(Image: IDFblog.com)
The IDF Spokesman’s office is trying to make online hasbara an epic battle. The new web application IDF Ranks virtually “enlists” hasbara-ites to become Israel’s most revered soldier in only a few clicks by sharing articles about Israel’s military. Each share is awarded points, earn enough points and subscribers can move up from a lowly recruit to a Zionist Rambo. From IDF Spokesman:
Have you ever wanted to join the military and fight to defend Israel? Well, now you can, with IDF Ranks — embedded directly in all IDF social platforms!
IDF Ranks promotes YOU for your activities around IDF-related material. Your every action — commenting, liking, sharing and even just visiting — rewards your efforts, as well as helps spread the truth about the Israeli army all over the world.
Lock, stock and load; share, Tweet and email. Do it from your sofa, bed or toilet if you have a smart phone.
(Image: IDFblog.com)
Yet the application is basically a dressed up version of a Facebook/Twitter share feature (we have one on Mondoweiss, it’s on the upper left side of the page). But what distinguishes IDF Ranks as a “game” with “virtual soldiers” is its bombastic copy that equates selecting an icon in the name of Israel to a venerable activity:
“TO INFINITY, AND BEYOND!
That’’s the spirit, soldier! Welcome aboard. Now get started and score some badges! You can earn badges by completing several specific tasks. For instance, ‘like’ 3 different articles in the front page and you’ll get a brand new badge for that. (Shiny.)”
Using simple technology to turn a mundane activity—like reading—into an epic battle? Virtual soldiers? Using a video game as a front to “join the military and fight to defend Israel?” Perhaps Israel is now taking its lead from 1980′s movies?
Just a game, or a training ground for fighting in a alien army?
Trailer for The Last Starfighter (1984).
The promotional copy for IDF Ranks is also overzealous in the expected reach of the application. The web tool only shares posts on the IDF’s Blog, limiting hasbara-ties are retweeting whatever the military’s mouthpiece deems newsworthy.
Last week there was a big story about a supermarket in Gaza with cans stocked on the shelves. The article, “The Gaza You’ve Never Seen,” included a picture intended to refute charges that Israel’s siege has turned the coastal piece of Occupied Palestine into one “big concentration camp.” With IDF Ranks, now sharing that same article not only protects the military from criticism of creating a humanitarian disaster for Gaza’s 1.5 million people, it is worth three points and a badge.
Futile
Wait, so you’re saying the people of Gaza have food?!?!? How generous of Israel, they allow the Gazans to buy food. The Israelis could just let them starve, but out of the goodwill of their hearts, they said, “The people in Gazans need to eat, so even though they could make weapons out of those glass jars, well give them the opportunity to keep living”(the carts don’t seem that full… maybe the food is really expensive)
Is that pix even Gaza, and if so when? I remember that a few years back there was a widely circulated picture of a “5-star” Gaza hotel used to propagandize along these same lines. The problem was that it showed Arab leaders who had been dead (or hadn’t been there) for several years prior to the time it was intended to depict.
They (GoI, et. al.) just make stuff up.
I wonder if there are some Warsaw ghetto photos available of children playing on the street or people throwing a party, or shopping in a store, then people can say, Wow, the Warsaw ghetto looks like it was a really fun place to live, why do the Jews complain so much?
they keep messing with the delivery/framing but never the policy. what losers.
This reeks of desperation. Which means that a congratulations is in order for Mondoweiss et al.
The Gaza supermarket picture shows how sick Zionism is. They don’t even pretend not to know what they are doing to Gaza.
It is some sort of group mental disorder. And so reminiscentof the picture of Dorian Gray. One day the whole media structure will collapse.
Supporting an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist Jewish state and its 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder – from the comfort of your own home! – is just so much cooler than supporting justice, morality, kindness, equality and accountability.
Once again, the supremacist Jewish State shines its light unto the nations…
So bizarre. To build on what Annie said, imagine if they spend half as much effort on finding an equitable solution to this situation as they do to framing, lobbying, and disseminating hasbara. Talk about mistaking the forest for the trees.
PEPCO, the power company here in the D.C. area, has been spending money on PR instead of on infrastructure. With each power failure (like the multiday one that just ended here) they become more and more hated. I think they are now rated as the most unpopular company in the country.
I am perturbed by the top image, which contains a red telephone box. Is that a reference to the UK? If so, save us Mondoweiss!
Don’t panic! There’s hardly any left on the streets now – haven’t most of them become mini greenhouses in back gardens?
Ideological warfare–it’s not a game.
I wonder if they will give Hophmi and the others rank and back pay for serving in the virtual Stern Gang and the Hasbara Hagannah? Seems only fair. Colonial regimes often absorb irregular and private forces into the official colonial government army when they consolidate power.
At the risk of being misinterpreted, I think there is a considerable disconnect between reality in Gaza and the perceptions of a great many well-intentioned pro-Palestinian activists. Life in Gaza is actually markedly more optimistic than many might think, though not in the way that Israeli propagandists would have you believe.
