Israeli propaganda machine hits Twitter

Well it was bound to happen. A Progressive Blogger member (sorry, can't recall who) recently mentioned that the wingnuts were looking at different ways of utilizing Twitter to their advantage. The Israeli Defense Forces must have been listening.

There is a military channel on the video-sharing site YouTube where you can watch suspected Hamas sites being obliterated by ordnance; blogs that spread the message of the foreign affairs ministry; and in the newest wrinkle, a news conference conducted through the microblogging service Twitter.

Some, including the MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, mocked the idea of a government spokesman addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in tweets barely a sentence long. "The Israeli government is trying to explain a conflict that people write books about, a conflict that newspaper writers struggle to explain in 2,000 words, in 140 characters at a time," she marveled.