Facebook, Twitter, Israel’s new battle ground

The Israeli military has announced that it will begin recruiting computer experts for a planned Internet and new media department unit.

Army Spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu made the announcement on Monday while speaking at the Eilat Journalists Conference, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

The spokesman explained the new department would target the Internet’s social networking sites to create a direct link with international audiences rather than addressing them through the regular media.

The plan was presented at the Monday conference alongside another initiative by the Israeli Information and Diaspora Ministry to train people to represent Israel independently on the Internet and other domains.

According to Benayahu, from each group recruited at the Army Spokesman’s Office, between 8 to 10 young people who are experts in Web 2.0 — YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — would be identified before training and assigned to the new unit.

Benayahu told Haaretz that the new program would be implemented in the next few months.

The Army Spokesman’s Office started work in this area during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s deadly 23-day military offensive on the Gaza Strip in December 2007-January 2008.

The military unit posted videos of attacks on targets in the Gaza Strip on YouTube.

The Spokesman’s Office has also contacted bloggers who are known as opinion-makers and directly sent them information and pictures.

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