My last post of last year was about the Israeli Military’s use of YouTube as a propoganda tool in their current war on Hamas. Given that it was new years eve it slipped under the radar a little, but the gist of it was:

“Allowing the world to see ‘Hamas members’ loading ‘rockets’ onto the back of a ute from the sights of an Israeli helicopter gunship is a compelling bit of propoganda. Of course, they won’t show you the attacks that miss their target (stand by for the Hamas channel, coming soon) and you have to treat each video in context as a biased historical document, but it’s a sign of the times that the Israeli military are using social media to give credence to their cause. They need to be careful though, they’re not allowing comments on their videos, and like any corporation who tries to control the dialogue, their message is likely to backfire on them. It won’t be long before Palestinians start using social media to show their side of the story.”

Well, as predicted, it didn’t take long at all before Palutube emerged - Hamas’s own dedicated video channel. It’s all written and presented in Arabic, but you’ll get the idea. Key theme: “The Zionist Holocaust against The Gaza Children of 2009.”

Using the media as a propoganda tool is nothing new of course, but it’s interesting to see a social media channel like YouTube being used in this very real, very relevant way. Watch it. It’s a hell of a lot more important than dancing cats. Yes, it’s propoganda, yes it’s biased, but it’s an insight into the lives of the people living on the Gaza strip you won’t get on CNN, from the Israelis, or anywhere else, but a social media channel.

Tags: Israel, Palestine

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Propaganda, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.