Speaker 1: As media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, Welcome to It
Speaker 1: could happen here, as I'm sure you're aware, at this
Speaker 1: point over the weekend, somewhere between five hundred and one
Speaker 1: thousand Hamas fighters. Those numbers have a lot of flex
Speaker 1: in them. It's really unclear at this moment that just
Speaker 1: kind of my guess, based on what I've seen so far,
Speaker 1: carried out a successful infiltration and sneak attack across a
Speaker 1: wide swath of the Israeli border. Their methods were varied
Speaker 1: from motorized hang gliders and boats to mobile columns of
Speaker 1: technicals and bulldozers, which they used to breach fence lines.
Speaker 1: Surprise seems to have been nearly total. In their worst
Speaker 1: intelligence failure since the nineteen seventies, many IDF troops were
Speaker 1: caught literally in their underwear. Casualties seem to have been
Speaker 1: highest among the police, who were unprepared for militants armed
Speaker 1: with conventional military weapons. Casualty accounts remain heavily in flux,
Speaker 1: so I will not labor over them here. Suffice to
Speaker 1: say that the best information at the time that I'm
Speaker 1: writing this suggests at least a thousand dead in the
Speaker 1: first day or so of fighting. It appears at the
Speaker 1: moment to be fairly evenly split between Israeli soldiers, police
Speaker 1: and civilians, as well as Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians.
Speaker 1: We can expect the death toll among Palestinians to rise
Speaker 1: steadily in the near future as the bombing of Gaza escalates.
Speaker 1: It is very clear though, that the Hamas did not
Speaker 1: strike only military targets, and Israelis and Palestinians are not
Speaker 1: the only people killed right now. There are reports coming
Speaker 1: in that a music festival, it was some sort of
Speaker 1: sytrance psychedelia festival in southern Israel on land that was
Speaker 1: possibly illegally occupied, was attacked by Hamas militants. Something like
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty people are confirmed to have been killed.
Speaker 1: There's pretty hideous video of a young German woman in
Speaker 1: her twenties, her corpse stripped, being paraded around by fighters.
Speaker 1: It's very ugly stuff. There's also unclear videos of other killing.
Speaker 1: I've seen one video of a man beating another man's
Speaker 1: head in it's claimed to be a Hummas militant and
Speaker 1: civilian clothes beating a Filipino guest worker in Israel to death.
Speaker 1: There's no actual evidence that I've seen as to who
Speaker 1: either person in the video is, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the videos of horrible things that are spreading right now
Speaker 1: are just that, videos that definitely show violence, but that
Speaker 1: are extremely unclear as to who is perpetrating the violence
Speaker 1: and why. We do, of course, know that Hummas targeted
Speaker 1: a number of civilians. A significant number were killed, including
Speaker 1: people in their homes, and unknown numbers of people were
Speaker 1: kidnapped and taken back across the border to be ransomed
Speaker 1: later for imprisoned fighters and Palestinian civilians. This has happened
Speaker 1: before in previous escalations of conflict in the area. It's
Speaker 1: not a new tactic. In The videos of it are,
Speaker 1: of course horrifying. The capturing and killing of civilians is
Speaker 1: by any definition of the term, a war crime. Israel's
Speaker 1: response has been horrifying as well, and writ on a
Speaker 1: larger scale. Significant chunks of Gaza have already been leveled
Speaker 1: in airstrikes. At least one hospital has been targeted, killing
Speaker 1: a nurse. Israel has cut off power to Gasam, an
Speaker 1: active collective punishment that also qualifies as a war crime.
Speaker 1: That term has less weight than it used to these days.
Speaker 1: Many of US in the West grew up with illusions
Speaker 1: about a rules based international order. The crimes occurring now
Speaker 1: will continue to erode the idea that war might ever
Speaker 1: have limits. Like white water cutting a path through stone.
Speaker 1: I try to stay plugged into such things, and I
Speaker 1: become aware of this most recent eruption as it happened.
