Faced with rising anti-Semitism in the world and caught mostly off-guard by a quite critical new media response to Operation Cast Lead, Israel Defense Forces has laid the groundworks for a new unit to fight back in cyberspace:
The new unit, as well as an initiative by the Information and Diaspora Ministry to train people to represent Israel independently on the Internet and in other arenas, were presented Monday at the conference during a panel discussion on Israeli public relations abroad. Responding to criticism of Israel's ability to face hostile entities on the Web, Benayahu said the new program would be able to deal with the problem. He said that from each group drafted to the Army Spokesman's Office, between eight to 10 young people who are experts in Web 2.0 - YouTube, Facebook and Twitter - to be identified before induction, would be assigned to the new department. The new recruits would be put to work in the new media unit after undergoing a general Army Spokesman's Unit training course.
How they're actually going to do this seems to be a closely-kept IDF secret, but if I had to guess, I'd say they'll be responding to tweets and post pro-Israel stuff on people's Facebook walls. Perhaps social media will be used to organize protests of radical anti-Israel groups and individuals.
Oh what the hell, this is dumb as fuck. Look, we all know the cropped and cut up videos and made-up stories that spout up online condemning Israel for just about everything exist. But there's got to be a better way to combat this hate than drafting people to serve in the (formerly humorous designation) IDF 101st Fightin' Keyboarders Brigade.
The head of communications at the Army Spokesman's office, Col. Ofer Kol, said they wanted to reach "mainly an international audience that is less exposed to operational processes. Foreign media do more 'zooming-in' and so it's important to us to show the totality of IDF actions without a filter."
The IDF YouTube account got millions of hits during Operation Cast Lead, which led to the decision to expand activity at the site and other social network Web sites. The IDF hopes to show other sides of the army less familiar to the world, such as women's service.
Perhaps it's a good idea in principle, but I think Israel underestimates the power of the anonymous internet. Unless they plan on outing the most vicious anti-Israel activists to thwart them (which I would vehemently disagree with), I don't see how the IDF could win the Web 2.0 war in this way, especially now that every independent individual who supports Israel on the merits will now be branded as an IDF infiltrator.
Hopefully they'll stick to posting YouTube videos and maybe blogging on their own and stay away from anonymous postings on Twitter and Facebook.