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• Palestinians, winners in social media
I've seen videos and photos showing Palestinian terrorists attacking unarmed Israeli civilians, killing them, taking them hostage, looting the dead, the killer posing with his foot on the dead man's head (in one image, the victim was an Israeli soldier still alive), I saw corpses left behind, including children, I saw images of women undoubtedly raped and murdered, with half their bodies charred, dead with their hands tied behind their backs with wire, I saw a man shot, fall into his wife's lap , shot later (probably), in their home.
You can see these images here .
But I do not advise you, to see them means a descent into the midst of depravity, even if it is only about images.
Despite these public atrocities, the victory of the Palestinians on the social media "battlefield" is absolute, and experts (including Jews) everywhere recognize it, despite a traditional Jewish superiority in the mass media.
The victory of the Palestinians in the media was consecrated by the IPI-IMS World Press Freedom Hero 2024 award, which they received yesterday, in Sarajevo, "for courage and resistance".
How is that possible?!
We will find that the explanations given by the experts so far are insufficient and that, probably, the victory of the pro-Palestinian current in international public opinion is due to a wider context than the one that was taken into account.
• The pro-Palestinian posts overwhelmed the pro-Israel ones
The explosive expansion of the Internet opened the wider sphere which made visible the fact that the traditional media collides with a colossus - social media -, where there was nothing.
Palestinian propaganda naturally swims in this social media river, while Israeli propaganda has not adapted (by the way, the Palestinian narrators are from there, they are not "sent").
"Politico" published last December that the views of pro-Palestinian posts on TikTok (like those on Facebook) were eight times more numerous than pro-Israel ones: "But it is true that videos with the hashtag #StandWithPalestine have garnered around 4.8 billion views, according to TikTok data. In contrast, #StandWithIsrael has garnered just under 600 million views." (25)
More than likely, until today, the disparity has deepened, but such global figures hardly find their window to the public.
• Explanations
There are explanations for the huge advance in views of pro-Palestinian posts: "In a world where Muslims make up 25% of the global population and Jews make up 0.2%, it's simply easier to get virality on the Muslim side." observed Refael-Chen (26).
He points to the involvement of a well-funded and coordinated pro-Palestinian effort in shaping the narrative, noting that ten prominent Instagram and TikTok accounts were suddenly turned into Hamas propaganda pages on October 7, generating a pro-Palestinian trend and gaining momentum at world level. He suggests that there is substantial funding behind this operation, because the messages are precise and the orchestration is well-suited, and this requires elaborate planning and resources, and argues that the burden of combating it cannot be left on the shoulders of volunteers.
As reported by Fox News in mid-November (27), US Republican Mike Gallagher said that TikTok is comparable to "digital fentanyl" (a powerful synthetic drug that has taken the name "China White" - originally a name for heroin high purity), stating that the application is financially supported or controlled by the Chinese government.
Despite many doubts about the probity of information management on Tik Tok, Chinese government involvement could not be proven.
A realistic explanation of the success of pro-Palestinian views on social media was formulated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at the beginning of May (28):
"We find ourselves in an ecosystem created by social media where context, history, facts are lost, and emotion - the impact of images - dominates".
What Blinken says here also governs this present study, the one you are reading right now: the emotion in front of a striking war photograph makes any explanatory effort wasteful, although what we see may be part of the truth, but it is never the truth, because the truth is a correspondence of propositions with the fact to which they refer, and not a fact.
• The effect
According to a viral Harvard poll released in the weeks following the brutal attack on Israel, a staggering 51 percent of 18-24-year-olds believe Hamas' actions were justified - that is, killing, kidnapping, and raping innocent people. of all ages, unlike anything seen in previous generations, notes the Israeli site CTech (29).
A quarter of young Americans believe that the long-term solution to the conflict is for Israel to be eliminated.
Just as pro-Palestinian posts on social media overwhelmed pro-Israeli ones, so did the demonstrations that erupted around the world.
A map (30) published by Al Jazeera on December 15, 2023, locating the demonstrations unleashed around the world between October 7 and November 27, 2023, shows that the number of pro-Palestinian ones exceeded nine times that of pro-Israeli demonstrations.
The map is based on an update of the one published on November 7, 2023, by "Armed Conflict Location & Events Data" (ACLED), - a non-governmental organization specialized in collecting conflict data.
