Israel asks Twitter to ban Iranian leader

Strategic Affairs Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen has sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calling for the “immediate suspension” of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s account “over his consistent posting of anti-Semitic and genocidal posts,” her ministry says in a statement.

“Examples of such include Khamenei calling for the ‘elimination’ of the ‘Zionist entity’ while asserting the ‘Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth,’ which must ‘be uprooted and destroyed.’ He also compared Israel to the deadly coronavirus, ‘the Zionist regime is a reality that the region must come to terms with. Today the #Covid_19 is a reality; should it be accepted or fought?!… Zionism will be uprooted,'” according to the statement.

4. The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth and a detriment to this region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed. Then, the shame will fall on those who put their facilities at the service of normalization of relations with this regime.

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) May 22, 2020

Khamenei was most recently panned for his tweeting of a poster calling a Palestinian referendum “the final solution.”

The regime has defended the tweeting as not anti-Semitic, since it calls for destroying only Israel and not all Jews.

Farkash-Hacohen, a member of the security cabinet, says that Twitter’s own company policies ban the propagation of anti-Semitism, support of terror groups and calls for genocide.

“The company’s Hateful Conduct Policy stipulates that a user ‘may not promote violence against, or directly attack, or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religious affiliation… or calls for mass murder,'” her office says.

There is no immediate response from Twitter. As of this writing Khamenei’s account remains active.

In the past, Israel has managed to have Twitter ban only Israelis from seeing tweets from terror groups.

— with Raphael Ahren