Speaker 1: I spent several hours trying to understand the early open
Speaker 1: source intelligence, watching people that I trusted in the region
Speaker 1: post videos that they could verify, and then I went
Speaker 1: to sleep. When I woke up, I saw the expected
Speaker 1: river of bloodthirst on social media. This is also nothing new.
Speaker 1: The Internet has not created this behavior. You may have
Speaker 1: read when you were in high school that early in
Speaker 1: the US Civil War, picnicking civilians would show up to
Speaker 1: awe the Battle of Manassas. Certain aspects of online culture have, however,
Speaker 1: lent a deeper ugliness to the affair. I noticed this
Speaker 1: for the first time during the fighting against ISIS. I
Speaker 1: reported from Moses several times and kept up with various
Speaker 1: Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, and Twitter accounts that shared footage
Speaker 1: and updates from the field. A subculture developed around this,
Speaker 1: fueled by a mix of professional seeking intel and amateurs,
Speaker 1: some of whom later became experts, and others of whom
Speaker 1: simply liked watching the violence. All of us experienced a
Speaker 1: degree of desensitization, and Gallo's humor was common. Researchers would
Speaker 1: share their favorite Isis nasheeds effectively Jihati theme music, and
Speaker 1: throw Arabic phrases that they'd read in issues of Debique
Speaker 1: Isis's magazine into daily conversation. Lines of dialogue from different
Speaker 1: videos of combat became catchphrases. The best known of these
Speaker 1: was probably a video released in April of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: which showed a group of four ISIS fighters battling Kurdish
Speaker 1: troops north of Mosl. These guys were not overly familiar
Speaker 1: with their weaponry, much of which had recently been looted
Speaker 1: from Iraqi army stores. One of the fighters in the video,
Speaker 1: Abu Hajar, fucks up constantly, at one point roasting his
Speaker 1: own men with the back blast of a rocket launcher.
Speaker 1: The timing on it is pretty perfect, and it's basically
Speaker 1: impossible not to laugh a little at this. His comrade
Speaker 1: shouts a now infamous line at him, what is wrong
Speaker 1: with you? Abu Hajar? The man who filmed the video dies,
Speaker 1: of course, and so did a bunch of other people
Speaker 1: that day. Now, these guys are ices fighters, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't hard to laugh at the footage and move on.
Speaker 1: I did, and so did many other people. I still
Speaker 1: chuckle sometimes at it. Of late, though I've come to
Speaker 1: find the laughter more unsettling. This started after the expanded
Speaker 1: Russian invasion of Ukraine. I began to see videos of wounded, dying,
Speaker 1: and dead Russian conscripts. These were often close in gory shots,
Speaker 1: devoid of broader information, and shot purely for entertainments. One
Speaker 1: thing to watch combat videos in which people die, if
Speaker 1: it gives you an understanding of the nature of combat
Speaker 1: in that theater of war, the kinds of weapons used,
Speaker 1: the efficacy of certain tactics. It's another to just look
Speaker 1: at a bleeding teenager as he slowly dies and joke
Speaker 1: about it. Now, some of the folks who were laughing
Speaker 1: are people I knew Ukrainian civilians and volunteers, and I
Speaker 1: cannot blame them, and do not blame them for taking
Speaker 1: satisfaction or even mirth in the death of an invader.
