Elon Musk changes the rules!.. How can the Arabs defeat “Israel” and support the Palestinian resistance?
In the first days of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, there was a tweet that went viral on X, or Twitter.
This tweet contained a picture of a dead child with traces of blood on his clothes and his face not clear, and written above this picture was a phrase in English that said: “This is the most difficult image we've ever posted.
We are shaking while writing this. We went back and forth about posting this, but we need each and every one of you to know. This happened.”
At first glance, some of you might think that this tweet was written by a reporter covering the Israeli aggression on Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 children.
But, in fact, the one who published this tweet and photo is the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on its official Twitter account.
Not only that, but they made a paid advertisement in order to reach the largest possible number of Twitter users, claiming that this was an Israeli child who was killed by the Palestinians.
This ad is one of many that Israelis are currently posting on social media sites, especially on Twitter.
Why Twitter in particular? Why not Facebook, for example?
Simply because Twitter is currently the main arena for the most important media battle the occupation has waged in recent years, a battle that will largely determine its ability to continue the aggression against the Gaza Strip and achieve the goals of its declared war there.
In short, and in the words of the spokesman for the Israeli mission to the European Union literally spoken a few days ago, “The war is not only on the ground.”
For the Israelis, no matter how strong they are and how much support they have, it’s impossible to win their declared war against the Gaza Strip without winning another parallel battle that they are currently waging against the Palestinians, and all those who support them,
In order to understand the nature of this parallel battle that the Israelis are currently fighting alongside the field battle, firstly we need to understand how Israel is using the tools and methods that Arab people, are ignorant about, in order to win this war.
Secondly, we’ll know what their weak points are, which many of Arab people can clearly exploit, not only to put pressure on the Israelis but also to defeat them.
Today, I will explain to you how, while sitting in your homes, you can play an important role in repelling the Israeli aggression on Gaza and saving the lives of Palestinian people there.
I will also explain to you what Elon Musk and Twitter have to do with this story.
social media platforms have placed significant restrictions on the spread of content against the occupying entity, as you have all likely seen.
In August 2013, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a very interesting piece of news.
The news briefly said that the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in cooperation with the National Union of Israeli Students, decided to form secret units of students whose job is to go on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media networks to defend the Israeli government, doing so without telling anyone that they are working for the government.
Netanyahu's office had allocated a budget of 3 million shekels to this project, or the equivalent of 810 thousand US dollars at the time, in order to employ about 550 students from seven Israeli universities who were proficient in foreign languages.
The Israeli Student Union's mission in this story was to conduct interviews with thousands of Israeli students in order to choose the best among them. Then, on each university campus, the Union would create a headquarters for this project and provide it with computers for the students who would be employed in these secret groups to work on them.
After these young people are selected, they are organized in a semi-military manner.
In each university, a main coordinator is appointed. Under this coordinator are 3 students who work as sub-coordinators:
a student specializing in languages, a student specializing in graphics, and a student specializing in research,
and the rest of the students work under these three.
Of course, they wanted these young people to have a sense of patriotism, but that does not prevent them from giving them incentives to keep their patriotism higher.
The main coordinators at the universities receive full scholarships, the sub-coordinators receive additional scholarships, but smaller ones, while the rest of the students receive symbolic salaries.
The question here is, what exactly do these young people do on social media?
According to statements by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office at the time, these units were tasked with supporting pro-Israeli public or popular diplomacy by developing and publishing content on social media networks directed primarily to international audiences.
In other words, these young people are tasked with improving the image of the Israeli occupation and defending it as an entity in front of the world, which they do by publishing positive content about it and interacting in a certain way with news related to the Israelis.
Here someone might ask a very logical question: Since when have Israelis cared about international public opinion?
What makes them care at all given that they have the support of governments, politicians, and decision-makers in Western countries, especially in the United States and Britain?
We will find that the Israelis answered this question in a paper presented at the tenth edition of the Israeli Herzliya Conference, which was held in 2010.
In this paper, we will find the Israeli Vera Michlin-Shapir, the author of the paper, saying that
“Although foreign policy decision-making involves a closed circle of people and its decisions are usually consistent with the views of elites in each society such as politicians, consultants, and famous academics, public opinion is very important.
Public opinion and media coverage in the United Kingdom in particular limit the government's freedom regarding its pro-Israel foreign policy agenda."
In short, Shapir understands very well that Western governments do not act or make their decisions in a vacuum and cannot completely ignore public opinion or the mood of the people and support the Israelis all the way.
