The saga of Kanye West's return to Twitter is developing with a surprising twist, when today the Israeli government also intervened in the affair - and along the way (roughly) recruited Taylor Swift for advocacy purposes.
As you may recall, a few weeks ago West was blocked from Twitter, after posting anti-Semitic tweets on the social network.
The block was lifted earlier this week under the auspices of Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, and to "celebrate" his return to the platform, West tweeted the word Shalom, plus a rather cheeky smiley, presumably as a kind of jab at Jews.
Complimenting Israel.
Elon Musk, photo: AP
The digital department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not like the rapper's defiant tweet, and on the official Twitter account of the State of Israel they responded with the sentence We would very much like to be excluded from this narrative - "We would be happy not to be included in this narrative".
We would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.
pic.twitter.com/kkB5uVV7yf
— Israel (@Israel) November 21, 2022
For those who are not up-to-date on conflicts in the world of pop music, we will explain that this is an iconic sentence that the singer Taylor Swift published a few years ago on Instagram, in response to a video uploaded by Kim Kardashian, who was married to West at the time.
The video allegedly recorded a conversation between Swift and West, in which the singer allegedly gave West her permission to refer to her in his song Famous, in which he called her Bitch, claimed he was the one who made her famous and talked about the possibility of sleeping with her in the future.
Swift, for her part, then clarified that she had never heard the song before it was released, that the photo Kardashian posted was taken without her consent, and that she must not have authorized the rapper to call her derogatory names.
In other words, Swift implored West to leave her the hell, and now the digital people of the Israeli Foreign Ministry have leveraged this mythological sentence in favor of the country - and even tagged Swift herself in response (who avoided intervening).
But it doesn't end here: Musk, who apparently sat tight on the saga and interpreted his Twitter frequently so as not to miss anything, responded himself to Israel's reaction and wrote: "Your tweets are good! More countries should tweet like you, it's not fun to be so boring and routine".
Hundreds of thousands of likes, comments and shares were not slow to arrive, and in the meantime West himself got scared and deleted his tasteless tweet.
Your tweets are good!
More countries should tweet like this.
No fun being all stuffy.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2022
We spoke with David Saranga, head of the digital division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Are any of you fans of Taylor Swift? How did the idea to use
Taylor's theorem come about?
"Kanye West tweeted 'Shalom'. We have an account with this anti-Semitic, and we decided that we should troll him. We thought about what was the right thing to do, and we realized that Taylor Swift's quote is the most appropriate, because it also applies to her. This phrase has become a currency Very well known in the US, so both the content and the context were appropriate.
This is the most viral post the Israeli Foreign Ministry has ever had."
Were you surprised by Musk's response?
"Yes. We didn't expect Musk's reaction. Maybe West's reaction, maybe Swift's, but not Musk's, and even such a warm reaction. We imagined it was a strong tweet, but not that strong."
Iconic sentence.
Taylor Swift, photo: AP
What is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs doing to combat the phenomenon of anti-Semitism online, which is only increasing?
"We actually operate on three levels: the first is dialogue with the technology companies - Tiktok, Facebook, etc., in order to block and download anti-Semitic content. The second level is through influencers who think like us and can organize and attack the same messages. The third level is a policy of anti-Semitic trolling. When it comes to a person with High prominence on social networks, every time he uploads an anti-Semitic message - he will find us and the few armies at our disposal attacking him.
"There is no place for dialogue with people who upload anti-Semitic content. We have no problem with criticism, and we have a critical dialogue with many people, but those who engage in anti-Semitism and undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel - with whom we take no prisoners."
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