Islamophobic tweet taken down

PSNA is pleased the Israel Institute has remove an Islamophobic tweet from their Twitter account.

We wrote to the Institutes David Cumin last night asking it be removed and it is no longer accessible.

The tweet featured a prominent picture of Al Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem associated in the story with an alleged Iranian cyber attack on Israeli citizens.

“The tweet was blatantly Islamophobic in linking Islam with alleged Iranian cyber attacks on Israel.”

“It was also aggressively anti-Palestinian by aligning Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied Palestine with the cyber attackers when there is no link whatever”

The Israel Institute tweet was here:

The original story is here:

The Israel Institute did not create the Islamophobic image or put it in the story.

However, by tweeting this story they were amplifying Islamophobic and racist anti-Palestinian messages. This is not acceptable.

In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand in particular the image is deeply offensive.

“The March 15 terrorist attacks did not come from a vacuum. They came, in significant part, from the normalisation of Islamophobia online as this tweet did”

We pointed out to Mr Cumin that if an image were posted which linked Judaisim with Israeli war crimes then the Israel Institute would be quick, and correct, to condemn it as anti-semitic and demand it be removed. We would agree.

We said the same should apply to the image in this story which is blatantly Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian.

We are pleased he agrees.

David Cumin responded after this blogpost went up and wants to clarify that “we don’t see anything egregious with the image but agree it’s not a good representation of the story. As you mentioned, it was chosen by the outlet and we have no way of changing or vetting it. It’s now down”