War on TikTok; America's Consternation at Growing Understanding of Israel's Nature
As protests escalate across the US and Palestinian supporters demonstrate in cities, 25 Republican senators have issued a letter demanding a crackdown on the flood of pro-Hamas content on TikTok.
Last week, the US House of Representatives banned the Chinese app TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the US. According to this bill, which must be signed by US President Joe Biden and passed in the Senate, the Chinese company Byte Dance, the owner of TikTok, has 6 months to sell its assets in America.
Although Republican supporters of the bill have always emphasized the fact that TikTok's Chinese ownership poses a national security problem for the United States, according to the Washington Post, the popularity of pro-Palestinian content on the social network has led Israeli supporters in Washington to label the program a "propaganda machine" and control it. content. Moreover, the US government, which is Israel's largest supporter in today's war in the Gaza Strip, has been unable to convince American youth to accept the White House and Tel Aviv's version of this war.
Therefore, we can say that Tel Aviv and the White House lost the war of narratives.
Meanwhile, Jeff Morris Jr., an American capitalist and one of the former media executives in the United States, speaking about Israel's failure in the narrative war and the influence of TikTok on Gen Z users in America, notes: “Most young Americans are TikTok users, and since the beginning of the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, videos with the hashtag Standwithpalestine received more than 2.9 billion views, while videos with the pro-Israel hashtag only had about 200 million views.”
TikTok data shows that the hashtag "Free Palestine" was visited by more than 770 million people in the 2 months after the Gaza War in the United States alone. This is likely the reason why pro-Israel groups and lobbyists in America accuse TikTok of "seducing" American youth from White House policies in the Gaza war.
The Washington Post notes that Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the pro-Zionist anti-defamation organization, pointed to TikTok's problem in America in a leaked phone conversation and called the app "the reason the US government (and Israel along with them) have failed in the narrative war over Gaza."
Nursin Acoglu Goni, head of the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Yildiz Technical University, told Anadolu Agency: “The US government and the pro-Israel lobby blame TikTok for the rise of anti-Israel sentiment among young Americans. Their goal is to protect Israel's interests. By banning these platforms, the American government and major US interests are seeking to impose their views, but with such measures, the fact that Israel is the aggressor will not change, since information sources are no longer limited to traditional media, and young people are exposed to different opinions and are exposed to with political content via social networks. They can see the truth clearly and no longer believe the lies.”
