Turning occupation into memes; 'Israel’s' favorite strategy
9 Min Read
While Israeli occupation forces kill, bomb, assault, and arrest innocent Palestinians, their social media platforms seem to be turning such heinous acts into jokes in search of desperate likes.
Young dancing soldiers, jumping on TikTok trends, memes, and jokes... it all sounds "fun" doesn’t it?
However, if there would ever be a backstage of the Israeli occupation forces’ social media platforms, it would be a room full of blood, murderous weapons, and the bodies of thousands of murdered Palestinians.
What happens backstage is a pure whitewashing of Israeli crimes for the sake of some desperate interaction and affection. Attacking Gaza? Let's make an infographic about how many "terrorists" there are in the Strip. Palestinians defending themselves against Israeli attacks? Let’s film a short clip about our soldiers crying to get some emotions out of our audience.
And this is how it works… for them…
Know your audience: Who are they targeting?
In 2012, Fast Company conducted an interview with IOF Spokesperson at the time, Eytan Buchman, in which he spoke about certain insights on how Israeli forces get things done regarding their social media platforms.
During the interview, the spokesperson said the Israeli army is "a very young army" and that’s where "the innovation comes from."
“… most people come in when they’re 18. Males serve for three years and women serve for two years. This forms a parity where people find themselves between 18 and 21 and inside military operations. The idea of flexibility and innovation is always encouraged.”
The Israeli spokesperson went on and talked about how “innovation” usually makes it to the world and how it “opens up new horizons." He even recalled one of the soldiers who had to pay for the IOF WordPress account “using her own credit card… instead of dealing with the military bureaucracy."
He said, during the interview, that there are “two primary interactions with social media. The first is the interactive media branch, which is responsible for outreach to different audiences online. The second is desk offices from traditional media, such as Leibovitch... In some cases, we also maintain Facebook pages and websites in specific languages in order to reach out to certain regions.”
Ironically, the spokesperson bragged about how the IOF is operating on different social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Google+, and even Pinterest in order to increase the occupation’s “legitimacy, to be transparent… to combat misinformation that being flooded out from inside Gaza.”
Legitimacy and transparency by ‘Israel’? Think again.
Whether it's jumping on trends, trending music, or even memes, the IOF’s strategy on TikTok does the job of completely victimizing the occupier while criminalizing the occupied.
For example, in one of the TikTok videos, during New Year's Eve, the IOF account posted a wrap-up about the year 2022, as part of the relevant TikTok trends where one would recall moments that took place during the year with background music playing A Sky Full of Stars, a song by Coldplay.
Zooming out, the video had no sight of Israeli occupation forces committing any massacres, murders, bombings, arrests, or assaults on Palestinians. The short video completely altered reality, failing to mention Israeli crimes and showcase Israeli weapons, its soldiers ‘in action’, and its warplanes.
Playing innocent, the IOF captions the video with: “This year was filled with highs and lows, but we pushed through every challenge. How was your 2022?”
The videos are endless.
In 2021, on TikTok, the IOF jumped on the “She's Gonna Be A Victoria's Secret Supermodel” trend where they filmed one of their tanks, with the caption: “We’re serving looks since 1948.”
Of course, the IOF will make no mention of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) during which Zionist gangs committed horrific massacres in Palestine against Palestinians, killing and forcefully expelling them from their motherland. This date is marked by “Israel” as its “independence”.
The only thing that "Israel" has been "serving" since 1948 is aggression, occupation, and colonization of an entire population.
See more: Palestine.. 74 years after the Nakba
In another instance, the IOF posted a video on TikTok on Easter with an Israeli soldier running with the writing on the video “POV: Us on easter morning looking for chocolate eggs [chocolate emoji].”
There was no context for the footage. Was it an Israeli soldier running toward a Palestinian to beat him as what always happens? If so, why chasing a Palestinian would be turned into a joke on social media? One comment said he was probably “hunting the Christians celebrating Easter.”
Palestinian Orthodox Christians in occupied #AlQuds are celebrating the #HolyFire ceremony under occupation and siege imposed by the Israeli occupation forces at a time when "Israel" hopes to excise the Arab identity of Al-Quds, comprised of both Christian and Muslim rituals,… pic.twitter.com/T4xv8tWOeS
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) April 15, 2023
Empowering women? More like assaulting them
On International Women’s Day, the IOF account on TikTok posted “Women get the job done," with a video of a girl being trained in the IOF as she is filmed going on missions while holding weapons and on a tank. At the end of the video, the girl is seen having this "dreamy" look on her face after the end of her shift, making the military occupation of Palestine look "dreamy" to the audience.