(31)
These maps, which are actually only one updated once, are a rarity; Reuters itself had, on May 9, 2024, to turn to the ACLED map (32), which shows the situation as of... October - an indication that no further updates have been made for half a year, although (or, perhaps, for that), meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protests have engulfed universities, grown in scale and generated a climate of insecurity for Jews everywhere.
A May 3, 2024 article in FP (foreignpolicy.com) notes: "Pro-Palestinian protests similar to those in the United States have begun to appear at universities around the world, including in Australia, Canada, France, Mexico and the United Kingdom .Pro-Israel counter-demonstrations have also occurred in several places.Unlike the United States, where more than 2,300 demonstrators have been arrested or detained on at least 49 campuses since April 18, the international protests have largely met with minimal interference. of the police".
It is certain that the Palestinians and their supporters defeat their opponents when it comes to street demonstrations.
• The pyramid of the battle between the top - the traditional media - and the social networks from the base
This is not the first war between Palestinians and Israelis, but it is the first with live broadcasts, and they are operated by Palestinians, not Israelis.
The Palestinians spend effort (including money) to film their attacks, sometimes using unarmed cameramen, who do just that, for the purpose of propaganda - allocating concern to the struggle on social media. (33)
They go so far as to make their intentions and preparations public: a video released in December 2022 showed Hamas training to take hostages, while another video showed Hamas practicing paragliding; on September 12, 2023, Hamas posted a video of its fighters training to blow up the border. (34)
Channel 4 News reports: "Those posting on social media are not just journalists, but also activists, ambulance crews, relatives of the victims. The basic details of the post were quickly clear: an ambulance had been attacked, hundreds of bodies were in the streets , people were running away". (35)
We are witnessing a battle between traditional media and social media, from which social media emerges victorious because it is considered part of the texture of the event (but, as we will see, no longer faithful to reality).
"Between the official statements and dozens of independent testimonies and photographs, there is no contest today, because there is more evidence of how the story is told by the participants than by the journalists," according to "Channel 4 News", which further claims : "The last time Israel invaded Gaza there were 26 million people on Twitter. Today there are 250 million people on it and 10 times as many smartphones that can run this stuff, bringing death and destruction into the palm of our hands and directly in our lives".
By contrast, the traditional media is perceived as dependent on the authorities, not only in the ideological orientation of press materials, but even in the exercise of functioning.
Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed a law on April 1, 2024, which allows Israel to temporarily close foreign media outlets if it considers them a threat to state security.
Consequently, on May 5, 2024, the Israeli government shut down Al Jazeera in Israel and authorized the confiscation of its equipment.
Not more than three days ago, (Tuesday, May 21, 2024), the American agency "The Associated Press" accused that officials of the Israeli Ministry of Communications confiscated a video camera and broadcast material, based on a document in which it was shown that the agency was in violation of the Israeli law on foreign broadcasting, a document issued by Minister Shlomo Karhi (later, the measures were canceled).
Social media has the advantage that it cannot be regulated and cannot be stopped under the rigor of this law.
The battle between traditional media and social media has been assimilated to the political struggle, subordinated to a logic of "class struggle": "The recent conflict has sparked a heated debate around the world, with many Western leaders supporting Israel, while their citizens protest against this support ", writes the Turkish newspaper "Daily Sabah". (36)
Let's remember this suggestion, that the traditional media is perceived as "part of the system", the idea will have a role in the explanation of the unfolding of both the war in the Gaza Strip and the one in Ukraine, which I want to propose in the final Episode, the following.
The interlocking between traditional media and social media configures a pyramid, in which the traditional media has stiffened at the top, hanging on to authority, lagging behind, in a crisis of credibility and in the minority, compared to social media, located at the base, in direct contact with the event in which he participates.
• Falsification - common trait
Often, however, social media (as well as traditional media), along with unaltered transmissions, also host the spread of untruths, only that they practice more numerous and more primitive - "unprofessional" falsifications - garbage that is a bit easier to detect (but not always ).
In the case of the Gaza war, there is another reason for the preponderance of social media coverage: according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 97 journalists and media company employees are among those over 35,000 deaths registered since the beginning of the war, which started on October 7; by May 1, another 16 journalists were injured, four disappeared and 25 were arrested.
