re: As a newly minted Israel Twitter expert, how can anyone side with the Palestinians?

You need to understand the protest class. My first indoctrination came at MIT when I was a grad student. VP Bush was scheduled to speak and a protest was planned. Having never seen a protest, I decided to swing by. There were about a thousand people attending but they represented dozens of "causes". No more than 20 or 30 stood with any one cause. After a time, I realized what I was witnessing was a social event - entertainment for a certain type of person. I don't think anything has changed. These types are what I said above - a protest class. They will always exist and always find a cause but the cause is secondary to the social aspects.