The Delegitimization Warfare Begins
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Please first look at the photo:
It’s criss-crossed the blogosphere and Twitter network like crazy last night. It pretends to be an image of children who, along with the man lying on a stretcher next to them, were allegedly targeted today by Israel’s forces for being terrorists. You can see it here or Twitter-search for it here.
In reality, the picture is four years old. It has nothing to do with anything that happened in Gaza last night. Check it out here.
Why are we seeing it now? Why is it being pushed across the world’s social media networks tonight?
Heavy fighting has going on in southern Israel and inside Gaza since early this evening. It began when an IDF patrol was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired from within Gaza around sundown. Several Israeli servicemen are seriously injured. In a country where most people’s children serve in the defense forces, an attack like this does not go un-noticed.
Throughout Saturday night, Israel has channeled some of its sophisticated weapons, including helicopters and drones, at very carefully selected targets in the Gaza Strip, an area dominated by the Hamas terrorist organization and bristling with tens of thousands of rockets stashed away inside homes, mosques and hospitals.
The terrorists for their part have fired off dozens of rockets. Frightened families throughout most of southern Israel are inside safe rooms and bomb shelters, or within a few seconds’ dash of one, as we write this. School classes throughout the area have been canceled (Sunday is a school day in Israel). This will not prevent foreign media channels from saying – as they will certainly do in the coming hours – that Israel is responding disproportionately.
Militarily, the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza are far less-well equipped with military equipment than the IDF is. But strategically, the Gazan side has the ‘advantage’ of being ready, willing and able to do anything that will un-nerve the Israeli side and bring criticism onto Israeli heads. If this means telling lies, taking steps that provoke Israeli reactions that will certainly injure their neighbors, or firing rockets indiscriminately at towns, farms, homes, buses, cars, schools – well, that’s what they have been doing for years. It’s how they fight.
But there’s another way and that’s via cognitive warfare. By promoting totally bogus lethal narratives, like the photo (at the top of this post) of a cluster of Palestinian Arab children who were allegedly attacked by a cruel and over-armed Israeli military, the Gazans score strategic points that their military weakness would otherwise prevent them from gaining.
If the photo has reached you (and it has reached huge numbers tonight), then they have made you a part of their warfare against us Israelis. What you do next will determine how successful their cowardly and very shabby strategy turns out to be… this time.
Visit This Ongoing War.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Frimet and Arnold Roth began writing and speaking publicly soon after the murder of their fifteen year-old daughter Malki Z"L in the Jerusalem Sbarro massacre, August 9, 2001 (Chaf Av, 5761). They have both been, and are, frequently interviewed for radio, television and the print media, including CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Al-Jazeera, and others. Their blog This Ongoing War deals with the under-appreciated price of living in a society afflicted by terrorism which, they contend, means the entire world. Frimet is a native of Queens, NY while her husband was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. They brought their family to settle in Jerusalem in 1988. They co-founded the Malki Foundation in 2001 and are deeply involved in its work as volunteers. They can be reached at thisoingoingwar@gmail.com .
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Unfortunately, in the post-industrial world of fast food, fast tweet and other internet communication, fast travel, fast dating, etc….THINKING critically about what they hear or read on the internet is NOT the majorities strong point. And ISRAEL continues to suffer from rabid, anti-semitic propaganda spewed out on youtube and other places by neo-NAZI'S and some Arabs also, among others who like to spread lies.
Unfortunately, in the post-industrial world of fast food, fast tweet and other internet communication, fast travel, fast dating, etc….THINKING critically about what they hear or read on the internet is NOT the majorities strong point. And ISRAEL continues to suffer from rabid, anti-semitic propaganda spewed out on youtube and other places by neo-NAZI’S and some Arabs also, among others who like to spread lies.