Avishai Edre'i: The IDF Spokesman's Arabic Speaker

During the current, "Pillar of Cloud" or "Pillar of Defense" operation, the IDF has been making excellent use of the social media: On YouTube there are videos documenting Hamas war crimes (such storing and launching missiles from civilian areas). Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are letting the world know what is really going on here, in spite of the attempts of certain media outlets to obfuscate the truth.

One Facebook page that is quite interesting, even if you do not understand Arabic, is the page of Avishai Edre'i (or Avichay Adraee). Avishai grew up in Haifa and speaks Arabic fluently. He is the IDF's spokesman in Arab media, appearing among other places on Al Jazeera.

His page seems to be quite popular among Arabs. Hundreds of comments are left on almost every post (although some of them are obviously spambots). Using the translation tools of Bing or Google, even someone who does not understand Arabic can usually get a pretty good idea of the content of the comments. For the most part, the picture is not pretty: swastikas, curses and threats of violence, many times in the name of Allah, are the order of the day. As I said, it is not a pretty sight, but it does reflect a lot about the mindset of our neighbors.

For more of the same you can also check out Avishai's Twitter account.