The IDF and Hamas wage a social media war: here’s what you need to know

Seven House Republicans have called for Twitter to take down the accounts of “US-designated terrorist groups.” Led by Texas Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX), the lawmakers sent the request in a letter to the FBI back in September, and earlier this week said that recent events have vindicated their actions. “Allowing foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas to operate on Twitter is enabling the enemy,” Poe told The Hill, adding that Twitter “arms them with the ability to freely spread their violent propaganda and mobilize in their war on Israel.”

During the conflict, both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas’ military arm heavily utilized Twitter and other social networks, even going so far as to exchange threatening tweets. However, the congress members’ concerns seem to relate more to a potential threat to the US and its allies than the broader issue of using social media for propaganda purposes. When asked for comment, the FBI said it was considering its response internally and would respond to the letter directly.

Shortly after Anonymous declared war on the Israeli internet, a separate group of apparently Pakistani hackers has defaced at least two Microsoft-run websites. Visiting the Israeli versions of MSN and Bing brings up an anti-Israel diatribe “on the behalf of all Pakistani and all Muslims,” promising that “your war on Gaza will make you cry blood.” The Israeli Skype website, meanwhile, is unavailable. Though the ideological justification is similar, this doesn’t appear to be related to OpIsrael, an Anonymous-affiliated offensive meant as payback after Israel threatened to cut off internet access in Gaza. Instead, it’s credited to a number of hackers, including ZombiE_KsA and the Pakistan Cyber Army.

Update: While MSN and Bing are accessible through the alternate “il.bing.com” and “il.msn.com,” the “bing.co.il” site remains defaced. MSN’s site, however, seems to have been counter-hacked: visiting “msn.co.il” now brings up the Borat trailer with the text “How 1337 pakistani looks like.”

Hacker group Anonymous is claiming to have successfully knocked offline and in some cases erased a number of prominent Israeli websites. The comprehensive attack, dubbed operation “OpIsrael,” comes in direct retaliation to threats from Israel’s government that it may shutter internet access to and from Gaza as violence between its Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hamas continues to escalate. “For far too long, Anonymous has stood by with the rest of the world and watched in despair the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of the Palestinian people in the so called ‘Occupied Territories’ by the Israel Defence Force,” reads a statement from the group. “But when the government of Israel publicly threatened to sever all Internet and other telecommunications into and out of Gaza they crossed a line in the sand.”

Israel and Hamas are fighting a war on a new front. This week, they took to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media to report live on real-world attacks in Gaza... or, depending on who you ask, to spread propaganda. Now, the brains behind @IDFSpokesperson have been revealed.

According to the Associated Press, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich is the woman in charge of the Israeli Defense Forces’ brand-new “Interactive Media” branch, a collection of 30 soldiers trained to craft the blog posts, infographics and status updates that comprise Israel’s media campaign. The group was reportedly formed just two months ago, but it’s apparently already important to the military’s operations. In February, Leibovich told the AP, she’ll be departing her other job as international spokeswoman to concentrate on this social media initiative.

The people of Israel are sadly not unfamiliar with violence. Like their government, these days many have sought to establish a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social sites to share their account of all that’s happening around them. But Israel’s military is asking citizens to cut back on their journalistic efforts for fear that geolocation data publicly accessible across these services is aiding Hamas plot out future targets. Per Fast Company, the theory is that realtime reports of where a rocket has landed (or where sirens can be heard) could assist Hamas in honing the aim of their rocket strikes. Further, the embedded location data from an Instagram photo or tweet could theoretically be used to triangulate attacks to ensure the largest number of civilian casualties.

Obviously maintaining a record of these events is important, and it remains up to individual Israelis whether they choose to follow the IDF’s suggestions: there are no legal restrictions against documenting such acts. But at the very least, it may not be a bad idea to disable location data for such public-facing content.

As I write this, I notice Hamas’ claim that it has shelled “occupied” Tel Aviv. I hear this not from cable news or The New York Times, or from RT America, the Russian government backed twenty-four hour news network that I have streaming on the Roku across the room. Nor do I learn it from CNN, where Anderson Cooper is busting Sen. McCain’s balls for contesting Hillary Clinton’s possible replacement. No, I learn this from Twitter, which isn’t really worth giving much thought to — until you realize that this tweet comes not from a news outlet, but from Hamas. And another tweet, from the Israel Defense Forces, assures me that, in fact, the Hamas rocket never reached Tel Aviv — “#Hamas propaganda is constantly spreading misinformation,” apparently.

The latest Israeli offensive on Gaza is currently in its second day, and if you’re following the events you can get your news from a number of sources. Of course, the usual American news organizations are keeping an eye on the situation, and any major updates will make it onto their newsfeeds. (ABC News, for instance, has placed an item about yesterday’s hit on Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari beneath a story about a baboon that befriended a kitten in a zoo.) For those of you that prefer by-the-minute coverage, the Web 2.0 tradition of “liveblogging” is another alternative. RT America is doing a pretty good job with its effort, while I must admit that I’m a little disappointed by Al Jazeera’s liveblog, which has had but one sparse update all night. But the liveblog that captured our attention today is being maintained by the IDF itself.

Liveblogging. It’s one of those tortured-English words that conjures up images of awards shows, Apple launch events, and Justin Bieber. Whenever something like this is added to the dictionary (kind of how “sexting” was, a couple months back) it’s a little amusing — seeing a slice of our somewhat-frivolous, hyper-connected world given some legitimacy by the “old guard,” as it were.

What is not amusing, however, is watching the Israel Defense Forces liveblog its current operation in Gaza. (And we’re not just saying that because the IDF doesn’t seem to own a decent liveblogging platform.) In addition to updates on the IDF blog, interested parties can follow the action on Twitter, thus ensuring that the news will come straight from the government’s mouth, without the pesky interference of the fourth estate.