ABSTRACT
By the end of the devastation, over 2,200 Palestinians were dead, over 10,000 wounded, and over a quarter of a million displaced. To use a metaphor frequently invoked by Israeli strategists, this was another instance of Israel “mowing the grass.” While Israeli bombs were destroying Palestinian lives that summer in Gaza, people in the United States were engaged in two social media campaigns that had gone viral. The first was the Ice Bucket Challenge. Spread via YouTube, this campaign dared people to film themselves pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads as a way to raise funds to combat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The second social media campaign making the rounds that summer began on August 9 when Michael Brown, an unarmed Black youth, was shot dead by a white police officer on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. The unusual aspect of this event was not the shooting itself but the public response to it.
