After all my posts on the Israel-Palestine conflict it is nice to get a reminder that YouTube is more than just a instrument of war (it’s weird to be able to write that). According to Reuters, the Vatican is opening a YouTube channel to show Pope and church events.
Hamas has launched a new website, www.palutube.com, to highlight pro-Palestine videos from the war in Gaza and assorted other pro-Palestinian content including nationalist songs and spirited demonstrations. This is in response to Israel’s already strong Web 2.0 presence covering the war. Palutube is in Arabic by default but a drop down menu on the right side allows you to switch to English. Currently I am having a great deal of trouble loading the site so don’t be surprised if you have trouble as well. Nonetheless I will try to embed a video from Palutube below. It is worth noting that because Hamas has chosen to host their own website (though not host all of their own videos), they are not bound by any other web portal’s terms of service (like the IDF is bound to YouTube’s TOS and authority). Thus there is some powerful and controversial language on Palutube. Most notably a banner that reads “The Zionist Holocaust in Gaza of the Innocent People [sic]“.
We are now talking about a war in which Israel refuses to allow foreign journalists access into Gaza, and both sides are battling for global support and to shape the narrative of the conflict via Web 2.0 strategies. As the Gulf War was the first cable news war, the current Israel-Palestine conflict is the first YouTube war. The obvious question being: is this the future of wartime journalistic propaganda?
It is clear from watching just a few of the videos available on Palutube that there is a different tone here than on the IDF’s YouTube channel. The IDF’s content has focused on justifying their attacks, which have been widely criticized as a disproportionate response to Hamas’ aggression, through videos of Hamas’ rocket attacks and evidence of other Hamas wrongdoing. In contrast the new Hamas site is a mix of videos that either display the large scale suffering that is going on in Gaza or provide evidence that Palestinian morale in Gaza is not dead through songs and videos of demonstrations.
The latter videos are particularly of interest considering the character of the Israeli attacks. It is quite clear that Israel’s attacks are an act of aggression by the side with the upper hand. Hamas rocket fire into Israel, while indefensible from the perspective of someone who would like to see the conflict resolved through diplomacy, is essentially impotent in comparison to the Israeli response. The Israeli message is that Hamas is thoroughly out gunned and by continuing to fire into Israel Hamas is inviting Israel to respond tenfold simply because they can. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece Rashid Khalidi presented a particularly insightful quote from former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Temporarily setting aside how disturbing that statement is, with Palutube Hamas appears intent on saying it is also not correct.
My friend “Joe Glo” made a great comment on my original post covering the IDF’s YouTube channel.
These images may be enhancing the realness of military violence, but they are also coded to be received in the same vein as movies, as videogames. They allow the IDF to control the narrative of the attacks; the IDF can retroactively write the script of the invasion.
Joe is absolutely correct that the IDF is attempting to control the narrative of their attacks. The IDF YouTube channel is clearly propaganda in the sense that it is entirely one-sided and can be misleading. But I wonder whether, as Joe says, these videos are to be received and processed like video games and movies. Take this video for example:
As video games have evolved most game makers have taken the opportunity of newer, better technologies as a challenge to improve the realism of their games. Note Call of Duty 4. If you follow that link to the game’s Wikipedia page and glance at the “Story” section you will find a long convoluted tale involving decades of complex international relations and leaders with conflicting interests. While in the past it may have been unclear what was the conflict between Megaman and Doc Wily (imagine the “Grendel” of the Megaman series where you play as one of Wily’s robots attempting to infiltrate Dr. Light’s lab where Light is attempting to finally complete his robo-terrorist Megaman). In the present games have tapped into the motivations behind real world conflicts.
That is exactly what the IDF YouTube channel lacks. The videos have a journalistic feel, as though these are “pure” documents where “the facts speak for themselves.” However, the juxtaposition with contemporary video games makes it all the more clear the videos are propaganda. We know from Call of Duty 4 if someone is going through all the trouble to commit the acts documented by the IDF, they must have some motivation. Israel does not share that motivation with us, they can’t, and this is why their coverage of the war has to be propaganda. If in the IDF YouTube channel or the Israeli consulate’s Twitter feed there was any acknowledgment that Hamas believes their actions to be somehow justified, that would appear to be sympathizing with the enemy you are slaughtering. It would open up the door to the idea that perhaps Israel has taken the wrong course of action. The IDF YouTube channel fails to pass the sniff test of a present-day video game.
The IDF has released two new YouTube videos that are sure to add new sparks to a number of already contentious debates. In the video below IDF Captain Benjamin Rutland explains the IDF’s motivation behind controversial mortar fire on a UN school in Gaza.
Another video cited by Captain Rutland shows the alleged Hamas rocket fire from the UN school. Israel is correct that by housing their forces in a UN school Hamas is in violation of international law however Israel’s attacks on Gaza are also in violation of international law. Due to the density of the population in Gaza Israel’s attacks are in violation of Geneva Conventions. And here we violate international law to punish those who see it fit to violate international law…
UPDATE: The UN has issued a statement denying there were any Hamas militants in the attacked school.
We live in a truly absurd age, if you require evidence of this notice that the Israel Defense Forces media & PR wing has setup a YouTube channel to share videos of the IDF’s air attacks in Gaza. Anyone want to join me on a trip to Montparnasse Cemetery for a seance with the spirit of Jean Baudrillard?
In the last year we have seen a rise in “citizen based journalism,” but it is strange (though unsurprising) to see a nation’s military attempt to usurp media coverage of their tactics with video recorded during missions. It is even more strange that the IDF’s idea of justifying or explaining their actions is to provide the world with video of who they are blowing up as those people are being blown up. Yet I must admit, it worked. The first thought that came to mind when I saw what appeared to be Hamas operatives loading and transporting rockets was “Yeah, maybe someone should blow those guys up.” Allow me to say that I am not voicing support for Israel’s actions, just that on the shallowest cognitive level, maybe more visceral than cognitive (maybe visceral, then cognitive?), the IDF’s videos were effective.
Among the interesting ironies here: in a culture that has trended towards fantasy, digital existence and detachment from basic human experiences, here YouTube is allowing the violence in our world to be made more real rather than less. These videos are not the sort of images one would typically find in war coverage on the world news. And to further entangle things some of the IDF’s videos have been taken down, most likely due to graphic content but YouTube policy is not to offer comment on why particular videos were removed from the site. According to the IDF’s brief statement on their YouTube channel’s home page YouTube has allowed some of the censored videos to be accessible again.
I would also like to add that despite my claim about these videos enhancing the realness of military violence I am not wholly uncritically accepting these videos as the real of the Gaza attacks. If the IDF has say, videos of two different bombings. One video is clearly targeting Hamas operatives while the other is more ambiguous, targeting Palestinians believed to be Hamas operatives but not engaged in suspicious activity and possibly innocent civilians. I realize these two theoretical videos would not have an equal likelihood of making it to YouTube.
Warner Music recently pulled their artists’ music videos from YouTube after negotiations between the two companies broke down. Warner Music is seeking an increase in the fee they receive when one of their videos is watched on YouTube. There is also rumor that a group of major music labels, including Warner Music, are considering founding their own rival to YouTube. The proposed new site would be similar to Hulu, a partnership between major television networks to offer full programs online with commercials.
It will be interesting to see the direction YouTube chooses as it begins to accrue rivals. Three years ago when YouTube was first becoming popular it was essentially the only site specializing in providing video on demand. Hulu seems to be less of a threat to YouTube because YouTube’s strength is providing brief clips rather than half hour programs. A music video website launched by major music labels would be a real threat to steal some of YouTube’s traffic as music videos are a major chunk of YouTube’s content. It is not wholly unlikely that we will reach a point where most large corporate content providers either provide content on their own websites exclusively or via consortiums like Hulu, at which point the interest in YouTube’s more grassroots content will truly be tested.
I believe YouTube will have staying power even if it loses most of its major corporate content. YouTube will be moving from being the entire online video encyclopedia, to being primarily a site for user generated content. But as we’ve seen users love uploading videos to YouTube and some people have even been able to launch careers that way. I also cannot imagine YouTube losing favor among smaller entities like independent record labels. For smaller entities YouTube’s market dominance is a chance to easily make your work available to a vast audience rather than a threat to your profit margins. I imagine this is what Google envisioned with their purchase of YouTube in 2006, despite some critics’ concern that YouTube would fold or be unprofitable without full corporate support. There was never any reason to believe corporate content providers would stick with YouTube as it became easier and made more business sense to host their own content but it is difficult to envision the entirety of the internet suddenly deciding they no longer want to share videos with each other.