Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren’s Twitter account was reinstated on May 4 after having been temporarily suspended.
Various Twitter users had noticed Oren’s account appeared to be inactive:
https://twitter.com/RobertGSilvermn/status/1257066096143843328?s=20
What is this nonsense pic.twitter.com/2odL13ONg5
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) May 3, 2020
I was SHOCKED to hear that @jack & @TwitterSupport have removed the @twitter account of @drmichaeloren.
Michael Oren is the former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, a Princeton scholar, and a former member of Israeli parliament.
Please correct this. pic.twitter.com/OzfjrXphc3
— Rabbi E. Poupko- Stands With #IranProtests 💪 (@RabbiPoupko) May 3, 2020
Oren’s account was reinstated shortly after The Jerusalem Post reached out to Twitter asking why his account was suspended. Twitter told the Post the suspension was a mistake. “This account was mistakenly caught in a spam filter,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Post. “The suspension was reversed and we notified the account holder.”
The spokesperson added it could take a while before a reinstated account gains all its followers back.
Oren’s last tweet before May 4 was in February; the Post reported, “Oren’s account [that] had been restricted as early as April 21 may not have been functional since before that. Twitter declined to disclose the date.”
Michael Doran, a foreign policy expert at the conservative think tank Hudson Institute, asked in a tweet why Oren had been suspended from Twitter while “[Iranian Foreign Minister] Javad Zarif, Louis Farrakhan and a gazillion other dirt bags are still tweeting away.
https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1257065548308938753?s=20
Twitter had mistakenly suspended Farrakhan’s account for a brief period in July before reinstating him; Farrakhan hasn’t tweeted since then.
Philanthropist Adam Milstein similarly tweeted, “Twitter continues its bizarre banning & suspension of accounts, while simultaneously allowing antisemites to operate freely on their platform. The latest victim? @DrMichaelOren, whose account was suspended, then reinstated.”
https://twitter.com/AdamMilstein/status/1257406909122043904?s=20
Tablet senior writer Yair Rosenberg tweeted that Oren’s “account had previously been locked for suspicious activity, and my presumption is that it got hacked and then suspended. He didn’t seem to be using it.”
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1257066077244325888?s=20
Oren told the Post he wondered if his suspension was due to users reporting his December tweets criticizing The New York Times of its coverage of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, arguing that the Times had been “whitewashing an anti-Semitic organization.”
Oren tweeted after he was reinstated, “Deepest thanks to all who expressed concern over the suspension of my Twitter account. I was moved by the outpouring of support for Israel and the Jewish people and for the right to defend us from hate. Our fight can now continue.”
Deepest thanks to all who expressed concern over the suspension of my Twitter account. I was moved by the outpouring of support for Israel and the Jewish people and for the right to defend us from hate. Our fight can now continue.
— Michael Oren (@DrMichaelOren) May 4, 2020
In 2018, Canary Mission, a watchdog against anti-Semitism, had its Twitter account suspended twice that year; both times, they were reinstated after Twitter confirmed the account hadn’t violated the platform’s rules.
