In the Israel-Gaza conflict, the Israeli side has embraced the new media to relay its viewpoint with great success.
By Zafar Anjum
08 Jan 2009
If you have been following the unfortunate Israel-Gaza conflict, you might have seen a video on YouTube in which several ‘Hamas’ (Palestinians) members are seen loading ‘short-range rockets’ into a truck moments before a massive explosion. According to media reports, this video, uploaded by a member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on YouTube, is the most viewed IDF video on the channel. It has been watched more than 360,000 times.
You get what you see, right? Not exactly. According to an investigation by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the rockets seen in the video were not rockets but gas canisters; the victims were not members of Hamas but civilians moving welding equipment after their workshop had been damaged in the Israeli air strikes.
Chances are that you have not heard about B’Tselem or its investigation on the above-mentioned episode. And that precisely is the point.
If facts become the first casualty in a public relations war, then so be it—that’s realpolitik.
“Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations,” writes the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times Ethan Bronner in a report. “But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.”
Like the conflict itself, many think this approach is unbalanced. But Israel is savvy enough to know that in today’s world of instant media, wars on the ground merely culminate a situation created through the media. That’s why the Bush administration created the media hype of weapons of mass destruction in the media before attacking Iraq, even though Saddam’s regime had no direct connection in the 9/11attacks. But the hype ensured that the public was convinced and consent was manufactured before the Bush administration went ahead with the invasion of Iraq.
Taking a leaf from the Bush strategy, Israel has perfected this art of war and, if you will, has extended it to the cyberspace.
But this lesson has come at a price.
Lessons from past mistakes
The Israeli government had made some mistakes in the 2006 Lebanon war—they had lost the war and also failed to gain much public sympathy.
It was a lesson of strategic importance. Writes Bronner in his report: “This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” said Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media was everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilised the home front. Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”
That’s why when Israel launched its air assault on Gaza on 27 December to teach a rocket-throwing Hamas a severe lesson, it simultaneously launched a ‘hasbara’ campaign—hasbara meaning ‘spin’ and ‘propaganda’ in Hebrew, including in the cyberspace. It involved the Israel Defense Forces’ posting daily videos from a spokesperson on Google's YouTube video, holding a ‘citizen’s press conference’ via Twitter, and other initiatives on MySpace, Facebook and blogs.
“In terms of communicating our message, new media is the future,” said Avi Benayahu, the chief spokesman of the Israeli army, in an interview. So far, they have been successful in their new media efforts.
Stop the press
Israel’s other part of the strategy has been to prevent the international media from entering the war zone. According to a report in Today, more 300 international reporters are waiting to enter Gaza but Israel is not allowing them to.
“But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins,” writes Bronner in his report. “So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.”
On the Palestinian side, however, some are braving the odds to keep the balance of the story in cyberspace. Bloggers such as ‘a-mother-from-gaza’ are telling their stories of suffering. Interestingly, there is also a joint blog by an Israeli and a Palestinian in operation: Hope Man and Peace Man. They write about the daily fighting in Gaza and how they yearn for peace. One blogger even pleaded for her readers to ‘pray for her’.
Well, all we can do is hope and pray that the war and suffering in Gaza stops as soon as possible. The world wants both Israel and Palestine to co-exist as peaceful neighbours. Whatever the moral consequences of the war, Israel has definitely shown its new media savvy beyond compare. If there were a global award for it, Israel will win it hands down.
Zafar Anjum is the online editor of MIS Asia portal.
