Live-Tweeting A War

Footage of the strike that killed Ahmed al-Jaabari, posted by the Israeli Defense Forces moments after he was killed: The IDF have been running a full-on marketing campaign via Twitter, complete with bluster, hashtags, graphics and videos. Noah Shachtman finds this unusual:

Once “Operation Pillar of Defense” began, the IDF put up a Facebook page, a Flickr feed, and, of course, a stream of Twitter taunts — all relying on the same white-on-red English-language graphics. “Ahmed Jabari: Eliminated,” reads a tweet from 2:21 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. This is a very different way of waging the war of opinion online. When an American drone strikes a suspected militant in Afghanistan, that footage is rarely made public — and, if so, only months after the fact. After the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, White House and Pentagon aides did start leaking details like mad. But the only live tweets from the operation were from a bystander in Abbottabad who heard the helicopters landing. And the pictures of bin Laden’s corpse were purposely kept from the public.

A few highlights from the IDF Twitter feed: