Hashtag Warfare: A soldier writes ...

 A Malaysia Airlines plane goes down over the eastern Ukraine, apparently shot down by rebel separatists, and inevitably some of the more pernicious of the antisemites on social media and elsewhere attribute the disaster to Israel, just as they accuse Israel as being complicit in 9/11.

Inevitable, really, this new canard, a contemporary updating of the medieval "The Jews have poisoned the wells" obscenity during the Middle Ages, and of that centuries-old "blood accusation" that historian Norman Cohn termed a "warrant for genocide", given that Israel has long been cast as"the Jew among the nations".

And Hamas fired 50 during the 6-hour ceasefire

Inevitable, too, since one of the consequences of the air disaster has been to push the situation in Gaza out of the "top story" spot in news bulletins just as Israel begins a ground invasion.

Writes a young female IDF soldier in the current Australian Jewish News:

'The #gazaunderattack hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is flourishing - filled with horrible, heart-wrenching pictures of women and children wounded from Israeli airstrikes.  What is missing, however, is [sic] the videos of Hamas leaders calling on Gazans to "love death like rhe Israelis live life".  Of their appeals to citizens to form a human shield around the martyrs and their bombs.  Of their pride in their peoples' [sic] united industry of terror....

Hamas is well-versed in propaganda.  I couldn't help but laugh at the preposterousness when I saw a screen shot from the horror movie Final Destination 2 of a blown apart corpse declared as a photo of a Gazan civilian killed by the Israeli retaliation strikes.  And yet, there are those gullible enough not to see through the lies....

My appeal is to all Israel's supporters living outside the blue and white borders.  You can help Israel fight this online war.

Post the truth through hashtags such as #freegaza, #gazaunderattack, #freegaza, #freepalestine ..."

Here's a new video that deserves publicity; the barbaric sentiments expressed by this gentleman were aired on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV on 11 July:

See, incidentally, a British blogger's excellent, compelling post that describes the propaganda encountered at a recent fair in Richmond, South London, at which the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) branch was out in force (there is a video of the event by rabid anti-Israel activist Alex Seymour aka Seymour Alexander here ; The Bilateralist's post really is a corker, and concludes of the mendacious malignant mischief spread by Israel's foes:

"It is that evil which we must confront if we are to be saved from an escalation of a magnitude similar to events that have arisen over the last few days in Toronto, Paris and Antwerp.  In Toronto the police stood by while a man was beaten up by Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, the same righteous souls who threatened an old and frail woman.  In Paris hundreds of demonstrators rioted outside Synagogues, trapping Jewish worshippers inside their buildings.  In Antwerp dozens of men shouted slogans about slaughtering Jews while three local (socialist, labour and green) politicians blissfully looked on.

In World War II, the Nazis set fire to synagogues with the local Jewish population trapped inside. In Africa, Muslims have done the same to Christian communities.

Immigration officers, governments run by elected officials who are more concerned with the powerful Muslim vote than with making a moral choice, and the police: They are all inactive.  This is where populist democracy fails.

This is Nazism – it does not matter whether it is inspired by the Right, by the Left, by the Liberal Democrats in Britain, or the Greens; by the Islamic faithful or by frustrated Arabs.

The propaganda war is violent; its intent from the Palestinian camp is terminal.

Wake up."