Twitter’s new fact checking system hit back at Rep. Rashida Tlaib after the Michigan Democrat called Israel an “apartheid state.””
“Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history but the apartheid state of Israel was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Tlaib said on Twitter Monday. “75 years later, the Nakba continues to this day.”
Tlaib’s tweet, which was in response to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s post noting the “special relationship” between Israel and the U.S., was the subject of an instant fact check by Twitter, with notes below the post pointing out several errors.
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The fact check first points out that Israel was created by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, linking to the document at the U.N.’s official website.
The fact check then points out that the “ethnic cleansing” Tlaib claimed happened “affected both Jewish and Arab communities caught up in the war initiated by 5 Arab states who opposed the existence of Israel.” To bolster the second point, the Twitter fact check linked to the State Department’s official history of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
The last note pointed out that Israel has over 20% Arab citizens which have “full and equal rights,” linking to a Democracy Institute study that found the country’s Arab residents had declining rates of infant mortality and rising life expectancies.
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Twitter’s “Community Notes” system has been expanded by new platform owner Elon Musk, who announced last month that there would be “no exceptions” to fact checks for those who post “materially false statements on this platform.” Musk pointed out that anyone could be fact checked under the system, including heads of states and even the billionaire owner himself.
The fact check of Tlaib, a high-profile Democratic member of the progressive “Squad,” comes after conservatives have long argued social media companies unfairly target conservative views for arbitrary fact checks and bans, something that is evidently changing at Twitter under the leadership of Musk.
Tlaib’s tweet also received scorn from other users of the platform, including former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who argued Michigan Democrat was “a bit off” on the facts.
“You’re a bit off on this congresswoman,” Friedman said in a response on Twitter. “Actually, the State of Israel was born notwithstanding the unsuccessful Palestinian attempts at ethnic cleansing to remove the Jews, through acts of terror and collaboration with Hitler (whose dear friend was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem).”
Tlaib’s office did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.