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The digital war between Israel and Hamas did not let up during the seven-day pause in fighting on the ground.
The Israeli government and the Palestinian terrorist group rushed to capitalize on the temporary truce that broke down Friday by pushing their respective narratives of events unfolding in the Gaza Strip and their broader views of what the battle represents.
Some specialists have dubbed the fight the “YouTube War.” Hamas seems to have spent nearly as much time and energy planning its public relations war as it did the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel. Israel, apparently caught flat-footed by propaganda videos that portrayed the Jewish state as the unrepentant aggressor willing to kill innocent women and children, has unleashed a powerful counterpunch.
Commanders of the Israel Defense Forces have flooded social media to explain their military actions in detail and the reasons they are necessary. The IDF’s raid on the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City this month was accompanied by a one-shot video in which IDF officials showed Hamas weapons, computers and other tools of war.
It was part of the IDF’s aggressive strategy to justify its actions in real time and get ahead of any narratives that would paint Israel as cruel and dismissive of innocent civilian lives.
SEE ALSO: Top Israeli general defends campaign against Hamas as U.S. urges restraint
Analysts say the true test is yet to come. Having largely concluded the first phase of its military campaign in northern Gaza, Israel has turned its attention to the southern portion of the enclave, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians displaced from fighting in the north.
“The real crunch is going to come now, when the fighting resumes,” said Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute.
The resumption of Israel’s military campaign coincides with a high-level gathering of world leaders at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. Behind the scenes, global decision-makers will undoubtedly discuss the Israel-Hamas war and what positions to take. They will likely be influenced by photos, videos and other public relations offensives from each side of the conflict.
Mr. Doran said Israel and the U.S. have made strides in the court of public opinion but it’s too soon to say the tide has turned in their favor.
“I still think the other side has done exceptionally well,” Mr. Doran said in an interview. “You need only to look at the size of the protests across Europe to realize that all of those protesters, they see a completely different picture of the world than those of us who are listening to the IDF.”
Hostage propaganda
Hamas leaders knew Israel would respond to the attack with a show of unprecedented military force in the form of airstrikes, a siege of Gaza and the unfolding ground war in the enclave. Hamas and its chief ally, Iran, believed that much of the world — including Arab governments actively warming relations with Israel — would quickly turn their attention away from the Hamas attack and toward the perceived brutality and indiscriminate nature of the response in Gaza.
That assumption appears to be correct. Media coverage around the world has focused heavily on the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the 15,000 Gaza casualties that Palestinians claim. Hamas has helped drive and exploit that coverage.
The clashing narratives over the seven-day truce, in which Hamas released about 100 Israeli hostages in return for the freeing of more than 200 Palestinian prisoners and the expansion of international aid shipments into Gaza, is perhaps the best example.
As Hamas freed dozens of hostages, it released well-produced videos showing its captives, including young children, smiling and waving goodbye.
Israeli officials said those videos were undoubtedly made under duress but were likely effective at reinforcing the perception in some quarters that Hamas is a humane collection of freedom fighters against a ruthless aggressor.
Israel, the U.S. and many other Western nations have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, and popular social media sites such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram have banned it from their platforms. Still, pro-Palestinian posts appear to be swamping those of Israel supporters. A recent Washington Post survey found that the #freepalestine hashtag was used 39 times more often than the #standwithisrael hashtag on Facebook and 26 times more often on Instagram.
Last week, Hamas released a letter supposedly written by Danielle Aloni, who had been held hostage with her 5-year-old daughter. The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, posted the letter on social media to portray the group in a more sympathetic light.
“Kids shouldn’t be in prison, but thanks to you and other kind people we met along the way … my daughter considered herself a queen in Gaza,” the letter read in part, according to English-language media accounts.
The letter wished “good health and well-being” to the group that held Ms. Aloni and her daughter hostage for nearly two months.
Liam Adam, identified in media accounts as Danielle’s cousin, said on Instagram that the letter was little more than “propaganda.”
“Unfortunately I know many out there will try to use this in Hamas’ defense. Don’t believe them!” he said.
Fighting back
Israel and its allies are fighting an uphill battle in their public relations counteroffensive.
As the truce was breaking down Friday, Israel had released some 240 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for roughly 100 hostages, including some foreign nationals. Palestinians have tried to cast the exchange as fair.
On Thursday, a social media post by the IDF contrasted the kidnapping of 9-year-old Israeli girl Emily Hand, taken hostage on Oct. 7, with Israel’s imprisonment of 38-year-old Asraa Jabes, convicted of carrying out a bombing attack against civilian targets.
“Being Israeli is not a crime. Trying to blow up innocent civilians is,” the IDF said in a post on X.
Israel also has been fiercely proactive against inevitable global backlash. Perhaps the clearest example was the IDF’s siege of the al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in the Palestinian enclave, shortly after the ground invasion began in mid-November. The IDF said Hamas militants used the site as a command center and weapons storage depot.
Israel blunted some of the sharp condemnation abroad with a carefully crafted media blitz accompanying the raid.
“While we and most countries do everything we can to protect the sick, sadly that’s not the case in Gaza. Hamas sees ill Gazans as an opportunity — an opportunity to put the most vulnerable in the line of fire,” Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler said in a social media post released at the moment Israeli special forces were on the ground at the hospital.
“We know Hamas has done this for years,” he said. “Hamas terrorists have embedded themselves deliberately in any place they could, be it schools, kindergartens and hospitals. Hamas, in the most cynical way, is not only using the fuel, the electricity, the oxygen, the medicine from hospitals, but is using the most vulnerable, the sick and the ill, as human shields. This is what we are up against.”
The same day, Israel released a single-shot video showing guns, ammunition, flak jackets and other battlefield gear stashed in the hospital complex’s MRI room and elsewhere throughout the facility.
The footage showed weapons sitting on shelves alongside bandages and other traditional medical supplies, bolstering the Israeli argument that the militant Palestinian group is perfectly willing to use hospitals and vulnerable patients as shields.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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