Israel.
Information Wars
By Philip Copeman
11 August 2025
The world changed this week. .
I guess we should have seen it coming. The evidence has been there on all sides: arresting protesters in colleges; banning protest groups; disappearing journalists in Russia; no interviews with Hamas’ dissidents.
In the age of digital warfare, the battlefield is no longer a place. It is a platform. The combatants are not just soldiers. They are broadcasters, bloggers, and anyone with a signal and a slogan. The Gaza conflict, like many others, has revealed that the most decisive operations may not occur in tunnels or trenches, but in timelines and transmission towers.
Take the case of Anas Al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera journalist killed by the IDF. There is a deluge of outrage, but beneath the noise lies a new more complex more sinister reality. The IDF claims Al-Sharif was not merely a reporter but a cell leader in Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades. If true, his dual role raises a question that modern warfare must confront: when does a journalist become a combatant? Where are the boundaries of the battle field? Do they stop in Khan Younis or Kyiv or do they extend to college campuses and Alaska?
The answer lies in the Law of Armed Conflict. It defines “direct participation in hostilities” as any act that adversely affects military operations. This is not limited to pulling a trigger. It includes guiding troop trains, radioing enemy positions, and yes, shaping global narratives that constrain military manoeuvres.
Information is no longer a support function. It is a strategic domain. NATO, the US military, and the IDF all treat it as a core operational environment. In Gaza, this domain is saturated with emotive imagery, selective reporting, and real-time influence campaigns. Al Jazeera, Qatar and Hamas have become central actors in this space.
This is not journalism in the traditional sense. It is strategic communication. And it has worked. Al Jazeera’s coverage has mobilised protests, influenced foreign policy, and pressured Israel into altering operations. These effects are not incidental. They are operational. They meet the criteria for direct participation: harm, causation, and belligerent nexus. Does this apply to anyone posting on social media? Does this apply to me writing this post?
The International Committee of the Red Cross sets out these criteria clearly. If a civilian act causes harm, is directly linked to that harm, and is designed to support one side in a conflict, then the actor loses protection. Al Jazeera’s conduct in Gaza arguably meets all three. Their broadcasts have constrained IDF operations, aligned with Hamas objectives, and served Qatar’s geopolitical interests.
I am a pacifist. This is not a call to target journalists. This is not a call to target anyone. The call is the opposite, a call for the world to stop fighting. It is a call to recognise that the battlefield has changed. The myth that only those with rifles are combatants is outdated. Today, the warfighter may carry a camera, not a gun. And when that camera becomes a weapon of war, the rules of engagement adapt.
The uncomfortable truth is that narrative dominance can be as lethal as firepower. When media organisations become operational assets, they enter the conflict. If that logic applies to organisations, then it applies to anyone seeking to influence the outcome of a conflict. Their facilities, personnel, and infrastructure may become legitimate targets under international law. This is not a moral failing. It is a legal and strategic reality.
The Gaza or Ukraine conflicts are not unique. It is a case study in the evolution of warfare. The tools have changed. The stakes have not. Pretending otherwise does not make war more humane. It makes it less honest.
Israel: Where Every Word Is a Weapon
By Philip Copeman
14 August 2025
Mention Israel and Palestine in a sentence and watch your inbox turn into a war zone. The moment you type “Occupied West Bank” or “Kingdom of Judea,” you’re not writing—you’re deploying. The combatants arrive swiftly. Some wield hashtags. Others prefer full-blown character assassination. Either way, you’re now a target.Neutrality? That’s adorable. Neither side tolerates it. Try saying “I just want peace” and you’ll be accused of treason by both camps. The pacifist position, according to game theory, is the peace-peace option. It almost always yields the optimal outcome. But in this theatre, optimal outcomes are suspicious. They smell too much like compromise.
The truth is, most people—those not professionally outraged—just want the violence to stop. They want the screaming to end, the rockets to retire, and the hashtags to cool down. But the extremists on either side believe that outcomes improve with more explosions. They treat ceasefires like commercial breaks.
This is where I punt my book How I Write with AI and You Can Too. It’s a 45-page guide to surviving the digital battlefield with style—literally. In it, I introduce the concept of writing style inheritance. Think of it as JSON for your soul. You define your style object, and then you write like it.
Mine looks like this:
{
"writingstyle": {
"inherits": "copemanswritingstyle",
"topic": "Israel",
"stance": "neutral",
"goal": "promotewinwinoutcome"
}
}
In English: “When writing satirically about Israel, always keep a politically neutral stance and promote a win-win outcome.” Anyone wanting to move from combatant to peacekeeper should adopt this style object. It’s not just a writing choice. It’s a survival strategy.Because in the information war, the pen is not just mightier than the sword—it’s also more likely to get you blocked, banned, and buried under hate mail. But if enough people inherit the peacekeeper style, maybe, just maybe, we can write our way out of this mess.
And if not, at least we’ll go down with well-structured JSON.
https://www.turbocash.net/a/pages/marketing/howiwritewithai.html
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