After some unpleasantness with Facebook, the Israeli government is now using Twitter in a bid to turn the tide in the propaganda war following its unpopular air strikes on the Gaza strip.

The Consulate General of Israel in New York will hold a "Citizen's Press Conference" with David Saranga, Consul of Media and Public Affairs, will be taking questions about the situation in Israel and Gaza via Twitter.

The conference is set to run from 1-3pm EST, but the consulate's Twitter account, twitter.com/IsraelConsulate, is active and responding to questions.

The Israel Consulate is apparently prepared to ask questions like "Can bombs really root out Hamas?" although we suspect questions that should be asked are questions like how can Israeli jets tell the difference between a terrorist and a normal person at Mach One.

However there some advantages to using the Twitter system.  The Consulate might answer questions but  it will also hide any replies that the Israeli Consulate sends to the participants.

The Israelis were using YouTube to show its jets blowing up what it called terrorists in Gaza in a bid to get support for its actions. While there seems to be no doubt that the Israelis have managed to kill a couple of Hamas leaders, the collateral damage has been huge with a disproportionately-large number of innocent Palestinians killed and injured. X