Israel Matzav

Twitter war ahead

One front where supporters of Israel and the 'Palestinians' are likely to be fighting this summer is Twitter (where you can follow me @IsraelMatzav).

The closer the date of the unilateral declaration approaches, the more the denizens of Internet are coming to life, promoting their opinions with ever-accelerating urgency. Their battle zone is the social media. You can see it in the Facebook statuses - for and against, in Twitter messages and in protest video clips on YouTube. The nearer September approaches, and with it the UN debate, the more this online activity is likely to escalate. But don't think the State of Israel is leaving the battlefield to the amateurs.

"We are intensively preparing ahead of September," says Chaim Shacham, head of the information and Internet department at the Foreign Ministry. Think of him as the Israeli government's tweeter.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor adds: "We all expect something to happen in September. We don't know what yet, but clearly there's going to be some sort of diplomatic development. We have our finger on the pulse in terms of the social media too."

Preparation involves constantly monitoring the blogs, tweets and insofar as possible, Facebook entries too, though many posts are closed to the general public (available only to specific "friends" ) and cannot be monitored.

Read the whole thing. I'm glad to see the foreign ministry getting involved. The truth - although Haaretz may not know it - is that the foreign ministry has been involved since Netanyahu took office.

Labels: Israel's Foreign Ministry, Twitter

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:36 AM