JERUSALEM — From afar, it seemed like a well-crafted propaganda plan, plotted out long in advance. Turns out Israel’s three-phased push to shape the images coming out of the Gaza war had a healthy dose of improvisation and happy accident, too.
The Israeli Defense Forces had largely shut the foreign press out of Gaza for most of its fight with Hamas that left more than 1,300 dead. At the same time, the military filmed its own videos and posted them on YouTube. It seemed to many observers — including this one — like an attempt to use the new, social media to do an end run around the old-school press. Well, not exactly.
Yes, the IDF made a deliberate effort to tightly control what the world saw of the conflict. Yes, the Israelis carefully documented their operation, to defend themselves in the court of public opinion (and maybe in criminal court, too). But the YouTube part? That was more off-the-cuff than thought-out plan.
Shortly before the start of the war, a group of twenty-something IDF soldiers wanted some way to share their story of the conflict online. So they got their bosses’ blessing to roll out a YouTube channel. Spy drones’ cameras were already recording the war zone from on high, after all. IDF video teams were trained — and ready to embed with the infantry — once the ground invasion began. The footage was meant to be shared with the press, anyway. So why not let everybody see it?
Little did they know that their the site would garner international attention and rack up more than two million views. Spokesmen are now video-blogging in English and in Arabic. And there’s talk in the IDF of a crafting a real-life master plan to invade social media.
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