Israeli propaganda war hits social media

[Violet_Crumble]

A computer lab staffed by students in an Israeli university is playing a key role in the war of information in the Gaza conflict.

Inspired by the role of social media during the Arab Spring and boosted by the support of the Israeli government and Israel Defence Force, student volunteers at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a private university north of Tel Aviv, are waging their own propaganda war countering online anti-Israeli sentiment.

Staffed by approximately 400 student volunteers the project which goes by the name “Israel Under Fire”, claims to have succeeded in closing anti-Israeli pages on Facebook and challenging propaganda from Hamas, the organisation that governs the Gaza Strip and whose military arm is firing rockets at Israel.

According to Igal Raich, a 23-year-old IDC student who volunteers in what is called "The Advocacy Room", the project aims to counter what is perceived as a false representation of Israel in international and social media through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“It is run by students who are all volunteers,” said Raich, who grew up in Canada before moving to Israel to study and also served in the Israeli military. “The school gave us a computer lab to work from and from nine in the morning until eight at night it is constantly full with student volunteers.”

Volunteer groups include a team that translates messages from Hebrew into 30 languages and a graphics team creating charts and images to be distributed via Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/israeli-propaganda-war-hits-social-media-20140717-ztvky.html

[Divernan]

1. Calibrating the Gaza Starvation Diet

Let's see how those whiz kids spin this article (from the UK, not the US, of course) which documents an Israeli policy of violent colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Just this February, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories – Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law at Princeton University – submitted his final report to the UN Human Rights Council. Presenting his findings at a news conference in March, he said that Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza bore “unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”

http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/israels-attack-gaza-culmination-66-years-settler-colonialism/

Israel’s attack on Gaza is the culmination of 66 years of settler-colonialism
Israel claims its latest onslaught against the population of Gaza is a response to Hamas rocket-fire, targeted at "terrorists" and motivated to "restore quiet." However, an analysis of the IDF's public relations points and war doctrines as well as the historical context of the events, shows the root cause of the crisis to be Israel's decades-long programme of violent settler colonialism.

(Just one of the documented examples from this article - thanks Wikileaks!), subtitled,
Calibrating the Gaza starvation diet

A US diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011 quoted Israeli officials saying they wanted to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.” The idea was to ensure the economy was “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”

One of the mechanisms to do this was what veteran Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook called Israel’s “starvation diet” for Gaza. Israeli Defence ministry documents obtained by the Israeli human rights group Gisha showed that Israeli officials had calculated the minimum number of calories – so-called ‘red lines’ – needed by Gaza’s population to avoid malnutrition. But as Cook reports, while this figure required allowing in 170 trucks a day, in practice Israeli military officials permitted an average of just 67 trucks per day into Gaza (compared to a daily 400 before the blockade).

“The facts on the ground in Gaza demonstrate that food imports consistently fell below the red lines,” said Robert Turner, operations director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). No wonder a 2012 UNRWA report forecasts that if Israel’s policies toward Gaza continue, the strip will be uninhabitable by 2020.