This is a very important statement.
But do you know what’s more important? The title of the paper itself.
"Winning the Battle of the Narrative"
A dangerous title that we must stand before and try to understand because it reveals the extent of the Israelis’ understanding of the nature and aspects of the conflict.
Let us stop at the word “narrative”.
In the context of war, what is meant by narrative is the way people view war within their minds.
Like, why did you enter the war, what are your goals, and are they legitimate or not?
Every war has a narrative and a story in people's minds that goes far beyond numbers, statistics, and field gains on the ground.
The Americans destroyed Vietnam in the last century and won all the battles they fought with the Vietnamese, but despite this, almost everyone agrees that the Americans lost the war in Vietnam, and this was simply because their narrative about the war was lost and people did not buy it.
People simply think that America lost, so losing it is.
Modern military theory says that wars are not won by states on the battlefields, but are won in people's minds.
If you enter a country and destroy it, but people see that you did not win, then you did not win.
It is not enough to win the military war, you must also win the war of narratives or the media war.
The two cannot be separated from each other at all, on the contrary, the second is an extension of the first.
As usual in wars, there are two narratives that contradict each other.
For example, in the current battle between the Israeli army and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, there are two narratives competing for the minds of people everywhere in the world.
The narrative of the Palestinians is simply summarized:
What happened on October 7th was an act of legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation and an attempt to repel the aggression, recover the land, and free the prisoners.
On the other hand, the summary of the Israeli narrative is that they are victims of an unjustified terrorist attack and that they are oppressed and attacked by unjust merciless people.
Who is the one whose narration is to win and convince people, especially those who are not considered a party to the conflict?
This is the parallel battle that the Israelis are currently waging, not only against the Palestinians but also against the Arabs, because whether we like it or not, we are a party to the conflict as witnesses to history.
Therefore, the current aggression against Gaza has two parts that are not separate from each other:
one part includes a military clash and one part includes a clash at the level of narratives.
The Palestinians and the Israelis are now competing to attract almost the same audiences, the international ones.
The positions of the local fans are almost settled. They support the Palestinians without question.
On the other hand, the Israeli masses, who are dominated by the desire for revenge after what happened on October 7, are seen for the first time in many years so enthusiastic about war.
Since the local masses' positions are almost settled, the two sides in the conflict have no one to compete for but the international masses, and each party will try to convince the largest possible number of these people with its narrative, and at the same time try to cast doubt on the counter-narrative or prove its falsity.
The question now is: Now that we know the battle and the target audience, how can we win or convince the target audience of our narrative and that we are right and the other party’s narrative is false and therefore our side should be taken, not theirs?
In order to do this, you first need to reach the target audience itself. Communicate with them directly. Make your voice reach them.
The foreigners or international audiences we target, our voice can reach them in two ways:
The first method is an indirect one. This usually happens through their traditional media, whether it’s TV or the press.
Here, two problems arise.
The first is the extreme bias toward the Israeli narrative and the marginalization and distortion of the Palestinian narrative and the bias against it, which is something that I believe no rational and fair person can deny.
The second problem is that traditional media is a one-way street.
The reader or viewer in this case simply receives only what is presented to them, whether in the press or on TV.
There is no way that you, while you are watching TV, can stop the broadcaster and call them out for being a liar and unscrupulous while presenting proof.
In this context, we find that the control of foreign traditional media over information outlets and the influence of the Israelis on these media have greatly deprived us of conveying the truth of the Palestinian issue to Western audiences.
This problem began to ease with the advent of the Internet, but the real breakthrough was with the emergence of social media in the first decade of the current century, especially Twitter, which is now called “X,” but allow me to refer to it for the rest of the article as Twitter because it is still the most popular name for the site.
Social media has emerged on the scene as a second means of communication with foreign audiences, but nonetheless a direct one. Audience to audience. Direct two-way interaction.
There is no middleman in the middle who can distort the facts or manipulate the narrative.
The two most famous social media outlets in the world were and still are Facebook, founded in 2004, and Twitter, which appeared in 2006.
Facebook, currently affiliated with Meta, has approximately 3 billion users today, and Twitter has approximately 350 million users. These two platforms have a presence all over the world.
The question now is: On which platform of the two are we or the Israelis able to communicate our voice to the world and sell our narrative? Twitter or Facebook?
The answer is definitely Twitter. There is no competition at all between the two in this particular context.
