When former deputy minister and ambassador to the US
Michael Oren tried to tweet out an Independence Day greeting and then a thank-you tweet to Germany for banning
Hezbollah, he was surprised to find he could not because his account had been suspended.
In fact, Oren’s account had been restricted as early as April 21 and may not have been functional since before that. Twitter declined to disclose the date.
On Sunday and Monday, a number of prominent pro-Israel twitter accounts noticed Oren’s absence and began to protest.
“Hey @jack,” Israeli hi-tech evangelist Hillel Fuld tweeted to Twitter’s founder, “remember you promised me you’d handle abuse on this platform? yea, well, suspending the account of former Israeli ambassador to the US, former MK, and former Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren? Not the way to do it.”
The UK-based Israel Advocacy Movement tweeted: “After twitter realised there were thousands and thousands of antisemites on their platform, they finally took action…By suspending the account of former Israeli ambassador to the US @drmichaeloren! Instead of banning the antisemites, they banned the Jews!” Oren told The Jerusalem Post he began receiving phone calls inquiring about what had happened to his Twitter account.
He said the only tweets he could think of that could have been reported as abusive were ones in which he called The New York Times antisemitic.
On December 12, 2019, Oren tweeted: “NY Times calls BDS ‘a movement...opposing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.’ In fact, BDS opposes Israel’s existence and seeks it’s [sic] destruction—by definition anti-Semitism. The Times cannot condemn anti-Semitism while whitewashing an anti-Semitic organization.”
Four days later, he wrote: “Twice in one week The NY Times says BDS ‘supports economic measures opposing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.’ This is a deliberate lie. BDS seeks Israel’s destruction. Covering up anti-Semitism is anti-Semitic.”
Oren said he stands by those statements.
The Post sent a query to Twitter to ask what had happened to Oren’s accounts, if he had correctly identified the offending tweets and, if so, in what way they violated twitter’s rules.
However, less than an hour later, Oren’s account was reinstated, sending out the following tweet: “Thank you Germany for recognizing that the political wing of Hezbollah, like its operational branch, is a terror organization. Hopefully all of Europe follows suit. Hopefully Europe will realize that paying off Iran, which pays Hezbollah $1b per year, is the same as paying terror.”
His account had been suspended accidentally, Twitter told Oren and the Post.
“This account was mistakenly caught in a spam filter,” a company spokesperson said. “The suspension was reversed and we have notified the account holder. Please note that an account’s followers take time to fully replenish after it is reinstated.”
A June 2018 post on Twitter’s company blog said its systems had identified and challenged more than 9.9 million potential spam or automated accounts per week in the previous month.
In the same post, the company said it was “auditing existing accounts for signs of automated sign-up” and “taking action to challenge a large number of suspected spam accounts.”
An account owner who believes he or she was incorrectly flagged as a spammer can use Twitter’s appeals process and request a review.
