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The Military Twitter

Israeli Army Retweeting 1967 War As It Happened 317

An anonymous reader writes "This is a new one, twitter as a form of historical reenactment: 'Israel's army is giving a "live" blow-by-blow account of the 1967 Six Day War, tweeting each air strike at the exact time it occurred 46 years ago ... @IDF1967 "is an official Israel Defence Forces account that is aimed at re-tweeting the events of the Six Day War in live time", ... The account was tweeting key events in the battle against the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that took place from June 5 to 10, 1967 and includes pictures and videos, the army said. The tweets are mostly in Hebrew, with some translated into English. "In response to repeated provocations by Egypt, the State of Israel and the IDF are going to war. We will not sit idly as the enemy forces tighten the noose around our necks," the opening tweet said around 8.00am (1500 AEST) on Wednesday when Israel landed its first preemptive air strike 46 years ago.'"
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Israeli Army Retweeting 1967 War As It Happened

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  • Liberty (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:27PM (#43919567)

    So when are they going to reenact the attack on the USS Liberty?

    • Re:Liberty (Score:4, Interesting)

      by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @08:59PM (#43920665)

      So when are they going to reenact the attack on the USS Liberty?

      On June 8, I suppose.

      • Re:Liberty (Score:5, Informative)

        by cavreader ( 1903280 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @11:49PM (#43921513)

        The USS Liberty attack demonstrates why you shouldn't send your SIGINT assets into a volatile war zone. The incident was collateral damage and the Israeli's did apologize. Also at the time the US-Israeli relationship was nothing like it is today. They were not enemies but Isreal was not a US client. In 1956 the US forced France, Isreal, and Britain to call off their attempts to take over the Suez Canal. At the time the Russians were supporting Egypt and continued fighting might have dragged the US into a direct confrontation with Russia. In the 1973 war the US government did not resupply Isreal until after the Israeli's broadcast their intentions to enact their "Samson Option" in the clear so all parties could intercept the message. The Samson option meant they were loading their nukes on their F-4's and Jericho missiles. Nixon agreed the next day to re-supply the Israelis.

        • by c0lo ( 1497653 )

          The USS Liberty attack demonstrates why you shouldn't send your SIGINT assets into a volatile war zone. The incident was collateral damage and the Israeli's did apologize.

          Ummm... did more than apologize: it paid about $13mil [wikipedia.org] for the gaffe. True, the apologies seemed to have helped, as Israel paid only $6mils from the total of 17mils bill+interests quoted to them by US for the material damage.
          Anyway, the above is likely to be off-topic: I can bet Israel is not going to tweet about these payments.

        • "At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish."
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [wikipedia.org]

          Isreal has a habit of attacking who they want, when they want, where they want...with no repercussions whatsoever.

          I am Jewish by birth but I am disgusted with the politics of Isreal.

  • What's the over/under on some news outlet somewhere posting this as Breaking News as if it's currently happening? Wouldn't be the first time media misunderstood intent.
  • Eyeroll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:29PM (#43919593)

    Interesting piece of propaganda

    • It is propaganda, but it looks to me like they are testing some kind of whole system that does this...maybe it scrapes updates from some kind of internal database of action reports?

      Whatever it is, it's like an "API" for tweeting a war...the IDF has been keen on using twitter as part of it's media relations...or propaganda depending on your view...

      They had 18 year old IDF draftees posting pics of themselves with their rifles like it was summer camp...hashtaging with #phonecian

      The writings of Zev Chafets are

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:33PM (#43919641)

    Since when did Slashdot become horribly biased in supporting Israel?

    I assume the tweets will come strictly from an Israeli perspective.

    Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides? Then it would actually be historically interesting, and not pure one-sided YAY WAR, YAY ISRAEL propaganda.

    When I read an international news story from an American outlet, I also try to read the Al Jazeera version in an attempt to extract the truth from somewhere in the middle. This is kind of like that.

    • by DaHat ( 247651 )

      No doubt you felt the same way back in 2011 when someone took to tweeting WWII in real time: http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/09/25/how-an-ex-history-student-is-using-twitter-to-bring-world-war-2-to-life/ [thenextweb.com]

      Were you calling for a 'counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides' back then? perhaps adding: "YAY WAR, YAY ALLIES propaganda"?

      • by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
        Damn you, I came here to post about the Real Time WWII tweeting account (https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII), you stole my idea person in the past!
    • Since when did Slashdot become horribly biased in supporting Israel?

      The slashdot summary is factual, it doesn't give an opinion on the accuracy or merits of the reenactment. In other words the summary is written as NEWS should be written, the fact it is reporting on IDF propaganda in no way makes it a tool of the IDF.

      Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides?

      Sure, but why would you want to match bad taste with more bad taste?

    • Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides?

