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Israel Conquers YouTube

IDF Flotilla videos garner millions of views

by
Marc Tracy
June 03, 2010

Yesterday, the New York Times noted that one of the main battlegrounds, at this point, is YouTube, with videos from competing sides each purporting to sell different narratives of the incident: Who was armed and who was unarmed, who started it, and so on. (Me? I will continue to insist that Han shot first.)

Well, numbers aren’t everything, but the numbers have it for Israel: Despite initially holding off on releasing footage, as of yesterday afternoon Youtube’s first- and third-most viewed videos, each with more than a million views, are IDF tapes of the raid on the main ship, the Mavi Marmara. These show the soldiers being violently set upon immediately after landing. (Second place was going to something titled “American Idol Freakout!!”—more Zionist propaganda, no doubt.)

A new “mash-up” of IDF footage, which does a nice job splicing among different perspectives, has been making the rounds. Check it out below:

And check out some audio here.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.