Twitter is literally the king when we talk about forming an international public opinion.
Facebook, first of all, is not suitable for news or political content, and in recent times it has begun to move away from this space completely.
Secondly, Facebook, as you know, clearly restricts pro-Palestinian content and its reach, which is done through algorithms and its employees.
Twitter is the opposite, it can be considered the largest interactive news platform in the world.
In terms of the platform, it has allowed the emergence of what is known as the citizen journalist, who can share with millions of platform users any news or event that he is present through, whether in writing or in audio or video.
On the other hand, Twitter gives the broad masses of ordinary people the opportunity to interact with a group that is not widely present on Facebook.
I am here talking about heads of state and government, parliamentarians, journalists, academics, institutions, and other decision-makers.
A large portion of these people are on Twitter, not on Facebook or any other social media.
That's why Twitter is the social media that has the ability to influence people's opinions and form public opinion regarding any issue.
This is a fact that the people who understand it most are the Israelis and the Palestinians.
All the media wars that Palestinians and Israelis waged against each other on social media sites were on Twitter.
Perhaps the first clear battle between the two sides on Twitter was the media battle that coincided with the Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2012. The matter reached the point that the foreign press called it the “First Twitter War”.
The two sides entered into a war of information and hashtags, during which they competed for the minds of people all over the world, and they both chose that the battleground be Twitter, on which at the time two-thirds of the world leaders had accounts.
This is in addition to other politicians, journalists, and all the important people who make decisions or direct public opinion.
This happened in 2012, 2014, and 2021, and it also happened in 2023.
From the first moment of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ attack on the Israelis in the occupied territories on October 7, Twitter turned into a warzone of opinions, news, hashtags, and information, some of which are real and some of which are fake.
News, developments, photos, and videos were posted on Twitter with unprecedented speed and intensity.
The battle began on the 7th. Exactly two days later, specifically on October 9, Twitter said that there were 50 million posts on the site pertaining to the battle between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
This has made a large portion of the site's users around the world who are interested in knowing exactly what is happening rely on Twitter by following the news and monitoring the opinions and counter-opinions that people write about the war.
What helped this happen is that Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, unlike Mark Zuckerberg, left the doors open on the platform without major restrictions, neither through algorithms nor moderators.
He pretty much lets everyone say what they want and winning the battle is up to each of the two.
In my opinion, he is happy about this situation. He is happy that Twitter has become the main area for the media battle, which is a reflection of the field battle that is preoccupying the entire world now, much more than even the Russian-Ukrainian war.
But this, of course, put him and his site in the crosshairs of traditional media outlets, which criticized Twitter's lack of attempt to control content.
What matters in this context is that Twitter is an ideal arena through which every supporter of the Palestinians and the justice of their cause can support their narrative by engaging in the violent media battle currently taking place on the platform.
Of course, since you want to communicate your voice to foreigners, you must speak their language,
and the most important language in this context is English, which, by the way, is the language that the Israelis focus on.
This is very logical because it’s the first international language that a large portion of the world’s people understand.
But of course, knowing the language is not enough. What’s more important than the language is the message itself.
Now you, as a foreigner, have nothing to do with the conflict and are standing and watching.
Whose narrative will you believe? The Palestinian or the Israeli narrative?
What will determine this point are 3 factors. Logic, evidence, and history.
Let's start with logic. For example, the Israelis claim that the Baptist Hospital massacre, which claimed the lives of about 471 Gazan civilians on October 17, was the result of an incorrect launch of a missile by the resistance and not from an air strike by the Israeli army.
This is a claim that contradicts the simplest rules of logic, not because it is impossible for a false launch to occur, but simply because the enormous size of the massacre and its victims indicate that the thing with which the hospital was struck has a huge destructive power, in a way that is completely inconsistent with the known destructive power of the resistance missiles that we see reaching Israel and not doing a tenth of this damage.
Simple logic like this can be shared by people who understand it in proper English with foreigners who may not have a background on the conflict and its parties that would enable them to judge the falsehood, unreasonableness, or illogicality of the accusation.
The second point that can convince someone of your narrative is evidence and proof. This includes things like photos and videos.
We do not need more than to share with the world the visual material that explains the extent of the Israeli crimes against defenseless civilians, especially women and children. Pictures and videos are more powerful than words.
Here I would like to share with you an excerpt from an article published by the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban in the Jerusalem Post in August 1982, after the destruction caused by the Israeli bombing of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Eban was explaining to the Israelis, from his point of view as a diplomat, the extent of the moral loss that the aggression against Lebanon caused to the Israelis.
