11-Nov-12: Here's how you conduct cognitive warfare and demonize those who defend us Israelis from cowardly, rocket-rich terrorists

Please first look at the photo:

Online here [click to see a larger version]   

It's criss-crossing the blogosphere and Twitter network like crazy tonight. It pretends to be an image of children who, along with the man lying on a stretcher next to them, were allegedly targeted today by Israel's forces for being terrorists. You can see it here or Twitter-search for it here.

In reality, the picture is four years old. It has nothing to do with anything that happened in Gaza tonight. Check it out here.

Why are we seeing it now? Why is it being pushed across the world's social media networks tonight?

Heavy fighting has going on in southern Israel and inside Gaza since early this evening. It began when an IDF patrol was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired from within Gaza around sundown. Several Israeli servicemen are seriously injured. In a country where most people's children serve in the defence forces, an attack like this does not go un-noticed. Throughout Saturday night, Israel has channeled some of its sophisticated weapons, including helicopters and drones, at very carefully selected targets in the Gaza Strip, an area dominated by the Hamas terrorist organization and bristling with tens of thousands of rockets stashed away inside homes, mosques and hospitals.

The terrorists for their part have fired off dozens of rockets. Frightened families throughout most of southern Israel are inside safe rooms and bomb shelters, or within a few seconds' dash of one, as we write this. School classes throughout the area have been canceled (Sunday is a school day in Israel). This will not prevent foreign media channels from saying - as they will certainly do in the coming hours - that Israel is responding disproportionately.

Militarily, the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza are far less-well armed with military equipment than the IDF is. But strategically, the Gazan side has the 'advantage' of being ready, willing and able to do anything that will un-nerve the Israeli side and bring criticism onto Israeli heads. If this means telling lies, taking steps that provoke Israeli reactions that will certainly injure their neighbours, or firing rockets indiscriminately at towns, farms, homes, buses, cars, schools - well, that's what they have been doing for years. It's how they fight.

But there's another way and that's via cognitive warfare. By promoting totally bogus lethal narratives, like the photo (at the top of this post) of a cluster of Palestinian Arab children who were allegedly attacked by a cruel and over-armed Israeli military, the Gazans score strategic points that their military weakness would otherwise prevent them from gaining.

If the photo has reached you (and it has reached huge numbers tonight), then they have made you a part of their warfare against us Israelis. What you do next will determine how successful their cowardly and very shabby strategy turns out to be... this time.