@idf Women get the job done 👑 #internationalwomensday ♬ original sound - Kiera 🌟
Of course, there was no mention of the following. In January this year, the Israeli occupation launched a large-scale campaign of brutal repression against Palestinian prisoners, most notably female prisoners as they were subjected to brutal practices by Israeli authorities.
Israeli occupation forces usually brutally assault Palestinian women stationed at Al-Aqsa Mosque while harassing, expelling, and arresting many others.
The Israeli occupation forces assaulted a woman in the vicinity of #AlAqsaMosque, took off her hijab, and forced her to leave amidst a new storming of the Mosque this morning.#AlAqsaUnderAttack #Palestine pic.twitter.com/vkKcPJRnxK
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 5, 2022
If this is their definition of women empowerment, the IOF needs a whole new dictionary.
'Is this a parody account?'
Not a single Ramadan has passed without the Israeli occupation forces, along with the illegal settlers, attacking Palestinian worshippers.
This Ramadan alone and for three nights in a row, the Israeli occupation forces stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and attacked Palestinian worshippers practicing Itikaf.
Israeli forces usually carry out brutal attacks against the Holy Mosque as Palestinians practice Ramadan acts of worship inside.
During these attacks, Israeli occupation forces use rubber bullets and smoke and stun grenades against the unarmed worshippers.
On March 2023, the IOF page wished Muslims "a meaningful and peaceful holiday" with audacity. This prompted one Twitter user to question whether the account was a parody account.
Tonight marks the beginning of the holy month of #Ramadan. We wish everyone celebrating within Israel and around the world a meaningful and peaceful holiday. 🕌🌙 pic.twitter.com/9SQgEuEnPP
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 22, 2023
Memes to defeat the ‘enemy’: Social media 101?
On a Twitter post on Valentine’s Day, the IOF posted three photos about “Hamas’ love language” where they mentioned quotes and previous news about Hamas. One of the pictures hinted that Hamas fires rockets "without any occasion" as part of its "gift giving" while completely disregarding the Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Gaza Strip, and in the West Bank.
Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas seem to be the IOF’s favorite opponents on their social media platforms. In one of their posts on Halloween, the IOF posted a costume for the occasion named "Hamas terrorist", while describing what the costume includes.
The caption that was posted was: "If you see this walking down the street, it’s not a costume..." The comments on the post varied, with some people saying this was an IOF costume and others writing "FREE PALESTINE".
"Do YOU know what the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza is? Watch to find out." With this caption, the IOF decided to describe a video they posted about the Islamic Jihad Movement. The video said the Palestinian faction is focused on the "destruction of the state of Israel."
The video received a backlash. People in the comments slammed the video with some saying, "Since when defending and dying for the liberation of your own country is terrorism?" Others stated the fact that "Israel" is an occupation by saying, "Why don't u tell the people how u came into power? Did u not steal their land and harm Palestinian citizens?"
The IOF social media team also got on the "Little Miss" trend where people make comedic characters that sum up their personality and are called Little Miss "something".
This was also slammed by social media users. When the IOF posted a picture that says "little miss combats terrorism in the Middle East," people started to reply "Little Miss Terrorism in the Middle East" and "Little Miss War criminals." In another picture of the same trend, people started commenting "Little miss makes me sick to my stomach..." and "Ethnic cleansing but make it quirky," hinting at using memes to hide Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
While the obsession seems to grow against whoever resists the Israeli occupation and defends the Palestinian lands, the Palestinian narrative has always triumphed and excelled over the Israeli one.
During Seif Al-Quds Battle, many pro-Palestine accounts started to publish videos and infographics about the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip in 2021.
Even Israeli media admitted that the most popular posts that were made then were in support of the Palestinians.
“…The most viral example had nearly 2 million likes on Bella Hadid’s Instagram page… Another popular infographic from @paliroots had over 500,000 likes. In comparison, most of the IDF’s videos and photos had likes in the tens of thousands, and only occasionally topping 100,000.”
- The Forward
At one point, during the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip, the IOF social media team seemed desperate enough to copy the same format of a Pro-Palestine post while changing the whole narrative to become pure Israeli propaganda.
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Crimes hidden in emojis and hashtags
While the IOF's social media account may look "glorious" and "fun" to some from the outside, there is no mention of the brutal Israeli administrative detention policy, there is no mention of killing children, there is no mention of uprooting Palestinian olive trees, there is no mention of ethnically cleansing a whole indigenous population, just as there is no mention of Israeli illegal checkpoints and settlements. There is not even any mention of "Israel" being the OCCUPATION it is!
