Steve Burns: Adventures in Obfuscation

The term "information warfare" has been used frequently by Bush administration officials who argue that 21st-century warriors must consider the internet as a key battlefield in the struggle for public opinion. But how does one fight an "information war"? The Israeli Foreign Ministry shows us how.

First, consider the graph below, featured on the Foreign Ministry's website, showing the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past year:



The period from July to October corresponds to an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas. This truce period was honored by Hamas, as the graph clearly indicates. Perhaps too clearly, because the graph above, after being linked to by blogs critical of the Israeli attack on Gaza, has been replaced by this graph:

The underlying data - numbers of rockets fired - are the same, but take out your magnifying glass and observe how the height of the bar for October (1 rocket fired) is now equal to the height of the bar for November (126 rockets fired).

And what happened in November? A November 5 New York Times article, "Israeli Strike Is First in Gaza Since Start of Cease-Fire" reported, “An Israeli security force had entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel and fought with Hamas gunmen”, after which “Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza.” That was November 4. The rocket attacks resumed immediately afterwards. This chain of events is supported by Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories:

Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified.

Of course, the game of “They started it!” is always played on morally shifty ground, since each side can always conveniently start the clock ticking at the most recent act of aggression by the other side. But in this case, the facts seem pretty clear: there was a cessation of rocket attacks for four months, this was not reciprocated by Israel, which did nothing during the period to lift the blockade on Gaza, until early November, when Israel resumed armed attacks, followed by a resumption of rocket fire. For a moment, the Israeli Foreign Ministry allowed information to leak out to the public that confirmed this chain of events, at least until they were able to fire up their "fog machine of war."