Speaker 1: That is how war works. That is how war has
Speaker 1: always worked. It is foolish and cruel to ask for
Speaker 1: decorum from people under siege. I'm sure many Gazans feel
Speaker 1: the same about footage now flooding the Internet from this
Speaker 1: most recent attack. But many of the people cheering at
Speaker 1: dead Russian conscripts were not soldiers and not civilians who
Speaker 1: were being shelled by that state, but were random Americans,
Speaker 1: middle class, suburban war aficionados far from the danger, who
Speaker 1: spent time, who took a moment from their day to
Speaker 1: joke about suffering soldiers in a foreign country. A mirror
Speaker 1: of that behavior now proliferates as well. It curdled my
Speaker 1: gut then, and it still does. But my feelings here
Speaker 1: are immaterial. I have come to believe that this behavior
Speaker 1: is impossible to avoid or even mitigate. To a very
Speaker 1: substantial degree. It also appears to be nearly universal. Social
Speaker 1: media has made barbarism easier than ever to monetize. As
Speaker 1: the years have gone on, every new eruption of violence
Speaker 1: around the world brings with it more footage faster ocent
Speaker 1: open source intelligence accounts have gone from a niche obsession
Speaker 1: among reporters and conflict nerds to mainstream entertainment. Because views
Speaker 1: equal money, especially on Twitter, where Elon Musk pays people
Speaker 1: based on the engagement they get. There is now a
Speaker 1: financial incentive to post videos that will be shared widely,
Speaker 1: and as always, the stuff that is shared most widely
Speaker 1: is the stuff that makes people angry. Videos need not
Speaker 1: be truthful to spread. In some cases, this means reposting
Speaker 1: old footage as if it is new. This is particularly
Speaker 1: easy with the conflict in Gaza, since Israel has launched
Speaker 1: so many strikes against it over the years. One video
Speaker 1: of a building crumbling into rubble left or a missile
Speaker 1: strike is as good as another to the rats scrambling
Speaker 1: for Elon Musk's pocket change. Many viral disinformation videos are
Speaker 1: just clips from the check video game Arma two. For
Speaker 1: roughly a decade, footage of in game combat has gone viral,
Speaker 1: netting followers and sometimes money for all manner of shady figures.
Speaker 1: If you see video that's claimed to be an Israeli
Speaker 1: helicopter or a Russian helicopter or an American helicopter being
Speaker 1: shot down in some erupting field, you should really double
Speaker 1: check that, because there's always a very good chance that
Speaker 1: it's a clip from this video game of a chopper
Speaker 1: going down, or of some other kind of military vehicle
Speaker 1: being taken out. In real warfare, it's quite rare to
Speaker 1: get footage at a good angle and close to that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So anytime you see footage that seems
Speaker 1: like it might be too good to be real, it
Speaker 1: probably is. Such disinformation is of course unsightly, but that's
Speaker 1: not all it is. It can provoke violence as well.
Speaker 1: A recent New York Times article on social media disinformation
Speaker 1: makes this clear quote. The Times found several pieces of
Speaker 1: misinformation that spread out across Israelian Palestinian neighborhood and activist
Speaker 1: WhatsApp groups this week. One which appeared as a block
Speaker 1: of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning
Speaker 1: that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli civilians.
Speaker 1: Palestinians are coming. Parents, Protect your children, read the message,
Speaker 1: which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north of Tel Aviv.