In this context, he wrote that the main victim outside the battlefield lay in the transformation he saw in the eyes of Israel’s friends as soon as its name came to mind.
He said, “During the last weeks, our image in the consciousness of our friends was linked to the screams of the bereaved, the wounded, and the children standing in line to get the water that the Israeli blockade deprived them of.”
This was in 1982, before the Internet and social media.
The images that the world can see today about the crimes of the occupation in Gaza are no less horrific than what happened in 1982. At the same time, there’s a lot more and faster to spread.
The third factor that affects people’s acceptance of the narrative of the conflicting parties in the context of wars is time or history.
The longer the conflict lasts, the more the party lies, so the more likely its lie will be exposed over time, and the more this negatively affects people’s acceptance of its narrative.
In the book “Narration as Argument” published in 2017, specifically in Chapter 12 under the title “How to Win Wars: The Role of the War Narrative,” researchers explain that, with the passage of time, evidence appears that confirms or denies the narratives presented, and if you are a liar and there is an accumulation of evidence that contradicts your narrative, then with time this narrative’s credibility will erode, and as the narrative continues to erode, in the end, it will reach a point where it becomes a burden on the narrator or the party who adopts it.
You will no longer be able to defend it because people no longer trust you because you lie so much.
This is, by the way, what has been happening with the Israeli narrative recently.
For example, when Israeli occupation army spokesman Daniel Hagari denied that they had bombed the Baptist Hospital, the CNN correspondent asked him a very simple question: “Why can the world believe what you say now when you lied before about the killing of the late Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whom you said at the time was killed by the Palestinians?”
Here, the spokesman for the occupation army had no choice but to try and justify that the army was hasty in issuing conclusions and rulings.
But in the end, the accumulation of these lies one after another contributes to people not accepting the Israeli narrative in their current war against Gaza, and perhaps the people on Twitter have a major role in exposing these lies and making people know the truth.
On Twitter, no one says something and then runs away, like on television, for example.
What is said will be recorded, and you will find many who will dig behind you and confront you with the truth and prove that you are lying or misleading, if you are a liar or misleading. And any deleted tweet will be brought up again.
This makes Twitter the best possible means for Palestinians and supporters of their cause to sell their narrative of the war to the world and refute the Israeli counter-narrative.
Twitter is still the most important platform for influencing Western, especially American, public opinion.
The number of Facebook users in America is much greater than the number of Twitter users, but despite this, Twitter is the most influential in shaping opinion.
The Israelis are aware of this truth more than anyone.
According to an investigation conducted by the American website POLITICO, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently made 30 advertisements on Twitter in less than a week, which were viewed more than 4 million times.
The ads that began appearing on October 12 were targeting young people over the age of 25 who live in Brussels, Paris, Munich, and Hague.
At the same time, the Ministry made 75 ads with similar content on YouTube, which were directed to viewers in Western countries such as the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
What is the purpose of these advertisements, regardless of the credibility of their content?
Its goal is simply the same goal that supporters of the Palestinian cause are supposed to have, which is to achieve what is called strategic communication.
What is strategic communication?
The British National Security Council defines strategic communication as the systematic and coordinated use of all means of communication to achieve national security objectives by influencing the attitudes and behaviors of individuals, groups, and countries.
Does the hurly-burly and the constant talk on Twitter really make a difference on the ground?
Can talking on Twitter and trying to build international public opinion in favor of the Palestinians be useful, in terms of the material facts that say that the Israelis, for example, are overwhelmingly superior militarily and that they have, but are not limited to, lethal weapons such as the F-35?
This is a very legitimate question that anyone has the right to ask.
This question was answered by a study published in 2018 under the title
“Does Social Media Influence Conflict? Evidence from the 2012 Gaza Conflict.”
As is clear from the title, the study attempts to determine the extent of the influence of social media on the Israeli war that was launched in Gaza in 2012.
The summary of this study, in brief, is that the shift in public support on social media in favor of the Palestinians contributed to a decrease in the intensity of the conflict and influenced the Israelis’ response to ceasefire efforts.
According to the study, the impact of public support on social media was greater than the impact of the international players who engaged in the conflict negotiations, led by Egypt ,the United States and UN.
I conclude my words here,
Tell me in the comments below, who among you is participating or intends to participate in the war of narratives and represent the Palestinian narrative in front of the whole world on Twitter?