      I guess "we" can have whatever "we" want as long as "we" are willing to do it. Surely you wouldn't expect the IDF to play characters of the other side and post what they thought would have been said. If "we" can find sources of what was going on in the command centers of the other armies, then I guess "we" could make a Twitter account and start posting that stuff. Or maybe Egypt, Syria, and Jordan can find the time to post that material between dealing with refugees, civil war, protests, etc. Otherwise,

    • Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides?

      ...because the only possible outcome of that would be even-handed, dispassionate analysis.

    • I also want to point out how you immediately assume that Slashdot's posting of a story about a current event (the IDF giving an account of a past war) somehow makes all of Slashdot "horribly biased in supporting Israel". Who exactly has the bias here?

    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      > I assume the tweets will come strictly from an Israeli perspective.

      Are any of the other parties at Liberty to do so? Since this was a humiliating loss for everyone else, I could see why a lot of the other countries might not be too keen to remember it?

      If you wanted to, could you tweet on the other side without getting shot?

      Will you make excuses for those countries if the answer is no?

      Although the Syrians are probably too busy worried about getting gassed right about now.

    • Since when did Slashdot become horribly biased in supporting Israel?

      It's a US website, and having witnessed first hand how fucked up the teaching of history and reporting of foreign affairs is in that country I'm not surprised that it's biased. As an example, a couple of years ago a new book on the Anglo-American war of 1812 was published. It got a write up in a US paper where it was lambasted for not repeating the mantra that the British started the war. In actual fact, the documentary evidence proves th

  • > now they are nazis

    Oh come on! Is creating a Twitter account so you can read these "tweets" really that hard?

  • @Wehrmacht1939: "Seit 5 Uhr 45 wird jetzt zurückgeschossen!"

  • by sumdumfuk ( 1155931 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:50PM (#43919771)
    I wonder if that broadcast will include the attack on the US Liberty in which they killed 34 American Sailors and was covered up for MANY years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [wikipedia.org]
    • You're not biased at all. From your article:

      In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3,323,500 (US$21.9 million in 2013) as full payment to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 in compensation to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the final U.S. bill of $17,132,709 for material damage to the Liberty itself plus 13 years' interest.

      Seems like they acknowledged it almost immediately - less than a year to begin to pay the families, which are definitely the most important part of repaying the US. As for an official press release and announcement, you can't forget that the Cold War was going on then, and the entire Middle East was far more unstable than it is even after the Arab Spring.

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        You're not biased at all.

        You're not projecting at all. The fact they made token payments later does jack and squat to change the fact the IDF knew perfectly well what they were doing at the time, and Jack left town.

    • I wonder if that broadcast will include the attack on the US Liberty in which they killed 34 American Sailors and was covered up for MANY years

      The attack wasn't covered up, it was front page news [uss-liberty.com]. The fact that you didn't know about it doesn't mean nobody else did.

      USS Liberty attack tapes released [cnn.com]

      The NSA on Tuesday released audiotapes of Israeli pilots and ground control speaking in Hebrew, along with English transcripts.

      The recordings were made by a nearby American surveillance aircraft in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

      "For your info, it is apparently an Arab ship," says ground control.

      "Roger," says the pilot.

      "It is an Egyptian supply ship," says ground control.

      "Roger," comes the response.

      The NSA released the tapes and transcripts under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request from Miami Judge Jay Cristol.

      An author of a book on the attack, Cristol said the tapes show it was a tragic accident in a time of war -- that the Israelis mistook the ship for an Egyptian one.

      "I don't think there's any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced there was the fog of war out there," Cristol said.

      Why did Israel attack USS Liberty? [bbc.co.uk]

      It is a view with which historian Michael B Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem academic research institute, concurs.

      "Many thousands of documents related to the Liberty have been declassified and in none of these documents will you find a scintilla of evidence to suggest any of these conspiracy t

      • Michael Oren is just one step above the notorious "Comical Ali". People in the US are becoming better informed. If the israelis are smart enough , they'll sideline him and get another ambassador.

  • Fog Of War (Score:5, Interesting)

    by devnullkac ( 223246 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:56PM (#43919841) Homepage

    It would be most interesting if the tweeting team managed to dig deep enough into the historical documents to recreate the fog of war that blankets all such events, announcing and then retracting as reports arrived at HQ (or whatever).

    Full realism would be uninteresting since no real HQ would tweet everything it thought it knew at the moment it knew it. But then, perhaps using declassified documents, we could recreate what it would be like to work at the top levels of a Twitter-based government with Top Secret initial and revised reports and guesses bouncing around, seeing how little time people really had to make decisions that put thousands or millions of lives at risk.

