[R-G] Gaza war also waged online

[Anthony Fenton]

Gaza war also waged online

By our correspondent David Poort*

06-01-2009

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/region/middleeast/090106-Gaza-propaganda

The Israeli army includes a well-oiled propaganda apparatus. Women are  
the gender of choice for spokespersons because of their supposed  
softer image. And foreign journalists are bombarded with emails and  
text messages providing news coverage from an Israeli perspective.

Pro-Israel YouTube videoWar also rages on the internet. A tough on- 
line battle to influence public opinion is being fought in the shadow  
of the Israeli offensive. Both sides have become masters in the art of  
cyber warfare. Without let-up, photographs, videos and text are posted  
on the internet. However, it is the Arab digital world which has  
perfected the production of on-line propaganda to an art form.

Thousands of e-mails including the most horrific photographs of the  
Gaza Strip conflict are circulating in the Arab world. They also  
include photographs of dead Palestinian children, their small bodies  
completely destroyed. The captions read "Zionists are Nazis.

Facebook
Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter en YouTube are used as weapons in  
the propaganda war. On the Facebook site, kindred spirits can join  
special groups; one of them is called : "I bet I can find one million  
people who support Israel". So far, only 76,000 people have joined.  
Another group, named F**k Israel, has nearly 20,000 members.

The Israeli army recently launched its own YouTube channel featuring  
videos of Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. The videos are intended  
to show that Israël is not simply firing into the strip at random.

One of the videos shows a group of men filmed from great altitude  
while loading long tubes in the boot of a car; Israel claims the tubes  
are Qassam rockets. A few seconds later, the car explodes and the men  
disappear in a cloud of smoke.

Army spokesperson Avital Leibovitch says: "The new media and the  
blogosphere form a whole new battlefield in the war for world opinion.  
It is vital Israel fights on this front as well".

Twitter
Last week, the Israeli consulate in New York for the first time used  
Twitter to organise a press conference on the Gaza Strip offensive.  
Twitter users from all around the globe fired about 400 questions at  
the consulate. More than 3,000 Twitters followed the discussion.

The al-Jazeera news channel has also opened a Twitter channel, where  
users can follow the latest development in the Gaza Strip. The Twitter  
channel qassamcount keeps track of the number of Qassam rockets fired  
by Hamas at Israel.

Hackers
But that is not the full extent of the on-line war. Hackers have  
attacked and taken over hundreds of web sites since the start of the  
Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. The site of Israel's main  
newspaper Yediot Ahronot was hacked on Friday. People who surfed to  
the paper's URL were redirected to a black page featuring anti-Israel  
propaganda and an Arab battle song. It took the newspaper at least  
half a day to regain control of its website.

At first glance, this sort of attack appears fairly harmless, but  
internet experts say they do constitute a threat. Research shows  
improved coordination of the attacks.

Access to Gaza
At present, al-Jazeera is the only international news channel with  
correspondents in the Gaza Strip. Israel has blasted al-Jazeera's  
coverage of the conflict as hostile and biased.

However, Israel still refuses to admit foreign journalists to the  
area, in spite of a Supreme Court decision ruling the blockade  
illegal. This means only Arab television images are broadcast from the  
Gaza Strip.

*RNW translation (gsh)