Hacker News Books

> 10. Six Days of War ( http://www.amazon.com/Days-June-Making-Modern-Middle/dp/B004.... )

If you're going to read this, the same author (Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US) wrote a book called Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to Present. A fascinating look at America's involvement in the region since the founding fathers.

The book falls short during the post-WWII period and the author fully acknowledges that weakness but up to that point the book is fantastic.

I'm halfway through Six Days of War by Michael Oren, and I think the most obvious thing that social media companies have done to handle the conflict is simply to exist.

[Kindles suck for skimming back though a book, and I don't have an eidetic memory. My apologies if I get any of these facts wrong.]

On the first day of the 1967 conflict, based on glowing, but false, reports from the Sinai outposts, President Nasser and Egyptian military leaders thought that they had knocked out most of the Israeli air force, when in fact the opposite was true. The cascade of misinformation not only aided Israel's efforts against Egypt, but it also lead Jordan's King Hussein to commit to the conflict in the West Bank. Similarly, news of Egypt's success is thought to have emboldened Syria and lead to the battle in the Golan Heights.

Now, 45 years later, with the social media and other communications channels available, there is less chance that the conflict could escalate due to false information. (It could still escalate for other reasons, of course.) It's just a theory, but maybe Israel's in-your-face social media strategy is a blunt retaliation to any Baghdad Bob style reporting taking place within the Arab world. Their goal might not be to provoke the enemy, but instead to dampen any groundswell that might occur due to false reporting.