Israel's self-proclaimed 'propaganda war' backfires in Youtube controversy

Sunday January 04, 2009 12:33 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

The Israeli government laid out a plan, at the beginning of its all-out assault on Gaza, for a 'propaganda war' that would publish propaganda in a variety of ways, employing different strategies, in order to win over world public opinion. Major Avital Leibovich, the head of the Israeli military's Foreign Press branch, told reporters, "the blogosphere and new media are another war zone [and] we have to be relevant there."

To that end, the Israeli military created its own YouTube channel, where it has been publishing aerial videos of its bombings on the population of Gaza. The Foreign Press office of the Israeli Military heavily promoted one particular video which it said clearly showed the Israeli airforce targeting men loading homemade shells onto a truck. They showcased it as definitive proof that they were targeting fighters, not civilians. The video was particularly graphic in that it showed men being blown apart by missiles, but Major Leibovich dismissed criticism that it was too graphic to display by saying, "the intelligent audience watching the footage will know that people killed did not have peaceful intentions toward Israel. I don't believe they'll be disturbed."

But, Leibovich was wrong about the men's intentions, according to local reports and human rights groups. Despite the ban on media in the Gaza Strip, 55-year-old Gaza resident Ahmed Samur, managed to get a statement out of the besieged and imprisoned coastal strip that these so-called 'rockets' were actually oxygen canisters used in his welding business.

He told the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, that his son and other family members were moving the canisters from his workshop because the building next to it had been hit by an Israeli airstrike, and he was worried that looters would steal from his shop through an opening in the wall that the missile strike had left.

His son was among the eight civilians killed in the airstrike. He told Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, “These were not Hamas, they were our children...”

Those killed in the strike were:

Muhammad bassel Madi, age 17, Wisam Akram ‘Eid, age 14, Imad Ahmad Sanur, age 32, Rami Sa’adi Ghabayan, age 24, Mahmoud Nabil Ghabayan, age 14, Ashraf a-Dabagh, age 26, Muhammad Majed Ka’abar, age 20, and Ahmad Ibrahim Khila, age 15.

Two were severely injured:

Bilal Suheil Ghabayan, age 19, and Baha Suheil Ghabayan, age 16.

As ground troops marched into Gaza Staurday, Israeli officials reiterated their plan to continue the propaganda war. Gideon Doron, who headed the agency overseeing the privatization of Israel's media, said, "Many of the victories of modern warfare are mediated by the media. 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."

Part of the Israeli plan to control the information that gets out to the world about the Gaza assault has been to keep foreign journalists out of Gaza. The Foreign Press Association for Israel and the Palestinian territories, made up of foreign journalists in Israel and Palestine, launched a petition to the Israeli High Court, saying, “We believe the Israeli government should ensure unfettered access for the world’s media to Gaza during this crisis”.

The High Court ruled that foreign journalists should be allowed into Gaza, but the Israeli military has refused to honor that High Court decision.

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