On Tuesday, Israel celebrated
its 66th Independence Day. In film, television, song and parades, Israel will
commemorate and relive its greatest military achievements: its incredible
victory over five Arab armies (and a number of militias) in 1948, its even-more-incredible
victory over the armies of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in 1967, its miraculous
escape from the brink of oblivion in 1973. Sixty-six years, and we’re still
here - hooray!
Yet lurking in the background of
this year’s saturnalia of chest-thumpin’ patriotism and IDF-adoration is what
appears to be Israel’s greatest military defeat in recent memory, against an
unexpected enemy: the Internet.
This past week, the IDF has found itself
engaged in a war vastly different than anything it has encountered before. It
finds itself pitted against the two great powers of the early 21st century:
millennials and social media. And in that war, it lost within the first 6
minutes.
A soldier
with an attitude
It all started when IDF soldier
David Adamov, who serves in the Nahal brigade, was filmed cocking his rifle and
pointing it at a Palestinian teenager in Hebron. Shortly thereafter Adamov was
sentenced to 20 days in jail.
Adamov’s imprisonment actually had
nothing to do with the Hebron incident - he was jailed for violent behavior
against other soldiers in his unit - but it didn’t matter. Once the video was
uploaded it went viral, and once word got around that Adamov - who had already
been christened “David the Nahlawi” (from Nahal) by the Internet - was in
military jail, everyone assumed it was because of his behavior in Hebron.
The result was a social media revolt
never before seen in the history of the Israeli army: hundreds and hundreds of
IDF soldiers, most of whom are no older than 21, uploaded photos of themselves
to Facebook holding signs that said “I am with David the Nahlawi”. Within days,
the Facebook page “I am also with David the Nahlawi” gathered 127,000 likes.
Their own rifles sometimes on
display and their faces hidden by the signs, the soldiers knew exactly what
they were doing. They were rebelling against what they saw as hypocrisy: the
IDF had sent David the Nahlawi to the West Bank, and after he reacted to a situation
he saw as threatening, it admonished him, thereby leaving his compatriots
confused as to how they should react to threats.
In that sense, David the Nahlawi
inadvertently become a cultural hero, a symbol for so-called “abandoned” young
soldiers, kids left to fend for their lives in the West Bank with guidelines
that are at best vague. His “predicament” turned into a Spartacus moment where
soldiers tired of their commanders’ hypocrisy joined each other shouting: “I’m
David the Nahlawi!” - with their phones.
Smart army vs
the smartphone
Until that very moment, the IDF
evidently hadn't quite understood the significance of the soldiers’ phones. In
recent years, any number of protests and revolutions have broken out around the
world inspired by photos and videos uploaded to the Web by smartphone-carrying
kids. But the army - much like in the years prior to the Yom Kippur War – was
oblivious. To military ranks, smartphones were just a way for soldiers to relax
and talk to their friends and families.
But to the young soldiers who carry
smartphones alongside their army-issued rifles, the phone is more than a fun
apparatus. Their phones are their personal weapons against wrongdoing –
including by the army.
It’s not that earlier signs to the
subversive potential of smartphones weren’t visible. In recent years soldiers
uploaded videos of themselves doing the Harlem Shake, Gangnam Style, the Tacata
and other dances on their tanks or just in the middle of streets in the West
Bank, even though they were definitely were forbidden from doing so.
Couldn’t those same devices that
recorded these silly videos be used for other purposes? The IDF didn’t think
so.
And that is exactly why it lost the
first battle of the digital frontier. Despite the huge embarrassment of the
social media revolt, no soldiers have been punished. Three who did receive
punishments, had their sentences revoked.
The official line, military
officials told Israel media, is to not punish any more soldiers for social
media-related offenses until further notice. Thirty years ago, it goes without
saying, every soldier who took part in a mutiny - digital or otherwise - would
have paid a heavy price.
Nowadays, it appears the army that
could decimate multiple Arab armies 66 years ago can’t beat an 18-year-old with
an Instagram account.
The IDF, of course, didn’t really
lose to a bunch of 18 year olds. It lost to itself. To its own vagueness about
the nature of its presence in the West bank. To its own confusion regarding the
lines between morality and aggression. To the hypocrisy of sending
barely-literate children to police the concrete jungle with rifles in their
hands and then admonishing them when they make a bad call.
But Israel’s first (any probably not
last) digital rebellion is also a telling sign to the ineptitude of armies -
not just the IDF - in dealing with technology and the new rules imposed on them
by the advent of social media. Discretion and obedience, the bread and butter
of any military system, are the very antithesis of the realm in which their current
flock of soldiers spends most of their time.
And in that realm, those 18 years
olds are the true strategic masters, while their commanders are just n00bs.
