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The Internet Had a Bris

‘Web Wars!’: an introduction

by
Marc Tracy
October 04, 2010
(Mark Alan Stamaty)
(Mark Alan Stamaty)

I didn’t write my post last Wednesday on The Social Network, the new movie about Facebook’s origins (which won the weekend box office), for this week’s Web Wars! series, but my take on the movie’s declaration that one of the world’s most important Websites was created by Jews self-conscious of (and perhaps trying to break free from) their Jewishness would have served as a nice preview nonetheless.

This week, writers Liel Leibovitz (today, on Web 2.0), Phil Taylor (on information warfare generally), Amy Zalman (on Israeli information warfare specifically), Mideast columnist Lee Smith (on Hezbollah’s messaging), Michael Tanji (on the Stuxnet malware), and Yossi Melman (it’s a surprise!) will explore the cultural and political implications of Jewish and Israeli use of the Internet. If you want, bookmark this page, where all the Web Wars! articles will be linked to once they are published.

As I say, the week wasn’t timed in conjunction with the Facebook movie, and it also wasn’t timed in conjunction with the revelation that Stuxnet, the computer worm that apparently targets Iran’s nuclear program, contains a line of code with the word “Myrtus”—a subtle reference to Esther, that famed Jewish subverter of Persian power. These coincidences, rather, serve to buttress the resonance of our theme.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.