Israel Takes Battle With Hamas to YouTube
Israel and Hamas take their battle to the Internet with videos on YouTube and blogs
Israel's bruising war on the Islamic militants who control Gaza has moved online, where sites like YouTube and Facebook are the new battlegrounds.
Israel posted video of its attacks on militants firing rockets over the past five days on a new YouTube channel to try to show the world the threat against it.
YouTube temporarily yanked the clips on Tuesday after viewers, apparently supporters of Hamas, flagged it as objectionable and asked that it be taken down. The video-sharing Web site restored the video a few hours later, labeling it inappropriate for minors.
Supporters of Gaza's Hamas rulers, meanwhile, have posted images of the devastating Israeli offensive on both YouTube and Facebook and on blogs, uploading images of the carnage and suffering in the tiny seaside territory.
The militants themselves regularly update their Web sites in Arabic and English. In addition, they broadcast images of masked, uniformed fighters on Hamas TV, which was bombed by Israeli warplanes but continues to broadcast from a mobile unit.
"The blogosphere and the new media are basically a war zone" in a battle for world opinion, an Israeli military spokesman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, said Wednesday.
Gideon Doron, former chairman of the Israeli agency that oversaw the privatization of the country's television and radio services, said today's warfare includes fighting through the media.
"Many of the victories of modern warfare are mediated by the media," Doron said. "We have Internet and all kinds of modern communication, and the Israeli military apparently decided that it has to broadcast its message through these tools."
Leibovich said the new YouTube channel and a new blog the military is launching are an important part of Israel's attempt to explain its actions abroad.
One of the aerial surveillance videos Israel posted shows about a dozen figures that the military says are militants loading rockets onto a truck. They are eventually targeted by an air-launched missile and disappear in a white cloud as the truck explodes.