Figures updated two days ago counted at least 105 journalists and media workers killed in the region since the start of the war, most of them Palestinians.
It seems to be another planet out there, with professional journalists who have become rarities.
But the Committee for the Protection of Journalists cannot guarantee the accuracy of the situation it presents:
According to Wikipedia (37), it has been reported that many journalists in Gaza who identify as freelancers are in fact affiliated with Hamas, which provides them with support to carry out their duties (such as cars, drivers, internet access and shelter in hospitals during the war) and instead monitors their work, making sure they present the Hamas version of the conflict.
These journalists are then quoted by Western news sources without identifying their affiliation with Hamas, the undeclared affiliation being invoked by the Israelis as confusion to explain their killing by the army.
Nothing is certain.
Israelis are generally suspicious of any information coming from the Palestinians, exemplified by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's view that Palestinians are "products of a culture where telling a lie ... does not create dissonance", while according to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Facebook was used to promote anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. (38)
On the other hand, Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinians, said that in the media's distorted picture of the Middle East, those who report honestly and truthfully are accused of bias, in while pro-Israel bias is perceived to be dominant.
• The failure of the strategy of serving authority
In a strange article (39), published by the Israeli magazine Ctech on October 29, 2023, Joanna Landau, co-author of the book "Ethical Tribing: Connecting the Next Generation to Israel in the Digital Era", is quoted, which shows an obvious lack of respect for public opinion: "Right now, we have global leadership on our side and we depend on global leadership to win this war and save the hostages. We understand that public opinion does not win wars and public opinion does not extract hostages".
After lamenting the fact that President Biden is losing the support of the Democrats for the defense of "the most liberal country in the Middle East", Landau incoherently draws a conclusion that has nothing to do with liberalism: "If we know that our objective is not to lose the support of the major politicians who give us real help on the ground, then they are the ones we have to protect and the ones who need the bulletproof vest. We have to put a bulletproof vest on the leadership - that's what we have to advocate."
Looking for a solution, Joanna Landau cites the example of hedge fund manager Bill Ackman (age 57) who demanded that Harvard nominate students who blame Israel for Hamas attacks, so that he and other CEOs not to hire them by accident.
She hopes the example will spread.
Joanna Landau transferred her expertise in the very month of the attacks and as it turns out, her strategy failed.
Israel's identification with global authorities has fueled anti-Israeli protests.
The international amplitude of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations has promoted the struggle for the liberation of Palestine as the most inspiring national liberation struggle in the world.
• What is there to do?
The title "What to do?" it belongs to a novel written by Nikolai Chernyshevsky in 1863 - an influential text for revolutionary movements in Russia, inspiring many radicals and revolutionaries, including Lenin, who took it up for an essay published in 1902, where he sets out his vision of revolutionary party organization and strategies necessary to overthrow the tsarist regime.
No connection.
The question "What is to be done?" it is natural in the face of a difficult problem.
Some BURSA readers asked me during the publication of this study, what is, in my opinion, the solution to the situation in the Gaza Strip - Israel war.
I think there is no solution.
The war is radical, each of the two belligerents wants the extermination of the other, because one of them - Hamas - has programmed the abolition of the state of Israel.
This leaves no room for tolerance, it is a life and death struggle.
Extermination, however, is not accepted as a solution in contemporary morality and legislation; on the other hand, any compromise proposal is unsatisfactory for both parties and, at best, can calm the conflict.
Temporary.
In conclusion, in this referential framework that the present study went through, there is no solution for the Gaza Strip - Israel conflict.
The solution therefore requires the broadening of the referential framework, which would also provide a coherent explanation of the manifestation of all current conflicts, including the Russian war in Ukraine, as a "by-product" of this conceptual construction.
I will attempt to do so in Episode 6 - the last - of this series study.
Although I have already reached a conception, at the time of writing these lines, Episode 6 has not yet been started and I am not sure that I can finish it.
It may be a few days before I publish it, or I may never publish it again, because I won't have been able to write it.
Notes
(25) https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/digital-bridge/does-social-media-favor-palestine-over-israel/
(26) https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b1xy1mzxa
(29) https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sykzpeqqp
(34) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel
(35) "Channel 4 News":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxK3lt5Cdl8
(36) https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/how-is-media-reporting-the-israel-palestine-conflict
(37) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
(38) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
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