The Tweets +972’s Joseph Dana didn’t want you to see

A pretty sure way of determining if you win a Twitter war is when one of the parties finds it necessary to delete a series of Tweets in the exchange.

The row began in reaction to a CW post on an anti-Zionist blogger named Joseph Dana, and his recent appearance at a SOAS event (“Palestine: Resistance and Occupation), as reported by Richard Millett, which we titled, +972’s Joseph Dana successfully freed himself from the “Zionist Indoctrination Program”.

No, the title wasn’t at all an exaggeration, as it represented Dana’s precise words at the conference, and seems to accurately reflect the activist’s understanding of Zionism – per professor Jacqueline Rose – as something approaching a mental disorder.

Though declining to directly respond, during the Q&A, to the pressing question posed by an audience member as to whether Zionism is, indeed, “the work of the devil”, Dana did clearly suggest, following a query from Millett, a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.

This was the basis of the Twitter conversation between Dana, CiF Watch, Richard Millett, and myself.

And:

Here, Dana’s referring to a passage from our post, in which we cited his comments regarding Hamas, which can be heard clearly in this audio, and this video, which Millett provided.

“Almost everything we can accuse Hamas of we can find the equal and sometimes worse situation inside of Israel.”

“The racism of Israel is on an equal platform [with Hamas]”

I then Tweeted the following:

Dana’s reply, while completely ignoring my challenge to his reference to the “Zionist Indoctrination Program”, which he claimed to have boldly broken free from, was as follows:

Actually, regarding the first Tweet above, Dana never used the word “absurd” in response to a questioner who seriously asked him if Zionism was the work of the devil.  Rather, Dana casually noted (again per this video provided by Millett), that Zionism should be relegated to the 20th century’s other failed ideologies, should be “left aside like an old coat”, but that he simply was “not going to comment on [that] terminology.”  

He didn’t laugh at the absurdity of the question, nor express anything approaching anger or disdain for the explicit suggestion that Zionism represented some sort of supernatural evil, but simply refused to comment on the “terminology”.

We again challenged Dana to listen to the audio and video, at which he point, clearly frustrated, he descended into name calling.

But, clearly still perturbed, Dana added:

Then, finally:

Oh, that’s why he deleted his Tweets!  

It couldn’t possibly have been because every claim we made regarding Dana’s comments on Israel, Zionism, and Hamas was substantiated by a video or audio clip, now could it?

Oh well, back to paid trolling. 

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