IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 27

bloggers would immediately claim
that the images were photo-shopped
or digitally altered, or that the Palestinians in the photos were actors,
and thus not really injured at all (pp.
60-61). The government's assertion
that Israel's military behaved ethically while the Palestinians were guilty
of deception was frequently seen on
pro-Israel websites.
In 2014, when Palestinians killed
three Israeli teens, expressions
of anger and demands for vengeance were prominent on many
pro-Israel social media sites. The
authors describe how supporters
began posting "revenge selfies,"
holding signs with anti-Arab slogans and demands for retribution
(pp. 92-94). Their cries were heeded by the Israeli government: Israel
soon launched an invasion of Gaza,
and social media was employed to
reassure the public and promote
the discourse of necessary and justified militarism all over again.
The authors are to be commended for introducing this exploration

of social media in a time of war,
and for taking on the task of
archiving online messages, which
can often be ephemeral. They are
also to be praised for tackling such
a contentious subject - any time
the Middle East is written about,
intense debate always seems to follow, and this book will certainly be
part of that conversation.
But despite the authors' good
intentions, Digital Militarism has some
flaws. For one, it is very short - only
about 100 pages of content. For
another, despite the authors' assertions that they wanted to do a scholarly study, the tone of the book is often
polemical. It is very clear where the
sympathies of Kuntsman and Stein
lie - they rarely miss an opportunity to criticize Israel, whether locating its origins in "colonial fictions"
(p. 15) or minimizing the times that
Israel really was under threat from its
Arab neighbors. In page after page,
one sees Israel at its worst, with little
context provided for why the government or its Jewish citizens felt so

beleaguered; lacking any information
about what the Arab world's social
media were saying, the reader is left
with the impression that Israelis are
callous and bigoted, and they hate
Palestinians for no apparent reason.
Thus, while the material in this book
may indeed be accurate (and there is
no reason to believe that the authors
invented it), the examples may have
been compiled in a way that confirms
what the authors already believe.
That said, there can be no denying that digital militarism exists and
is now a real factor in war; nor can it
be denied that many governments
use social media to inflame and
manipulate, or to hide unpleasant
truths and shape the discourse. I
only wish that Kuntsman and Stein
had not made it seem as if only Israel does these things.

Reviewer Information
Donna L. Halper is an Associate Professor of Communication at Lesley
University, Cambridge MA. Email:
dlh@donnahalper.com.

Corrections
In the March 2016 issue of IEEE Technology and Society
Magazine, the article "Designing a Novel ECG Simulator," by
Sohyung Cho, Youngseok Lee, and Inbae Chang, appearing on
pp. 75-84, should have carried the notation, "First author Cho and
second author Lee contributed equally to this work."
In the same issue of T&S Magazine, in the Letter to the Editor by
Michael Eldred appearing on p. 39, third column, fourth line, the
word "later" should be "latter."
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2564505

june 2016

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