This latest Palestinian uprising is a Facebook intifada

TEL AVIV, Israel — They are young, apparently unaffiliated with any political or terror group and brimming with fury over Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Their weapons of choice: rocks, knives and social media.
Like the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 and the recruitment success of the Islamic State, the spreading violence against Israelis in recent weeks seems to have been sparked by spontaneous combustion on Twitter and Facebook, rather than by organized political groups. Social media have been crucial in mobilizing Palestinians for protests, disseminating information and feeding outrage against Israel.
Palestinians participating in the uprising are largely apolitical youths who post videos, photos and commentary “showing the larger picture of occupation, which is a violent experience which all Palestinians believe it is legitimate to resist,” said Ahmad Rafiq Awad, a professor of media and political science at al-Quds University. They use platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to bring “stories of individuals, who are portrayed as heroes.”
Since the Jewish New Year last month, at least eight Israelis have died and 31 Palestinians have been killed in attacks or clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Facebook and Twitter have been deluged with videos and photos portraying Palestinians' suffering under occupation and calls for resistance. A music video shared more than 100,000 times on the Facebook page of the news site Keifak features Palestinian musician Qassem Najjar describing intifada — or uprising — as a unity of Palestinians against injustice, singing, “When a shahid (martyr) is made, we will take each other's hands ... workers, teachers, doctors ... from the left and from the right.”
During the last intifada, from 2000 until 2005, coverage was dominated by large media outlets such as Al Jazeera, creating a “collective experience,” said Shimrit Meir, founding editor of the Arabic news site Al-Masdar. This time, established news sites take cues from the tone and content of amateur viral videos and posts, she said. “If you look at the Facebook pages of attackers, though, they don’t have a goal, they want revenge, they want blood."
Meir noted that the posts feature themes. For about a year, Muhannad Halabi, 19, who fatally stabbed two Israeli Jews in Jerusalem’s Old City on Oct. 4, posted to his Facebook page (since taken down) threats to Palestinian women, particularly the “murabitat,” a group of Palestinian women who curse and scream at Jews who make their way up to the Temple Mount compound, which is considered holy to both Jews and Muslims.
Twitter and Facebook are  flooded with images of blood dripping off knives under hashtags such as  #the_knives_intifada and #Palestine_Intifada. Many of those knife-wielding Palestinians, shot by Israeli security forces, are described as killed “in cold blood.”
One viral video taken on a smartphone Monday shows Ahmad Manasra, 13, his leg twisted as he lies on the ground and bleeds from his head while an Israeli curses at him and yells at him to die.
Israeli police said they “neutralized” Ahmad after he and his 15-year-old cousin, Hassan Manasra, stabbed a 13-year-old Jewish Israeli boy riding his bike in West Jerusalem. The cousin was killed.
Similar videos of young Palestinians, either injured or killed, are shown without filters in thousands of Facebook posts, including an account  titled “Images from Palestine.” The post says, “In the past two weeks, several Palestinian civilians were killed and injured from fires shot by armed Israeli settlers and soldiers who allege similar charges that have turned out to be falsehoods.”
Because these “lone wolf” attacks are random, Israel has struggled to respond effectively. It has closed roads used by Palestinians, demolished homes of suspected attackers and deployed additional forces to patrol public places.
“There’s nothing you can do to thwart them in the planning phase, because they’re very spontaneous," said Daniel Nisman, a security analyst with the Levantine Group. "The only thing you can do is to prevent them as they happen by making sure you have very aware security forces deployed to many places.
“Really, the only thing you can do is try to calm the incitement, if that can even be done," he said, "as well as start a national dialogue in terms of reconciliation.”