By TOI Staff - June 13, 2018
As thousands marched in Iran on Friday to mark the regime-led Quds Day — an annual day of protest against Israel — some Iranians launched a Twitter campaign to express support for the Jewish state.
The effort, under the hashtag #WeStandWithIsrael, was a call for peace between the two peoples. A photo shared on the social media platform encouraged users to tweet the hashtag at 9 p.m. Tehran time on Friday.
A Foreign Ministry official on Tuesday said the hashtag had featured in tens of thousands of tweets.
“The Foreign Ministry implements digital public diplomacy in social media networks in various languages, one of them being Persian,” the ministry’s Persian digital media manager Sharona Avginsaz said.
“In the last six months our Twitter page ‘Israel in Persian,’ intended specifically for Iranian civilians, has been gaining steam,” she told the Mako website, run by Hadashot news. “We have around 60 thousands followers, and our messages reach over 1.5 million people with that Twitter handle alone.”
She explained that though Twitter is banned in Iran, many Iranians have found ways to circumvent the restrictions.
Read More: Times of Israel