The YouTube War In Gaza

It’s a bit like playing a video game.
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I wanted to snark at this, but for once my irony-detector went off. And yeah, it’s a good point, and we Americans love ourselves some video game wars.

Well, there is a lot to be said for propaganda.
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Look at the last eight years, if you have any doubts about that!

I think the more positive side is that the behavior of the Israeli Army is also being broadcast by thousands of Palestinians and distributed via youtube that allow the Palestinians to show their side of the conflict without having to match the costs of a multi-million dollar media industry.

O/T (slightly).
Retired US Navy Commander, Jeff Huber, has this to say about Israel’s incursion into Gaza:
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The purpose of strategy in war is to focus the violence on a tangible policy aim. Not surprisingly, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor freely admitted in a recent lecture at George Washington University that, “we have no grand political scheme” in Gaza.
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That means our “friend and democratic ally,” with the endorsement of our executive and legislative branches of government and with the tacit approval of our president elect, are conducting slaughter for the sake of slaughter. This is also known as total war, and war of annihilation, and genocide.
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Or perhaps you can call it terrorism.

Comments deactivated? That says all you need to know…

Respectable content will always allow a) links and b) comments. If it doesn’t allow both of those (as is the case with sites like NRO and The Weekly Standard), then it is simply a propaganda site and cannot be taken too seriously. The comments disabled means that the writers do not want any public discussion that may deviate from the propaganda.

Just because you can. Doesn’t not mean you should.
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Michael-One of the reasons why Israel is so effective is because they are absolute experts with propaganda. So while you might think these videos are cool and look like video games, real people are dying and Israel wants you to forget that. Mission accomplished.

Cookie Puss – that video made me feel like I was on drugs. Am I doing it right?

“.. The Israeli military has its own broadcast channel for the war in Gaza, ..

Michael, can you remind us – we, the people whose president is ordered about on matters of OUR foreign policy by a foreign leader named Olmert – that THAT is the USA workers’ taxes a work?

What gored many during the presidential campaigns was that the RNC could spend thousands of dollars contributed by Americans on showy clothing for Sarah Palin and family. Yet in that case, the contributors sent their money willingly and in good faith – even though they had no say on how it was used.

Millions of American tax-payers have no say in the billions of dollars shipped to Israel every year.

Do our lawmakers assume that most American taxpayers approve the huge American handouts to warring idlers?

Americans spend over $2,000 a year on each person in that foreign pauper country of Israel. And that is a lot of money – considering that people in most third world countries like Israel survive on less than $300 a year.
And moreover we have starving Americans – 30,000,000 of them. Should our lawmakers deny Americans to feed foreigners?

What constitution are they looking at?

I find this surreal. I guess it’s supposed to be informational, but it’s just strange.

[...] interesting and provocative short post from the Swampland politics blog about how Israel is harnessing YouTube during the ongoing conflict in Gaza: The Israeli military [...]

“Comments deactivated? That says all you need to know…”
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I’ll somewhat disagree with this. While I don’t deny that these are likely designed to be pure propaganda, I don’t think one could safely open comments for a video as controversial as this. Any comments would likely spiral into a flame war rather quickly, without significant amounts of moderation, which would likely also cause cries of censorship, etc.
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-MBirchmeier

MBirchmeier:

Sure, allowing comments for these videos will certainly cause the comments to spiral into a flame war. But a flame “war” is just a figure of speech—it is not actually a real “war”. This propaganda, however, is indeed meant to promote a real war—the type where people get killed, not insulted.

YouTube is a public site, and the facility for the public to leave comments is central to the concept of sharing your content with the public. It is a public video blog. But when comments are disabled, it becomes a propaganda site.

I believe that anyone promoting something as awful as war (even if it is a justified war) on a public site like YouTube cannot be squeamish about preventing off-color comments. Regardless of how profane and hateful the comments may get (even to the extent of the likes of “Kill the Jews” or “Screw all Arabs”), it pales in comparasion to the obscenity of the subject of the video itself.

mbirchmeier Says:
” .. I don’t think one could safely open comments for a video as controversial as this. .. “

Excuses .. excuses.

If we shouldn’t have and express an opinion then don’t tell us about it.
Seen but not heard? Smirks of disagreeable holier-than-thou dictatorship (net) by some foreigners (who are on the dole from American taxpayers).

[Parallel: The Americans will pay the taxes that go to feed those lazy foreigners n Israel - but the American taxpayers cannot say anything about it. Mexico and the 'illegal' migrant workers deserve more: They actually contribute to America's prosperity!]

@joseph: While a flame war is not actually a real war I don’t think it helps in this situation. With most emotional debates I’ve seen online, one of two things usually happens. One side overwhelms the debate, and it becomes an echo chamber for their own predetermined opinions, or both sides are represented well, a line is drawn in the sand, and it becomes a very divisive, right vs. wrong, with no shades of gray discussion. All this seems to encourage is conflict and/or more extreme views than already existed, instead of productive discourse.

I recognize this is akin to stopping a litterer while someone else is dumping a truck full trash in the river, but this is something that can easily be affected.

@cfukara: I’m not suggesting silence as response, there are alternate methods of response other than just posting a comment, but the effort involved in an internet comment is so minimal, raising the bar a bit might help.