Israel's air strikes yesterday and a potential invasion of the Gaza strip marked by an announcement on Twitter [3], has spread to a war of words on social media. Twitter feeds from both the IDF [4] and the Alqassam Brigades [5] have been hurling 140 characters of propaganda at each other since the campaign started yesterday. Throughout the day and night, people live-blogged the attack, posting photos [6] on Twitter and turning #gaza and #gazaunderattack into liveblogs.

Footage [7] of yesterday's assassination of the Hamas commander, Ahmed Al-Jabari, went up on YouTube almost immediately. YouTube, however, is no stranger to conflict in the Middle East. The deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and other diplomatic workers [8] in September was linked to an inflammatory anti-Islam [9] video put up by a pro-Israeli Californian.

This, however, may be the first time that the name of a military operation has been turned into a hashtag [10].

[Ed note: We've inserted the words "possible" and "potential" into this story's headline and opening paragraph respectively, to reflect that an invasion has not yet happened.]