounded by ruthless savages who celebrate turning their kids into suicide bombers and are willing to see all their children killed for the advantage of assigning the blame to you, the only answer for peace is for you to commit suicide, of course.” [The Tweet and Twitter’s “violent speech” message are viewable here]
If you were to scroll a Twitter feed this very moment, you would have no trouble finding Tweets calling for Israel’s elimination, accusing it of “genocide,” etc. There are only two ways for Israel to be eliminated: (1) Its enemies might eradicate it, or (2) Its inhabitants might agree to just give up and dismantle their state. The latter would be, metaphorically speaking, national suicide. The former would involve great violence; maybe even actual genocide. And yet, the anti-Israeli calls for great violence or national suicide continue, while my un-violent mocking of the same is labeled “violent speech” and is suppressed. This is where we have arrived.
Do Israel’s enemies place their children in harm’s way so that they might be killed for political advantage? Oh please, tell me it can’t be true.
First, there is no denying that Hamas gains a propaganda advantage against Israel that increases with every report of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel. And, of course, it’s Palestinians under Hamas rule who are reporting the numbers used in the news reports. Ever since witnessing the Palestinian propaganda regarding the alleged Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 – the slaughter that wasn’t — I approach any such information that the Palestinian authorities provide on the assumption that they are lying.
In George Orwell’s 1942 essay, Looking Back on the Spanish War, he wrote:
“[I]n Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.’”
Propaganda is a method of war. The degree to which the deaths of Palestinian women and children advance Hamas’s cause explains the eagerness of Hamas and other Iranian proxies to wage their war for Israel’s eradication from behind, and in the midst of, women and children. Put another way, if they did not intend to place women and children in harm’s way, they would not wage war from behind and in the midst of them. The tactic is a real two-fer for the “By any means necessary” crowd. For one thing, it evokes Israeli reluctance to wage its battle for existence as fully as possible. For another, when Israel fights back and Palestinian women and children do in fact get killed, it serves to erode western support for Israel.
From a western mindset, it’s difficult to imagine that people could be eager to sacrifice their own children’s lives to a political cause. But westerners don’t encourage their schoolchildren to blow themselves up as suicide bombers. And westerners don’t glorify those who do blow themselves up as martyrs in God’s cause. Hamas does. For those who encourage their small children to blow themselves up against the enemy, it’s no big additional step to place their children in harm’s way as a tactic that undermines support for the enemy, advancing propaganda proven to win hearts and minds in the west. After all, as Hamas officials have repeatedly told us, they love death more than we love life. Why patronize Hamas by viewing them through an ethnocentric lens of western sensibilities? Why not afford them the dignity they deserve and take them at their word and by their deeds?
Twitter’s speech police now deem it “violent speech” to call out Hamas’s cynical tactics of battlefield and propaganda warfare. Those with the power to control communication channels, to make sure that what they do not want said will not be heard, now apply the term “violent speech” in much the same way they apply the terms “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “malinformation,” and “hate speech” — to extinguish speech that they find undesirable. Patronizing and passive-aggressive are hallmarks of the breed.
Regardless, remember the gratuitous barbarity of October 7! Ultimately, it’s who we’re dealing with.
