Israel Tweets Back a Taylor Swift Quote at Kanye West, Receives Praise From Elon Musk
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
The official Twitter account for the state of Israel clapped back at Kanye West on Monday in a playful tweet quoting Taylor Swift.
West, who in recent weeks has made and posted various anti-Semitic statements, wrote on Twitter, “Shalom :)” – the Hebrew salutation for coming and going, which means “peace.”
Israel’s account, which is “managed by the @IsraelMFA’s Digital Diplomacy team,” replied with a screenshot and the caption, “We would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.”
The caption is a reference to a Taylor Swift Instagram post in which she wrote, “I Would Very Much Like To Be Excluded From This Narrative.” Swift was posting in response to a song West released in which he calls Swift “that bitch.”
Fader.com’s Myles Tanzer explains the spat from 2016:
Taylor Swift has responded to footage released by Kim Kardashian that seems to show her giving approval to Kanye West for his references to her on “Famous.” In the song, Kanye says, For all my south side n****s that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ I made that bitch famous/ I made that bitch famous. In the note, Swift writes she never gave approval to be called “a bitch,” that she never actually got to hear the song before it was released, and also claims that the footage was taken “secretly.”
West famously rushed the stage in 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards as Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Video by a Female Artist and interrupted her to say, “I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!”
Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, appreciated the State of Israel’s Twitter account approaching West with some attempted levity, writing, “Your tweets are good! More countries should tweet like this. No fun being all stuffy.”
