A small railway ticketing firm has defended a tweet calling Israel “puppeteers” over its approval of plans to build 780 new homes in the West Bank.

The train booking website, called TicketySplit.co.uk, sells low-cost tickets and has over 1,000 Twitter followers. It appears to have no employees, according to a financial statement filed in 2019.

Ticketysplit said in a tweet on Monday it was unlikely “the Puppeteers will take any notice from the Puppets” in response to a foreign office statement calling on Israel to cease construction. 

One online user replied that calling Israel “puppeteers of the UK” was an antisemitic trope. 

But Ticketysplit insisted in a second tweet its earlier post was “100% a criticism of the policies and government.”

“As for the UK being puppets comment, it was about doing as we’re told. Years ago they extorted power with pictures of people with their pants down, now they just pay greedy MP’s to look the other way,” it wrote.

Ticketysplit has since deleted the tweets and made a statement apologising for any offence caused.  The full text of the statement can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/TicketysplitUKstatement