  • USS Liberty (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dredd13 ( 14750 ) <dredd@megacity.org> on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @06:58PM (#43919863) Homepage

    I wonder if they'll tweet an "oops,our bad #fail #sosorry" when it comes time for them to lay waste to an American military vessel in international waters.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [wikipedia.org]

  • I have to wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ogre332 ( 145645 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @07:18PM (#43920023) Homepage
    how the Israelis would feel if someone created a Twitter account along the lines of "@Treblinka1942" and ran a play by play of the daily events there?
    • by khallow ( 566160 )
      I think it would be educational, eye-opening, and yield a similar degree of propaganda benefit for the Israelis (perhaps you haven't heard of the variety of Holocaust museums which are just classier versions of this idea).

      Maybe they could do that next. I do wonder why you think it'd somehow be sauce for the gander.
  • by ThePeices ( 635180 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @07:42PM (#43920193)

    Why post this article on Slashdot? Its obvious flamebait, bringing out all the hatred, hand-wringing and dubious justifications from all sides of this conflict.

    Nothing good is going to come from all the comments in here, ive already seem my fair share of sheer hatred in the comments so far.

    Why post this Slashdot? Because its on Twitter?

    • by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @08:01PM (#43920287)

      >Why post this Slashdot? Because its on Twitter?

      Because it's an interesting use of technology. Pretending difficult issues like the Israel/Palestine thing do not exist may prevent arguments on slashdot but it's certainly not going to do the world any good. Flamewars on this site are the least of the middle-Easts concerns.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        no, no its not an interesting use of technology at best its a stunt

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        propaganda is hardly a novel use of technology anymore..

  • Twitter vs Wall St (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aaron B Lingwood ( 1288412 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @07:43PM (#43920197)

    Last time there were tweets of this nature, Wall Street had a flash crash.

    I wonder if the 1.4% drop in the S&P500 today is related in any way.

  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @08:47PM (#43920591) Homepage

    I wonder why the IDF is doing this? Are they completely tone-deaf to public opinion?

    I support Israel, but sometimes their PR blunders make we wonder what exactly they are thinking....

    • I wonder why the IDF is doing this? Are they completely tone-deaf to public opinion?

      Just the opposite, I'd figure. Let's see what public sentiment for a new war with Syria or Iran is like before and after this war-glorifying propaganda. I'll bet it goes up. People are like that all over.

    • Are they completely tone-deaf to public opinion?

      Whose public opinion? All the Hebrew speaking twitter readers spread across the world and in all the Arab lands?

      I don't suppose you know of any Arab nations that have actual celebrations and parades for their armed forces instead of twitter posts, do you?

      Egypt: Armed Forces Begin Sixth October Victory Celebrations By Air Parades [allafrica.com] - 5 October 2012

      The Armed Forces will begin on Saturday celebrations of the 39th anniversary of the 6th October War victory by staging air parades in the skies of 21 cities in 12 Egyptian governorates.

      Different types of military aircraft will partake in the parade to show the high capabilities of the Air Force servicemen.

      The military air shows will be held in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Beheira, Sharqiya, Daqahlia, Gharbia, Ismailia, Suez, Port Said, Beni Sweif and Minya

      Good grief, who will warn them?

    • by mvdwege ( 243851 )

      Yes they are. The IDF is the world's most autist organisation, too arrogant to ever think it could be in the wrong.

      Don't take my word for it, General Spector analyses it quite well in the last chapters of his memoirs 'Loud and Clear', to name just one source.

      • The IDF is the world's most autist organisation, too arrogant to ever think it could be in the wrong.

        I doubt if that describes the situation well. The IDF does have a military doctrine that is not very common, and it involves being able to strike whenever they consider it in their interest. This doctrine of complete military freedom is completely illegal in terms of international law, but it's accepted in the case of "poor little defenseless" Israel (poor little Samson as some call it). If you can get away

  • This is a new one

    No it's not.

    @CenturyAgoToday [twitter.com]
    @RealTimeWWII [twitter.com]

    Neat, though, but certainly not the first.

  • Here's the Twitter account for the Titanic play by play. I seem to remember there was an earlier one as well.

    https://twitter.com/TitanicRealTime [twitter.com]

  • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Thursday June 06, 2013 @12:28AM (#43921711)

    Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of surrounding land, most importantly the West Bank.

    Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules. Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.

    • Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.

      So, Israel's justification for attack was an act of war by Egypt? Brilliant!!

      Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules.

      Wrong again. First, it isn't a total blockade. If it was, the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza would not have been able to build a new shopping center, would they? But weapons are being stopped, like the many Iranian rockets being smuggled into Gaza. [haaretz.com]

      Biggest mall in Gaza Strip opens its doors [gulfnews.com]

      Second, Gaza is not a nation state, but a territory. It shouldn't be attacking anyone. Any attacks coming from there are either direct aggressio

  • by lightknight ( 213164 ) on Thursday June 06, 2013 @01:17AM (#43921963) Homepage

    Any particular reason they are choosing to do this?

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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