On October 7th Hamas launched a horrifying raid into Israel killing 1,200 Israelis taking over 200 hostages, and displaced hundreds of thousands. This violence represented the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. In response Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas, the genocidal terrorist group who rules Gaza. Most news coverage focuses on ground combat, but my emphasis lies on the information war. Researchers at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command shared this insight on Chinese information operations.
Without information superiority, the Chinese believe that they cannot achieve dominance in other domains: land, sea, air, or space.
I agree with the Chinese
#Hamas=TheConfederacy
Mark Twain never said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” He actually said
History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.
After the attack, the hashtag #HamasIsISIS began trending on social media. This excellent framing helped convince America to support Israel’s mission in Gaza. Just as the forces of civilization needed to eliminate the barbaric savages of ISIS, now the genocidal maniacs of Hamas warrant elimination. Though, the analogy fails to note that the Atlantic Ocean protected Americans from ISIS, while geography provides no protection to Israel from Hamas. To complete our kaleidoscope we need a historical analogy that showcases a threat to America right on its borders.
As Colin Woodard chronicled in American Nations, only the northern states encompassing Yankeedom wanted to immediately declare war on The Confederacy. The other nations preferred to let the South create their slaveholder paradise, but Fort Sumter persuaded the remaining nations to eliminate The Confederacy.
It took just one attack from a rival nation on the American continent to convince Americans to destroy the rival nation. Israel has allowed Hamas, an organization that explicitly calls for genocide against the Jews, to exist for 25 years before deciding that it must end. Both Israel and the U.S. possessed only half-baked plans for what happens after they eliminate their dangerous enemy, and like the U.S. I expect Israel to make their half-baked plan work.
American Information Landscape
Geography contextualizes the information war. America, like every other country, features its own mix of social media platforms and influencers. Understanding the American information landscape involves gauging public opinion regarding Israel before the October 7th attack. According to Gallup, we see a split in US public opinion based on political party. Republicans remain sympathetic to Israel over the last two decade, while Democrats recently became more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Democrat support for Israel increased since the attack. Morning Consult's May 2021 poll showed Democrats sympathy lying with the Palestinians (18%) over Israel (12%). A follow up poll conducted after the attack shows Democrat sympathy lying with Israel (28%) over the Palestinians (15%).
But, changing the wording of the question produces differing results. The previous two polls included the options of supporting both or I don’t know. Brookings asked whether America should support Israel, Palestine, or neither. Support for neither is much higher than I expected. Before the the October 7th attacks 73% of Democrats, and 50% of Republicans, want the US to support neither side. After the attacks those numbers fell to 58% and 26% respectively.
These polls show that while the US supports Israel overall, this support may erode over time, like how support for Ukraine erode over time. Highlighting this trend, Axios reports that Pro-Palestinian posts outpaced Pro-Israeli posts 12:1 for October 16th to 30th. The Economist analyzed Twitter and Instagram and found that Pro-Palestinian posts outpaced Pro-Israeli posts 2:1 & 1.5:1 respectively from October 7th to 23rd. While Pro-Israel content appears competitive on Instagram and Twitter, Pro-Palestinian content dominates TikTok, the most popular social network for the youth.
Learning From Our Enemies
Israel needs to change the anti-Israel bent of the Islamic public and keep the pro-Israel bent of the American public. To accomplish this Israel must penetrate allied and adversary social influence networks. Unfortunately for Israel, penetrating an nation’s social influence networks produces tons of challenges.
Two months ago, Meta took down two government led social influence operations, one Chinese and one Russian. The Chinese operation highlights the difficulty of penetrating another nation’s influence networks. The Chinese accounts made linguistic errors, posted infrequently, and operated mostly during the Chinese weekday working hours (several hours ahead of US time). Meta concluded that the influence operation performed quite poorly.
The Russian operation appeared much more competent. The Russians created fake versions of news sites like Spiegel, The Guardian and Bild, promoted articles from those fake websites on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter, and promoted petitions on websites like Change.org and Avaaz, and LiveJournal. Meta noted
This is the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation that we’ve disrupted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. It presented an unusual combination of sophistication and brute force. The spoofed websites and the use of many languages demanded both technical and linguistic investment. The amplification on social media, on the other hand, relied primarily on crude ads and fake accounts.
Israel can learn from these operations, they can create fake versions of leading Muslim websites and promote Pro-Israeli content from those fake websites. While some may squirm at the duplicitous nature of the actions I described, all’s fair in love and information war.