Speaker 1: Thousands of people were in one of the telegram groups
Speaker 1: where the post was shared. The post then appeared in
Speaker 1: several WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members. Now,
Speaker 1: there were no reports of violence in the areas mentioned
Speaker 1: in this post. This kind of thing happens all over
Speaker 1: the world and has been happening for years, and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's untrue does not stop similar viral lies
Speaker 1: from inspiring and justifying mass violence in places like India
Speaker 1: and Meanmar. In both those countries, much of this targeted
Speaker 1: disinformation was posted at the direct behest of state security
Speaker 1: agencies to further their efforts at genocide. None of this
Speaker 1: is new. It all just works much faster thanks to
Speaker 1: social media. The one truly significant change in recent months
Speaker 1: has been the addition of a direct profit motive to
Speaker 1: sharing lies. The best recent example of this is a
Speaker 1: fellow named Mario Naffall. He's a con artist and a
Speaker 1: crypto scammer who embezzled from his own company and has
Speaker 1: built a massive following retweeting out of context videos starting
Speaker 1: with the Wagner rebellion in Russia. Earlier this year. Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: whose ignorance of that conflict is unsurpassed, called Naffall's messages
Speaker 1: the best coverage I've seen so far. More recently, marion
Speaker 1: Na Fall has been responsible for spreading fake news about
Speaker 1: the potential capture of Nimrod Alone, who is the commander
Speaker 1: of Israel's Southern forces in the region. The video that
Speaker 1: he claimed was Nimrod alone being taken into captivity was
Speaker 1: in fact a completely different persons, actually unclear who. Mario
Speaker 1: does not know anything about anything, and I think was
Speaker 1: just lying because that would be the most salacious thing possible.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that Elon Musk recently made a
Speaker 1: post highlighting a couple of ocent accounts that were his recommendations,
Speaker 1: his picks for credible people to report on the conflict,
Speaker 1: and you should follow these folks. He then deleted part
Speaker 1: of that tweet and self censored himself when one of
Speaker 1: the sources he had picked referred to dead Hamas fighters
Speaker 1: as martyrs, which Elon had an issue with. Clearly, what
Speaker 1: he's doing is attempting to pick and set his own
Speaker 1: propaganda dispensers, you know, the people that, for whatever reason
Speaker 1: he thinks, are providing the most convenient narrative about what's happening.
Speaker 1: None of this should be mistaken for actual news. It
Speaker 1: is likely that much, perhaps most, of the footage on
Speaker 1: your timeline from the fighting in Gaza and Israel is
Speaker 1: reposted video that is not current. Obviously, there is a
Speaker 1: lot of current footage going out right now too, But
Speaker 1: a significant amount of it is not. I find this exastspirating,
Speaker 1: even as I wonder how much that really matters. Is
Speaker 1: sharing old footage of civilian homes being leveled by Israeli
Speaker 1: missiles really an issue when similar homes are being bombed
Speaker 1: at the same time. I do still think so, but
Speaker 1: I'm no longer sure that my feelings on the matter
Speaker 1: are quite rational. The most commonly accepted definition of intelligence
Speaker 1: of intellect that you'll find is the ability to adapt
Speaker 1: to change and select environments, or the ability to deal
Speaker 1: with change in your environment. If that is truly the
Speaker 1: best measure of intelligence, then my discussed at disinformation makes
Speaker 1: me kind of stupid. Its purveyors have had blinding success
Speaker 1: in using it to push their own narratives and to
Speaker 1: shape reality. I use the word barbarism earlier to describe this,
Speaker 1: and it's a loaded word, but not nearly so loaded
Speaker 1: as its synonym, savagery. Savagery is a word that inspires
Speaker 1: powerful emotions for good reason. It was often used by
Speaker 1: white supremacist colonizers to paint whole peoples as bad, backwards
Speaker 1: and less human, especially when they engaged in acts of
Speaker 1: resistance that were in reality no bloodier or more violent
Speaker 1: than the acts being perpetrated against them. The word predates
Speaker 1: European colonialism, though it seems to date back to around
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred, and it entered French salvage like the Cologne
Speaker 1: Johnny depphawks from the Latin salvaticus, which literally means of
Speaker 1: the woods. Why this digression because in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: an Islamist strategist named Abu Baker Naji published a book
Speaker 1: on the Internet titled Management of Savagery. In Naj's conception,
Speaker 1: savagery was defined as terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure and
Speaker 1: stuff like tourist facilities, which were meant to provoke violent
Speaker 1: escalations from superpowers. That violence would radicalize more people against
Speaker 1: the West and lead to a progressive degradation of social
Speaker 1: order and operational capacity in the nation's nase saw as enemies.
Speaker 1: The management of savagery was a key text for the
Speaker 1: men who wound up creating the Islamic State. Some will
Speaker 1: use this to our argue that the tactics failed, since
Speaker 1: Isis is not exactly thriving at present. To do so
Speaker 1: would be to ignore the six trillion dollars the United
Speaker 1: States lit on fire fighting, a disastrous war on terror
Speaker 1: which supercharged much of the underlying instability in our country
Speaker 1: and may yet lead to a collapse in domestic order.
