A week after Hamas unleashed unprecedented attacks on Israel raining down thousands of rockets, massacring Israeli youth and children and taking several Israelis hostage it is now becoming clear that there is a method in the madness. The horrific barbarity came in the wake of the far-right-controlled Benjamin Netanyahu-government’s provocative acts of aggression against the Arabs, including the Palestinians, living in land occupied and expanded by Israel. The attacks seem to be intended to be an answer to the new policies of the government geared to cornering and hounding out the Palestinians with impunity. The ultra-right partner of the coalition ruling Israel appears to have been over-confident about its anti-Arab rhetoric and attempts to displace Palestinians from their homes.
This also emboldened the government to go ahead with its judicial reforms to make the Supreme Court subservient to the executive so that it could implement its bigoted policies without any checks and balances. This alone explains the reaction from the wider Arab world. Despite its brutality, Hamas’ attacks have been celebrated by the Arab public across the region. At the same time Israel’s bombing of Gaza in retaliatory strikes has predictably brought even more support for the Palestinian cause. This has also brought to the fore the contradiction of regional governments, including Saudi Arabia, expressing their keenness on pursuing closer ties with Israel and Arab public remaining sympathetic to the Palestinians.
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Hamas appears to be cashing in on this pan-Arab sentiment in order to project itself as the rallying point for the Palestinians’ cause of getting their own homeland. The whole thing seems to have been carefully planned beforehand. The social dynamics is such that Hezbollah – the powerful Lebanese militia operating on Israel’s northern border – launched its attack on Israel immediately following that of Hamas. Experts calculate Hezbollah may join Hamas’ side depending on the extent to which the war between Israel and Hamas spreads.
There is also a general assumption that Iran is involved in the planning of Hamas’ attack on Israel. This is only natural given the fact that Iran is known to provide Hamas with weapons and finance since long.
Similarly, the conflagration is getting traction from President Vladimir Putin of Russia. He has already expressed his disapproval of Israel’s action in Gaza on the ground of the humanitarian cost of Israel’s ultimatum to the Palestinians to run for safety from their homes to safer zones in 24 hours. This has also brought condemnation from the United Nations chief for the patent cruelty involved in Israel’s threat to innocent people to leave their home and hearth overnight.
In a bizarre twist to the macabre dance of death in Israel and Gaza, a propaganda war has started to mobilise public opinion in favour of either of the warring sides. This is also something never before witnessed. Propaganda or disinformation campaigns have always been part of war strategies to confuse the rivals and get more support. But, this time around the information or disinformation war has assumed unprecedented proportions taking advantage of the new communication tools. Since launching the massive cross-border attack into Israel, Hamas has been seeding violent videos and graphic images of its attacks on social media, particularly on Telegram and X. The matter has reached such a stage that X owner Elon Musk has received a warning letter from an EU commissioner regarding disinformation being spread on the platform in violation of the EU’s Digital Services Act, while the UK’s technology secretary has summoned social media executives to demand the removal of violent content from their platforms.
The propaganda offensive is but natural in all warfare. Hamas’ seeding of violent content on social media is a military tactic designed to batter Israeli morale and increase the deterrent leverage of the Israeli hostages the group is holding. The ingenuity of Hamas is its ability to take advantage of the lack of content moderation on X and Telegram so as to weaponise social media. Israel’s security forces too have long used social media to mould global perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to demoralise its adversaries and maintain support from its allies. It is using exactly the same ploy, it appears, regarding its airstrikes and operations in Gaza.
Hamas, in a sense, is paying Israel back in the same coin. That is the truth and the savagery by both sides cannot possibly hide it.
It is interesting to note how Indians too are reacting to the Hamas-Israel conflict. Many Right wing social media handles are supporting Israel and baying for the blood of Hamas. They presume all Palestinians are Moslems so Israel is doing their work. Little do they realize that war in the Middle East could cost India dearly in the coming days.
