Maxwell Fires Up Twitterverse With Post About Obama's Israel Visit

Neo-soul singer Maxwell took to Twitter on Wednesday to offer his thoughts on Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel as president. And the fallout wasn’t pretty.

our editor recommends

Maxwell Performs on 'VH1 Storytellers' (Video)

At 11:42 a.m. PT, he tweeted, “love watching israel and america come together to make human rights choices for all #syriaweloveyou.” The multiplatinum Grammy winner -- who has 512,969 followers -- starting receiving negative responses almost immediately, including one from sana@sanajafrani, who wrote: “You can’t be serious. Israel & human rights don’t belong in the same sentence unless written as follows: human rights violations.”

ImranSabir@irsabir wrote: “As a follower, extremely disappointed that you don’t see the hypocrisy. I think you mean world wide “Human Rights Violations.” To which Maxwell responded, “I see it and again that’s not my point I just want peace we can argue about the details but the facts haven’t changed we need peace.”

As the comments stacked up, Maxwell offered this:

i hope my views aren't misconstrued many lives lost none worth the cost that peace may heal in time for some if not all #palestineweloveyou

— MAXWELL (@_MAXWELL_) March 20, 2013

But as the singer backpedaled and called for peace -- and tried to switch the topic to his tattoo and the Knicks -- the fallout continued. And he continued tweeting, which, linked to his Facebook account, showed up in posts at a seemingly frantic pace. He tweeted 16 times in less than three hours, calling for peace and, at one point, suggesting that he was going to delete his posts.

“Deleting these tweets ill never talk about this again too hot for me and my intentions are peace peace peace peace peace,” he wrote. Minutes later, he followed with, “no one hates the haitians the latinos or the african americans i'm totally ill equipped to understand anything at all #sure”

As of 4 p.m. PT, none of the tweets had been deleted.

CONCERT REVIEW: 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief

The 39-year-old singer, who won a pair of Grammys in 2010, continued to try to alleviate the tension with more tweets such as “P E A C E” and ".the sky is blue the sun is yellow and all blood is red."

The Brooklyn-born Maxwell, who is part Haitian and Puerto Rican, burst on to the national scene with his debut album Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, which has sold more than 2 million copies. His two most recent albums, 2001’s Now and 2009’s BLACKsummers'night, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and have gone platinum. Last year he duetted with Alicia Keys on “Fire We Make,” a track from her chart-topping album Girl on Fire.