Speaker 1: I will admit that I have found the framework of
Speaker 1: managing savagery useful in my interpretation and understanding of conflict,
Speaker 1: both domestic and international. In twenty twenty, I got to
Speaker 1: watch the process up close over the course of dozens
Speaker 1: of protests. The basic strategy of most Portland protests that year.
Speaker 1: When like this you got a bunch of people to
Speaker 1: march up to a police building, they would chant and
Speaker 1: yell until the police got angry and then gassed and
Speaker 1: or beat up everybody. After a while, this dynamic was
Speaker 1: widely understood and accepted by protesters. They saw their suffering
Speaker 1: and the risk that they engaged in as an acceptable
Speaker 1: trade off because it revealed the violence and savagery inherent
Speaker 1: in policing as an institution. This they hoped, would radicalize
Speaker 1: others again against it, people who watched clips of videos
Speaker 1: from the protest or who attended themselves, and for a
Speaker 1: time this strategy worked quite well. Many people who had
Speaker 1: been apolitical on the matter grew utterly hardened against the
Speaker 1: cops after a few hours in the gas clouds. People
Speaker 1: cannot endure violence, however, without being changed by it. So
Speaker 1: as the week's war on, participants grew more and more
Speaker 1: comfortable with not just property destruction, but with the use
Speaker 1: of things like molotov cocktails. One may consider a molotov
Speaker 1: to be necessary sometimes, and throughout history they often have been,
Speaker 1: But savage is as good a term to describe firebombs
Speaker 1: as any. No one was killed by any molotov that
Speaker 1: I ever saw used in Portland, but of course no
Speaker 1: protests come close to the savagery of warfare. The emotional
Speaker 1: dynamics at play are shades of each other, though, and
Speaker 1: I thought it might be useful to mention perhaps a
Speaker 1: more illustrative example would be my own experiences in Mosel
Speaker 1: in the early summer of twenty seventeen. My team and
Speaker 1: I were embedded with an Iraqi federal police unit in
Speaker 1: the Old City, where the fighting was intense and hideous.
Speaker 1: I'm under fire from a sniper. Some of the shots
Speaker 1: were so close that chipped concrete hit my helmet. The
Speaker 1: mortar team with us responded with the help of a spotter.
Speaker 1: They dropped explosive shells on homes and shops until they
Speaker 1: hit and killed the sniper. In that moment, I felt
Speaker 1: elation I've seldom felt since. After we found better cover,
Speaker 1: I began composing the scene in my head, laying out
Speaker 1: how I would write it. Then my fixer, Sangar said
Speaker 1: something that interrupted my train of thought and has remained
Speaker 1: with me ever since. Did you count how many rounds
Speaker 1: they fired before they hit him? I told him I
Speaker 1: thought it was six or seven. Maybe where do you
Speaker 1: think the others landed?
Speaker 2: From?
Speaker 1: His tone was clear what he meant. The old city
Speaker 1: was crowded. Many civilians had not yet been able to
Speaker 1: escape the Isis lines. Their homes were often next door
Speaker 1: to fighting positions, and the density of the city meant
Speaker 1: that any honest hit still had a good chance of
Speaker 1: hitting someone. Later, I met a man whose house had
Speaker 1: been hit twenty times by mortar rounds and rockets before
Speaker 1: he had a chance to escape with his family. So
Speaker 1: the glee of the moment faded. My writing about that
Speaker 1: scene was more sober, more careful, and much better. As
Speaker 1: a result, Saygur's words have helped me shape both my
Speaker 1: coverage of war and my reactions to it ever since.
Speaker 1: This shouldn't matter to people being bombed out of their
Speaker 1: homes and losing loved ones right now. It might be helpful, though,
Speaker 1: to those of us watching bloodshed from behind a screen,
Speaker 1: at least until we're the ones filming.
Speaker 2: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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