Josh Spiro and Ben Harris have a story about the use of new media in the current P.R. battle, focused more heavily on the pro-Israel side of the equation. Still, the authors make clear that pro-Palestinian foreces are running their own innovative spin machines:
To be sure, online political activism is hardly the sole province of the pro-Israel community. Palestinian solidarity activists and Jews opposed to Israel’s military operations have also taken to the Internet — arguably with greater force and visibility.
"The short of it is, if you look at the communities that power social news Web sites, because these communities tend to be composed of early adopters who generally tend to have a more liberal bias, the stories you tend to see promoted will mostly favor the Palestinian side," said Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant in Chicago.
"I’m seeing the same thing happen on Facebook as well. There are groups arguing both sides of the issue, but the groups that get the most attention tend to be liberal and lean towards the Gazans’ side of the issue."
Saleem stressed that he was describing only the balance of opinion he’s seeing online, not the rightness or wrongness of particular points of view.
Ynet has two pieces on the high-tech efforts of the anti-Israel forces. The first looks at a Facebook-driven boycott campaign:
An extensive campaign was launched on the Facebook social network several days ago, calling for a boycott of American companies over the Bush administration’s support for the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of people from all across the world have already joined the boycott efforts.
The companies mentioned in the campaign are McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and the Marlboro cigarette brand.
Additional measures against American companies have been taken in the Arab world in the past two weeks, and not just on the Web. The people behind the campaign claim that if all Muslims worldwide were to stop purchasing American products, the United States economy would lose $8.6 billion a month.
The second report focuses on Hamas:
After Hamas sent a text message in broken Hebrew to a number of Israeli cellular phones during the first days of Operation Cast Leadad, the organization ahs now decided to try its luck in an English message. "Come on into Gaza. A number of surprises waiting for your sons, the least of which is death. Hamas," read the SMS message received Wednesday by a number of Israelis on their cellular phones.
Check out the full story to see a picture of the message.
