A new IDF unit formed to help fight the nation's public-relations war is recruiting and training soldiers for the virtual battlefields of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

"The Internet, and especially social networks, Web 2.0 and bloggers, are an increasingly important and powerful way to disseminate information," said Sgt. Aliza Landes, who heads the unit, which was formed in September.

"Facebook has the same number of subscribers as the entire population of the US and provides a new opportunity for us to reach audiences we wouldn't reach otherwise," she said.

Israel first began seriously using the Internet as a publicrelations tool during Operation Cast Lead. The army launched a YouTube channel in December 2008 and broadcast footage of IAF attacks on Gaza targets, including one of a missile aborted once officers realized civilians were in the area.

Individual video views on the army's YouTube channel have reached more than 8.5 million people, Landes said. On Twitter, the army has 1,485 followers. It recently also started a blog and will soon launch an official presence on Facebook.

"There was awareness before Cast Lead that this was an area where the Israeli army spokesman's office should get involved and the Gaza operation galvanized the effort," Landes said in a telephone interview. "What we are doing right now is a starting point."

The UN General Assembly on November 5 voted 114 to 18, with 44 abstentions, to adopt a non-binding resolution calling for Israeli and Palestinian authorities to launch independent investigations of the fighting within three months.

The new unit "will be beneficial" to the Israeli public relations campaign abroad, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at Israel's Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center.

"Whether or not it will make a massive difference at the end of the day in how Israel will be perceived, that I am more skeptical about," he said.

The most recent action for the army's Internet social network unit came during last month's naval interception of a ship heading for Syria. Israel said it seized an unprecedented 500-ton haul of weapons from Iran intended for Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Landes and her soldiers made sure bloggers, whom she calls "a very critical and key element" of her work, were getting the same information the traditional media received.

"I want to make sure they can write with the same sort of authority," she said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the arms shipment a war crime and urged the UN to address the smuggled weapons and not the Goldstone Report on Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip.

"This is not just about addressing misinformation, although that is an important aspect," said Maj. Erik Snider, an army spokesman. "This is also a way to engage a target audience and have a dialogue with people around the world."