Information Warfare: June 23, 2002

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Israel and the Palestinians constantly fight am Information War over who is doing the most damage to each others civilians. Both sides take a markedly different approach to how they deal with documenting casualties. The Israelis photograph and record any available data on anyone killed in areas they control. In addition, the Israeli press (which includes pro and anti government outlets) scrutinize the deaths for possible headlines. So the Israeli count of who died, and whether or not they were fighters or unarmed civilians, is generally considered accurate. The Palestinians, on the other hand, severely restrict media access to combat areas they control. The Israelis do this as well, but not as consistently and persistently as the Palestinians. Moreover, the Palestinians play with the numbers and have even been caught staging funerals using "corpses" that were actually live people pretending to be dead. The Palestinians will claim as high a number of dead Palestinians that they think they can get away with. In cases where a third party was able to double check, the Palestinians were found to be exaggerating the number of their dead by five to ten times.

 

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