Tag: ISRAEL

Using video games as propaganda is nothing new. The U.S. has been doing it with 'America's Army' for some time, while Hezbollah has employed 'Special Force' to spread its message. But those games might seem quaint and diplomatic in the face of a series of games from Residents' Councils of Samaria and Binyamin, an advocacy group for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The organization has released ...

Earlier this week, Facebook pulled a controversial page calling for a Third Palestinian Intifada after facing intense pressure and criticism from Israeli politicians and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League. When it eventually decided to remove the page, the social network explained the decision by pointing out that comments on the page had "deteriorated to direct calls for violence," ...

Retreating from its previous stance, Facebook yesterday announced that it had pulled a page calling for a Third Palestinian Intifada. Israeli Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein wrote Mark Zuckerberg last week to request that the page be shuttered, but Facebook initially refused to do so; the company claimed that there was nothing overtly violent about the page, which was established as a call for ...

Thousands of historical photos and documents from the Holocaust are now available online, thanks to a collaborative project from Google and Israel's Yad Vashem memorial. The initiative, which launched yesterday, will allow users to search through 130,000 photos from the Jerusalem-based institute, which houses the world's largest collection of Holocaust documents. With the help of experimental ...

Call it a publicity stunt or an effort to make his government more transparent, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently took to Facebook to show the world exactly what he is worth -- by posting his paystub. Netanyahu is currently spearheading a movement to achieve a pay raise for government employees. Netanyahu's stub puts him at 44,000 shekels a month, or approximately $12,400. ...

Back in January, an Israeli hit squad assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh at a hotel in Dubai. Presumably operating under Mossad, the 11 assassins disguised themselves as tennis players in order to gain access to the hotel and do the deed, but, according to a new investigative report from GQ, they used a decidedly 21st-century technique to track their target. According to investigative ...

The Middle East may be once again on the brink of ornithological warfare, now that Saudi Arabian officials have detained an Israeli bird suspected of espionage. The bird was first spotted in a rural area of the country, wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet that read 'Tel Aviv University.' Officials promptly took the creature into custody, and accused it of being a Mossad spy. Its tag would ...

In June, security experts first discovered a dangerous new worm called Stuxnet, which, to the horror of many, possessed the ability to wreak havoc upon real-world industrial systems. The virus affected servers all over the world, but seemed to be especially focused on networks in Iran, as the country absorbed a major attack over the summer. This Iranian focus led many to speculate that Stuxnet ...

Israeli law requires all citizens to spend some time doing military service, but women who claim to be observant Jews typically get a pass. Understandably, many women in Israel take full advantage of this loophole, even if they're not all that Jewish. Unfortunately for them, though, the Israeli military recently caught onto their scheme, and, with a little help from Facebook, has now outed 1,000 ...

The Palestinian Authority has arrested a 26-year-old West Bank blogger for calling himself "God" on Facebook. The suspect, Walid Husayin, works as a barber in the conservative town of Qalqilya, where the locals describe him as a devout family man. When he surfs the Web, though, Husayin apparently takes on an entirely different persona. As the AP reports, Husayin is now facing a sentence of ...

The 21st century has ushered the field of archaeology into a revolutionary renaissance period, as technological advances like lasers, infrared mapping and multi-spectral imaging now afford archaeologists with extraordinary methods of discovery and restoration. Science also allows history buffs and amateur bone-diggers -- in similarly unprecedented fashion -- to experience, enjoy and share in that ...

Despite its media portrayal (deserved or not) as a constant war zone, few nations blend the ancient and the advanced as seamlessly as Israel. According to the Associated Press, though, certain members of the Israeli government hope to implement a divisive plan that could significantly strain relations between the country's religious and secular groups. Many adherents to Judaism practice ...

The Twitter account @Israel has been sold to, and is now be run by, the government of Israel. The username was snagged by Israel Meléndez in 2007, during the early days of the Twitter explosion. But the Internet porn entrepreneur found himself being barraged with messages, sometimes anti-semitic ones, from users who believed that @Israel was the official Twitter account of the contentious ...

On Monday, newspapers in Israel ran a series of photographs, featuring an Israeli soldier posing childishly next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners. The photos, which were taken by former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil in 2008, were posted on her Facebook page in an album titled 'Army -- the best period of my life.' Once the pics were discovered and published, Abergil soon found ...

To most people, the Israeli blockade of ships entering Gaza doesn't exactly sound like game material. But one Israel-based, non-profit organization has seized upon the ongoing crisis to create an online game in the hopes of highlighting what they perceive as misguided Israeli policy. The game, called 'Safe Passage,' was created by Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, a multi-religious ...