Twitter Greenlights Palestinian Celebration of Axe Murderers

Popular Palestinian hashtags included “Operation Axe,” “The Glorious Axe,” and “Operation Elad.”

By Pesach Benson, United With Israel

In the wake of Thursday’s Palestinian terror attack in Elad, Twitter became filled with posts celebrating the murder of three Israeli fathers.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Palestinians tweeted in Arabic using hashtags such as “#Operation Axe,” “The Glorious Axe,” and “#Operation Elad.”

Others cited a recent incendiary speech by Hamas’s Gaza Yahya Sinwar, in which he called on Palestinians to defend the Temple Mount from the Jews.

“Let everyone who has a rifle, ready it. And if you don’t have a rifle, ready your cleaver or an axe, or a knife,” Sinwar said.

Some tweets called for further attacks, others praised the terrorists, while still others expressed joy at the timing of the attack — Israel’s Independence Day.

One user identified as “Bint Al-Hassan” tweeted an image of a bloody axe representing Palestine with its blade embedded in an Israeli army helmet. and quoted Sinwar in his speech: “Do not wait for a decision from anyone. Whoever does not have a gun should prepare his cleaver…”

Twitter claims it shuts down accounts for inciting violence, but the social media giant has a major blind spot when it comes to genocidal hatemongers and antismemitism. For example, it has permitted Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to use the platform to promote the destruction of the Jewish state.

In fact, a Twitter representative stood in front of Israel’s Knesset and told them the company considers those tweets mere “foreign policy saber-rattling.”

Does praising axe murderers who target Jews also fail to violate the company’s policy?

One user identified by the Twitter handle, @Abotagoog tweeted: “Chop off their heads with your axe, shoot them with your gun, and do not fear them.”

The tweet included a graphic of the scene of the attack and a bloodied axe.

Yousef Al-Husni, a Gaza journalist, tweeted an image of a rocket and a knife captioned, “The knife glitters.”

MEMRI also flagged Twitter user @aliwalidkanaan. He posted an image of a bloody cleaver with the words, “Even as weapons advance, the meat cleaver continues to have a special effect on the hearts of the Zionists… The cleaver satisfies the thirst [for vengeance] more than all the rockets and bullets.”

Palestinian incitement to violence in online forums is, unfortunately, not a new phenomenon.

For years, Jews have urged social media companies to like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram to adopt a definition of antisemitism to more effectively address problems, shut down accounts belonging to terror groups and take down videos inciting antisemitic violence.