Gaza War of Words on Twitter

The battle being waged between Hamas and Israeli forces is also being fought online.

Both sides have been using Twitter to convey their political messages.

Anchor Aaron Schachter speaks with Orit Perlov with the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel about this so-called Twitter war.

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Aaron Schachter: Beyond the flying rockets and missiles there’s also a social media war playing out between Hamas and the Israeli military. Both sides are using Twitter to score rhetorical points. One tweet sent out by the Israel Defense Forces asks users to retweet if they agree that Israel has the right to self defense. Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades responded with a tweet declaring that Israelis have opened the gates of hell on themselves. Keeping tabs on who’s winning this social media war isn’t easy. Orit Perlov is with the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel. She says it’s not about throwing rhetoric from one side to the other.

Orit Perlov: It’s about young people having conversations. They have the ability now, they have the tools to talk to each other. We know the borders are not important and there’s a huge conversation taking place around what’s happening now. And unfortunately, I have to say Israelis are not part of them.

Schachter: And is the conversation in Arabic different from the conversation that we see in English?

Perlov: Yeah, 100%.

Schachter: How so?

Perlov: First of all, many more Arabic users speaking in Arabic are using Twitter.

Schachter: Considering that the conversation as you’re talking about is much more voluminous on the pro-Palestinian side, you know, so what? What is the point of that, where does that lead?

Perlov: By the way, I didn’t say the pro-Palestinians, you know, it’s funny if I can like give you in trends what I can see, one thing that I can see that I didn’t see before is that all sides want to like immediately out of this aggression. I can give you like Egyptian, Gazan, West Bank or whatever, Jordanian, everybody wants it to stop. Nobody wants more in escalation. That’s one thing that I can assure you. Arabic Twitter, you know, English Twitter, everything. So and it’s young people and you would expect them to be a little more populist, but they’re not, they’re not.

Schachter: You know, that’s really interesting because we’re looking at the official Twitter feeds. We’re not–well, I’ll speak for myself–I’m not seeing so much of this conversation. What I’m seeing are official statements. And certainly the official statements are incredibly belligerent.

Perlov: I know, but this is exactly, this is the difference. When you have an official statement it’s more the institution, it’s the country, it’s the government, it’s the you know, the parties, but it’s not the people. What separates Twitter maybe from the television office, other official media, okay, is giving a youth platform you know, for the [inaudible 02:34] speak out.

Schachter: Orit Perlov is with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Orit, thank you.

Perlov: Thank you.

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