The Arab Tweet: Saudi National Day

Judging from today’s Twitter feed, the big story today in the Arab world is not the 130,000 refugees who crossed from Syria into Turkey over the weekend, the fall of the Yemeni prime minister in the wake of the occupation of government buildings by Shiite Houthi rebels, or even the Reuters story about the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, advertising for spies on its website.

Instead, today is a day of celebration: Saudi National Day, the anniversary of the day in 1932 when Hejaz and Nejd merged to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This tweet from @abdulrahmanoham is typical:

Note the hashtags. This is quite common: when I searched on the Arabic acronym for ISIS, I got a flood of National Day tweets. I’m not sure if the intent is to express solidarity with ISIS and al-Nusra, or defiance. The generally patriotic tone of the photos makes me suspect the latter.

@M__eh86 is dubious about the holiday. He writes.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com