Israel maintains a criminal air, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, with arbitrary and illicit control of the free movement of people and goods. Sonic booms, sporadic fly-overs and intermittent disruptions in power and water supplies are psychological tactics to remind the people of Gaza of their subservient dependence on their Israeli overlords, and ultimately their vulnerability. Then of course, there is always the constant threat of a crippling and deadly Israeli incursion or bombardment that makes Gaza far from a pleasant place to live, certainly nothing like the flourishing suburbia Israeli hasbarists would lead you to believe.
However, despite all of this, Gazans do enjoy something that is often overlooked: a sense, false perhaps, of autonomy and freedom on a day-to-day basis. The Israeli presence is known, but not necessarily always tangible. Gazans are free to enjoy their own streets, with vendors selling their wares, celebrations, festivals, soccer games, and much more. The people have retained a sense of pride in their culture despite seemingly insurmountable odds. The people of Gaza are truly inspiring, and optimistic. For Gazans, travel from Khan Yunis to Gaza City is feasible in a way that travel from Hebron to Bethlehem or from Jericho to Jerusalem is not for the Palestinians of the West Bank.
And this is of fundamental importance. For all the talk of investment in and development of the West Bank, it is still one of the most restrictive and repressive regions of the world. Life in the West Bank is draped in the facade of autonomy, however in actuality is consists of military check-points and patrols, night-raids, arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings, indefinite detentions, militant and fanatic Israeli settlers, destruction of property, arson, theft of lands, assaults, rapes and murder. There is a sense of utter hopelessness and helplessness, of complete restriction. The Palestinians of the West Bank are a disillusioned people, nearly broken. They have no freedom, no say in their own affairs, and are “represented” by the feckless collaborators of the Palestinian Authority, at times equally brutal as their occupying counterparts. The Gazans, however, have leadership and governance, a sense of community unmolested by the daily presence of Israeli troops.
Every few years or so, Israeli leadership deems it necessary to inflict devastating inhumanity on the people of Gaza of the Cast Lead variety. They must be reminded of where power truly lies. However, something entirely more paralyzing occurs every day in the West Bank. It’s an utter shame that the majority of the world’s press only seems to have a piqued interest in Palestinian suffering during those dark days of Israeli invasions of Gaza.
I think this is a more poignant articulation of what I’m trying to express…
“Until the headlines stop focusing on just the devastation and systematic oppression perpetuated by the Israeli occupation and start recognizing or at least acknowledging Gaza’s audacity to become what the occupation is designed to prevent it from becoming, the population of the Gaza Strip will continue to harbor feelings of discontent towards foreign journalism and justifiably so.” ~Sami Kishawi
link to electronicintifada.net
A picture speaks a thousand words. The accompanying narrative simply steers the context.
Here, let me have a try:
Look! A supermarket in Gaza! Wow! Doesn’t this show the world that the Gazans are normal people going about their day in spite of Israeli restrictions?
Look! A man is doing the shopping! I thought Islamic fundamentalists wouldn’t be seen dead doing domestic duties and would never pay their kids any attention other than teaching them how to be Jihadists.
Look! The Women are out on their own! They’re even allowed out without a hijab and they can carry their own money to pay for the shopping! Wow! They’re actually normal people and not the loonies they’re made out to be!
Just because there are supermarkets in Gaza, it doesn’t mean people’s lives aren’t made difficult by the occupation.
And just because there are supermarkets in Gaza, doesn’t mean people have the money to buy from them.
IDF wanks , surely
Hophmi as a top armchair combatant would then be an IDF wanker
“IDF content online”
Where content= what is in your bowel
It might be more profitable to contemplate the tactic, and if it appears to be effective, imitate it.
There are seven million Palestinians out there in the diaspora. Unlike most of the non-Palestinians involved in the anti-Israel movement, most of them are not especially politically correct — or even political.
However, many of them are reasonably prosperous, and most of them seem to be quite clear in their feelings about Israel. There are probably half a million Palestinian teens and twenty-somethings out there hooked into the internet.
Instead of making fun of Israeli Hasbara, get those Palestinian kids involved in earning ‘cool points’ themselves.
In our movement, there is too much concern with congratulating oneself on one’s own intellectual and moral superiority — and too little concern with just winning.
Look at that poster at the top. Instead of ridiculing it, figure out how to copy it.
“HELP SPREAD THE TRUTH: Let the world know what’s really going on in Israel”
I agree!
A Zionist Rambo ?
That reminded me of Bambi on the ice.
link to youtube.com
She was really cute, but was lost when she went into a place she should not have gone to.
HELP SPREAD THE LIE:
Zionists can walk on ice or in the desert for many days!!!!!!!
“Captain Up” provides “website gamification” for the IDF blog. The company is based in Tel Aviv.
What I find so odd about this project is that’s a big leak of personal information from people are eager to promote IDF content on social media. If you poke around in the DOM or monitor your javascript console while the page is running, you will see Facebook opengraph IDs for the Facebook users. Even if the person is not findable in Facebook search, the Facebook profile can be retrieved by appending the ID to http:// facebook . com / profile.php?id= (spaces added to prevent obfuscation by Mondoweiss comment system)
It seems awfully foolish to expose your most valuable, active and eager hasbara activists to this kind of scrutiny…