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Israel is live-tweeting its offensive into Gaza

yllus

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Wow - I mean, it was inevitably going to happen on Facebook or Twitter, but I didn't expect it so soon.

The Atlantic - Military Strikes Go Viral: Israel Is Live-Tweeting Its Own Offensive Into Gaza

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The Persian Gulf War marked a major change in the way Americans experienced combat from their living rooms. It was the first time civilians got to see explosions going off under computerized crosshairs, in grainy black-and-white -- a development that led people to marvel at war's growing resemblance to video games. Then came YouTube. Suddenly, Internet users had on-demand access to a wealth of helmetcam footage -- this time in color -- taken by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, for the most part, you had to dig it up yourself if you wanted to watch.

Now we've arrived at the latest iteration in digital warfare: when military operations are liveblogged in real time, and the updates are delivered right to your social newsfeed.

Over the past six hours, Israel's military has been hammering Gaza with a barrage of missiles. The IDF's public relations team, meanwhile, has just as steadily been covering the offensive -- updating its Twitter handle, @IDFSpokesperson, with the play-by-play on Operation Pillar of Defense. Within moments of the opening salvo, IDF officials announced that they'd killed the top operative in Hamas' armed services.

The IDF then literally told the enemy to run and hide -- an instruction that has so far been retweeted over 2,000 times. It gets weirder: In reply to that message, Hamas' military wing wrote back ... on Twitter.

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So now what we're looking at is a full-on information war being waged over the Internet in addition to in the streets. The exchange is reminiscent of an earlier encounter between NATO officials in Afghanistan and Taliban sympathizers. But that incident was widely read as a tension-reliever in the aftermath of violence, evidence that even enemies could talk reasonably. This, on the other hand -- a coordinated PR attack in the midst of battle -- feels far more serious.
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Tweets about warfare? Really? Pretty soon there will be video games I bet. 🙄

That is all the cynic in me can muster. What does this really change other than adding some livish commentary to the action and transparent attempts at pr coup?
 
davmat787 said:
Tweets about warfare? Really? Pretty soon there will be video games I bet. 🙄

That is all the cynic in me can muster. What does this really change other than adding some livish commentary to the action and transparent attempts at pr coup?
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One way of negating the Palestinian PR machine
 
It's a good thing for many Israelis that approximately half the Arabs aren't capable of reason... including myself in the latter. I'm descended from Australoids so I'm more like an Arab than I am like a Jew.
 
Anarchist420 said:
It's a good thing for many Israelis that approximately half the Arabs aren't capable of reason... including myself in the latter. I'm descended from Australoids so I'm more like an Arab than I am like a Jew.
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And the other half don't have cell phones, I wonder who the Israelis are trying to impress with there twitter taunting?
 
Northern Lawn said:
And the other half don't have cell phones, I wonder who the Israelis are trying to impress with there twitter taunting?
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Or to allow the true civilians to know where the fighting will be located; so they have time to get to safety
 
EagleKeeper said:
Or to allow the true civilians to know where the fighting will be located; so they have time to get to safety
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Good Point. I wonder if it works both ways like when Hamas fires mortars from a day care centre hoping Israel fires back. Maybe the teachers could tweet...probably not. She would probably be killed as a traitor.

But what their doing does help a little.
 
This is pretty much why I have zero hope for peace in that area of the world. The fact that militarizes are tweeting taunts at each other shows how deeply rooted the hatred is between the factions.
 
Northern Lawn said:
EagleKeeper said:
Or to allow the true civilians to know where the fighting will be located; so they have time to get to safety
Click to expand...
Good Point. I wonder if it works both ways like when Hamas fires mortars from a day care centre hoping Israel fires back. Maybe the teachers could tweet...probably not. She would probably be killed as a traitor.

But what their doing does help a little.
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The militants would never allow such tweets.

1) It will confirm the firing location to ISrael
2) It exposes the militants to human rights violations by putting children in danger
3) If the school emptied out; there would be no civilian martyrs to use for PR purposes against Israel.
 
The limited amount of this skirmish I've seen shows the Israelis using precise missiles to avoid collateral damage. Good PR for them. It may also help prevent false claims by the other side about civilian casualties.

Fern
 
Fern said:
The limited amount of this skirmish I've seen shows the Israelis using precise missiles to avoid collateral damage. Good PR for them. It may also help prevent false claims by the other side about civilian casualties.

Fern
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The Palestinians have the capability and PR to manufacture false evidence.

In most cases, the evidence does not need to be presented; there are suckers that will lap it up just because of Israeli hatred.
 
EagleKeeper said:
The Palestinians have the capability and PR to manufacture false evidence.

In most cases, the evidence does not need to be presented; there are suckers that will lap it up just because of Israeli hatred.
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In your world there are only two scenarios: Israel never causes collateral damage/kills civilians or Palestine lies about it? Actually that's just one.
 
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