Read on Twitter
NARRATOR: The Covid relief bill did not, in fact, contain $500 million for Israel. Congress passed a suite of bills, including Covid relief *and* the bill funding the Defense Department for 2021, which includes foreign aid. This isn't hard unless you know nothing about Congress. https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1341121311578476544
For those interested in facts about the bills Congress just passed, rather than people fishing for retweets with misinformation, this is a good place to start: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-defense/2020/12/21/spending-deal-includes-pentagon-792431 https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341131902854590474
The bill contains money for everyone from Egypt to Pakistan, as it does every year. Worth noting that under the current agreement struck by Obama, most military aid to Israel (and soon all of it) must be spent in America, so it's ultimately just a subsidy to our own industries. https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341131902854590474
What they told you: Congress gave $500 million in its covid relief bill to Israel instead of Americans
What actually happened: Congress passed its foreign aid budget for all countries, including military aid to Israel, nearly all of which must be spent on American companies https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341137959324688385
What actually happened: Congress passed its foreign aid budget for all countries, including military aid to Israel, nearly all of which must be spent on American companies https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341137959324688385
Now ask yourself: Why would people so egregiously misrepresent what happened here, and who does such misinformation demonize? You have now learned a valuable lesson about consuming viral tweets about the Jewish state. https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341138710553878528
In conclusion: Follow people who know enough to tell you what the truth is, and respect you enough to tell it to you, and unfollow those who lie to you out of ignorance, ideology, or a desire to go viral.
I should say that I've received some thoughtful pushback to this thread in my DMs, and am sharing in the interest of full transparency:
To be clear, this fellow DM'd me and then blocked me. I would have happily strung him along for a while pretending I didn't know what he was responding to. Oh well. https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341145391547465729
They are not sending their best.
It amazes me how freely people just make stuff up on Twitter. This is not what's in the bill at all. The military aid going to Israel is for its Iron Dome anti-missile defense system that shoots down rockets fired at civilian areas. (It's in the first tweet this guy didn't read.) https://twitter.com/DanWei55/status/1341148915186450438
I would think that if you are a critic of aid to Israel, you would want to know the facts so you can be a better advocate for your position, but it turns out that knowing facts is a countercultural position on Twitter when it comes to Israel. https://twitter.com/Benjels76/status/1341151075852636160
People are often wary of dipping their toes into Israel Twitter because it can be so toxic in every direction, but I find it quite helpful for IDing and blocking large swathes of dishonest and terrible users on here in one go. They even helpfully come up and introduce themselves!
By the way, I'm always happy to engage with good faith questions and critiques about anything I report on. My DMs are open. Like anyone else, I don't respond well to invective, but I appreciate all those who approach with genuine interest, whether they agree with me or not.
(Shared with permission, and also, I just realized I numbered my points wrong here, which is a clue that I need to get off Twitter.) https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341162737603399687
Worth pointing out that the person whose tweet I critiqued at the start of this thread has basically admitted it was false, but isn't taking it down. A lot of people who claim to care about government accountability don't even hold themselves accountable. https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1341181104087322625
Seems like a good place to end this thread https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1341192586044817413
In retrospect, the original mistake was taking anything written by this guy seriously. https://www.salon.com/2016/04/29/a_liberal_case_for_donald_trump_the_lesser_of_two_evils_is_not_at_all_clear_in_2016/
You know why it matters when you lie about what's in the "covid relief bill" so you can go viral on Twitter? It matters because the idiot president of the United States gets all his information from Twitter and is now threatening not to sign the relief b/c he believed your memes. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1341537886315950080
