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Video

Gaza Videos Take Over YouTube Charts

VIDEO: High on impact, low on context

Allison Martell 13 Jan 2009TheTyee.ca

Allison Martell regularly writes about online video for The Tyee.
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'News' unfiltered.

Viral video has taken a serious turn in the last few weeks, as rocket attacks, tanks and Israeli forces supplant piano-playing cats and laughing babies on the charts. As the professional media complains that it does not have enough access to Gaza, others are stepping in to fill the gap. The volume of material is overwhelming. A YouTube search for "Gaza" brings up nearly 13,000 videos posted in the last seven days alone.

Many have focused on the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) controversial YouTube channel. And the IDF's most recent video, apparently showing a booby-trapped school in Gaza, was one of the web's current top 10 viral videos at the time of publication.

But there's no shortage of pro-Palestinian vids. Take this clip from Korean television, which shows a young woman staring down the rifles of IDF forces.

The images are affecting, wherever your sympathies lie, which is probably why this clip has been widely viewed over the last week, alongside more direct messages, like this slideshow of photos, juxtaposing injured children, protests around the world and a smiling Condoleezza Rice.

The trouble with all this material is that it is even lighter on context than cable news. Take the above video, which only offers an explanation of the video's context in Korean. Bloggers have identified the woman in the video as Huwaida Arraf, an American activist and lawyer.

Arraf, profiled some time ago with her husband in the Guardian, is one of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group. They distribute aid, organize protests and serve as human shields in the occupied territories, at house demolitions and in ambulances. (You might remember news stories about one of their members, Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an IDF bulldozer during a protest in Gaza in 2003.)

Many viewers probably assume that they are seeing a regular citizen of Gaza, or at least something filmed during the current invasion, since the video was posted this January, but bloggers have suggested that it was probably filmed earlier this year. We don't know why or who the soldiers are shooting at, or whether their bullets are rubber or lead. Though it seems unlikely, this clip and many others could be entirely fabricated.

I don't think this detail takes away from the impact of video -- even though there is nothing like watching a human shield to make me wonder why I'm wasting your life on YouTube -- but it does make me long for the clarifying filter of a BBC anchor who provides context, background and checked facts. Thanks to the web, we're getting every side of the current Gaza story, but I am not sure we get to understand any of them.

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