Quick experiment. This is from an otherwise excruciating set of BBC "human interest" interviews. Read it and see if anything strikes you as odd:

MUHAMMAD ABUSHABAN, GAZA CITY - The Israeli army started the invasion in the morning. We have been out of electricity for more than three days and out of water in the house. The invasion started from three areas - two in the North and one in the East. We are living in the middle of Gaza City and are about nine or 10 kilometres from where they are. At the moment the Israeli soldiers are close to one of the most important streets, the eastern street, they are at the beginning of it. They are not only shooting the outside areas, the helicopters and F-16 are covering the ground invasion by hitting as much locations as they can. My home is between the Islamic University and al-Saraia military building. Last night they attacked the military building with two rockets... I spoke in the morning to a friend who lives in a neighbourhood between Gaza City and the northern area, they are close to the area where they entered and right now they are trying to go to the higher place like hills and mountains.

Read it again.

Now: is it just me or do those not read exactly like a military communique describing Israeli troop movements? One might almost suspect that - while Gaza is blanketed by Israel's electronic jamming - the BBC was acting as a conduit for Hamas coordination. That BBC News stringer certainly got lucky. This guy's been without electricity for three days and the two of them just happened to run into each other? And such a compelling and succinct interviewee to stumble into!

If this was meant to be intelligence it was outdated by the time it got posted. And I'm not sure it was - MR reader Jerry had to point it out to me twice before I saw anything strange. But on the second reading it certainly sounds a little amiss. And in any case it raises a particularly thorny problem in the context of new media technologies and urban warfighting: the enemy doesn't need a robust communications infrastructure any more. He has the Internet and willing local stringers. Of course if Hamas was going to communicate over the Internet they'd just set up a chatroom or a closed bulletin board somewhere. But could they guarantee that those wouldn't be infiltrated and shut down by Israel? And what if there's a field operative who has information about Israeli troop movements but no way to get to or power a laptop. It would be easy enough to have instructions in place that say "identify yourself as Muhammad Abushaban and find a reporter."

Not sure. Anyway, the rest of the interviews were pure propaganda - "we need the international community to save our children" stuff. But this one was a little disconcerting.

References:
* Gaza voices: Living with conflict [BBC]

Previously:
* Hamas Thanks "The Media" For Glorious "Victory" In Gaza [Video]
* BBC Reporter Upset At Marine For Underplaying Kinder, Gentler Side Of Taliban Lunatics Who Wanted To Skin British Soldiers Alive
* Shocking BBC Expose! Anti-Israel 9/11 Truther Thinks Gaza Violence Is Israel's Fault