Sarah Palin Riles Up NYC Mayor Bloomberg Over Tweet to 'Refudiate' Ground Zero Mosque

July 20, 2010— -- Sarah Palin's inflammatory tweets calling on New Yorkers to "refudiate" a planned mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has made her both a satirical target and a thorn in the side of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The former Alaska governor took to Twitter Sunday to oppose the city's plans for the mosque, already a source of heated debate in New York.

After Palin tweeted "peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is unnecessary provocation; it stabs hearts," Bloomberg shot back.

"Sarah Palin has a right to her opinions, but I could not disagree more. "Everything the United States stands for and New York stands for is tolerance and openness."

Daisy Khan, a spokesperson for the community center that will include the mosque, said Palin's stance "raises the very question of what is at the heart of all this furor and that is ignorance."

"I'm saying that she needs to educate herself about who the Muslim community is," she said.

As New Yorkers reacted to Palin's tweets, others across the country pounced on her not-quite dictionary-endorsed language.

Though Palin deleted the original tweet containing "refudiate" (instead of repudiate) and later made a joke of it, saying Shakespeare often made up words, her use of the non-word has made her the butt of jokes across the Internet. She used the same word on a July 12 Fox News segment.

The satirical Web site Gawker is even advertising T-shirts with the slogan, "Sarah Palin Refudiates This T-Shirt."

In another Twitter message, she wrote, "Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real."

The proposed 13-story, $100 million project has touched off an enormous controversy in New York City.

Relatives of 9/11 victims say it would amount to a monument for terrorists. But the project's sponsors maintain the center would be all about bringing New Yorkers together, not tearing the community apart.