Israel Buys Twitter Handle From Porn Entrepreneur
Twitter users following @israel were, until last month, not getting news from the Jewish State. Nor were they getting updates from the West Bank or Gaza Strip. They were, however, reading about a totally different kind of strip…as in striptease.
The owner of the handle since Twitter’s infancy, Israel Melendez told the New York Times his account went largely unused because he was getting nothing but angry anti-Israel and anti-Semitic comments in response to his tweets, when all he wanted to do was advertise his business enterprise. His Spanish-language Internet porn site, that is.
Enter the State of Israel, which decided last month to give Twitter a shot.
Accustomed to the criticism and perhaps feeling Melendez’s pain — not to mention, wanting the obvious handle for itself — the State of Israel offered to take @israel off the impresario’s hands — for a fee, of course (the Spanish newspaper Publico reported that Melendez got a whopping six figures for the name).
Arrangements were made through the Israeli consulate in Miami. “We thought we could put it to better use than he did,” Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times. He went on to explain that the purchase was in line with Israel’s recent efforts to expand into social media.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.