Hamas’s cognitive war against Israel since its Oct. 7 invasion has been a critical weapon in its arsenal. Hamas has gained global sympathy for its fabricated accusations: Israel starves Gazans, refuses to send in humanitarian aid, targets civilians with malice of forethought and fires on tent cities, hospitals, mosques and residential buildings. While all of these charges have been refuted, including the Hamas Ministry of Health casualty numbers, this perception warfare leaves a long-lasting impression on the international public. A global spike in antisemitism across North America and Europe, Nazi conspiracy themes on social networks, and widespread protests casting Jews and Israelis as murderers and racist war criminals have proven themselves as effective weapons in engineering public reception.
Hezbollah’s deadly rocket attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on July 27, 2024, which killed 12 children and injured scores of others on a soccer pitch, triggering a firestorm of media coverage, is a case in point. Both the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S. government confirmed that the Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket was fired from the Lebanese town of Chebaa by Iran-backed Hezbollah, designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and most Arab Gulf States.
However, some Arabic-language news outlets and social media influencers blamed the bombing on Israel. Al-Araby reporter Christine Rinawi was one of many Arab media personnel who platformed the fabricated narrative alleging an Israeli Iron Dome misfire.
Qatar-based Al Araby’s Rinawi, in a helmet and bulletproof “PRESS” vest, reported live that a man “in a Magen David Adom” (Israel’s version of the Red Cross) shirt told her that “eyewitnesses” said that Israel fired the rocket that hit the soccer field. Rinawi then noted that this alleged source told her that he could not report the truth, fearing Israel would imprison him.
Middle East Eye, a Qatar-funded media outlet, clipped Al-Araby’s report and posted it on Instagram. As of July 30, the post had 23.6 thousand likes, and Instagram users made hundreds of approving comments.
This false claim spread quickly across Arab media outlets and social networks. These media outlets, primarily based in Qatar, Hamas’s principal backer, attempted to contextualize the tragedy, charging that Israel illegally occupies Majdal Shams, many of whose residents, including the murdered children, hold Syrian citizenship. The Arab media implied that Israel killed Syrian nationals but “framed” Hezbollah to extend its war with Hamas to Hezbollah in the north. This claim ignored months of Hezbollah’s rocket barrage, drone war and targeted shooting into northern Israel.
(U.S. spokespersons in the White House and State Department emphasized on July 30 that the attack in Majdal Shams was in “northern Israel.”)
This misleading media coverage was not limited to Arab news sources. Following the attack, the front page of The Washington Post featured a picture of the funeral of the Druze children, with a headline that declared, “Israel hits targets in Lebanon.” This disconnected photograph and headline created the false perception that Israel had attacked Arab children in Lebanon as opposed to the truth of Hizbullah’s deadly attack against Druze children in Israel’s Golan.
These methods of misinformation are part of a trend of mobilizing and exploiting advanced “perception warfare” alongside Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism, which has intensified since the Oct. 7 attack. These examples underscore the importance of examining perception as a tool of war, its threat to Israel’s international standing, and how Israel can use its own perception warfare.
Under Iran’s direction, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have utilized social and mainstream media to project a narrative that presents them as legitimate political entities and “freedom fighters,” transforming the perception of multiple target audiences. These include the Israeli public, the Palestinian public and perhaps most importantly, the U.S. political and public audiences.
The steep rise in global antisemitism following the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel is in large part a result of Hamas’s successful perception warfare campaign. The Iranian-backed Hamas has modeled its anti-Zionist, antisemitic propaganda and disinformation after its ideological predecessors: the Nazis, the Chinese and the Soviets. These regimes have all significantly influenced Palestinian leaders and movements, from Haj Amin al-Husseini in the 1920s to the Palestine Liberation Organization beginning in the 1960s. The Palestinian cause has succeeded exponentially through time in making anti-Israel propaganda appeal to Western and global audiences while simultaneously appealing to the Arab and Muslim world with religious ideology and symbolism and Arab unity messages.
Iranian regime-sourced and -directed disinformation warfare against Israel and world Jewry, frequently masked as anti-Zionism, complements traditional terrorism acts by Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies as part of Iran’s “hybrid warfare” strategy. As Ron Schleifer notes, in psychological operations, “psywar” proponents demoralize a civilian population through fear, terror and emotional manipulation. Perception warfare as a concept is broader than psywar or political war, as it interferes with the audience’s discernment of the conflict as a whole. The neutral audience observing a conflict accepts the enemy’s messages, influencing the way those audiences receive and interpret information. Images, ideological messages and emotional appeals shape a particular perception of the conflict that benefits the enemy.
Iran and its proxies’ perception warfare has dominated social and mainstream media networks. For example, Qatar, Hamas’s most crucial state sponsor, influences audiences of hundreds of millions through its media giant Al Jazeera, which has showcased its narrative of the “Palestinian issue” in Arabic, English and other languages. For example, Al Jazeera’s AJ+ venue shapes public opinion worldwide with messages tailored to Western audiences, often diametrically opposed to their messages in Arabic.
Perception warfare in the Middle East
Al Jazeera is only one example of a general trend of authoritarian regimes using media tools to control information and shape public consciousness. Perception warfare can be projected outward to foreign audiences and inward to local audiences. Regimes spread messages to support their agenda and ensure continued control while enhancing their political legitimacy. This type of psychological operation is widely used by Russia and communist China, as shown in its “Three Warfares” model.
Maintaining domestic and international legitimacy among Islamist and other terror groups is especially important in the conflict-ridden Middle East. Psychological warfare is a crucial tool for legitimizing totalitarian military actions as well as terror groups, garnering public support and deterring enemies.
Cultural and religious symbolism are essential elements of perception operations, particularly in the Middle East. Symbols and images of Palestinian youth flashing victory signs, telling heroic stories, and making Koranic references serve as powerful tools for maintaining morale and support for jihad. In Islam especially, religious beliefs are intertwined with political and military struggles, mobilizing forces to fight.
Oct. 7 and perception warfare
The aftermath of Oct. 7 underscored the successful antisemitic weaponization of classic Palestinian propaganda themes. Hamas’s disinformation campaign succeeded in positioning, as noble “resistance,” its unilateral, strategically designed, barbaric mass terror assault, which killed some 1,200 civilians. Hamas propaganda altered global perceptions, convincing the West, moderate Muslims and the international community to sympathize with a radical Islamic terror organization against a democratic state.
In its continuing perception warfare, Hamas has uprooted facts: the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s fabricated death statistics; the erroneous accusation that the IDF bombed Al Ahli Hospital in November 2023, which was revealed to be an errant rocket shot by Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants; hiding armaments in UNRWA and other schools and residential buildings; doctored and directed visual images and video distributed on social media; using hospitals and mosques as military bases and as tunnel shaft entrances—are but a few examples.
Yet, Hamas’s targeted disinformation has enhanced its success on the military and international battlefield for public opinion. Hamas perception warfare has yielded mendacious international accusations: the IDF’s “starvation warfare,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” culminated in the recent rulings of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice charging Israel with criminal presence and activity in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Israel’s options for fighting the war of perception
It is incumbent that Israel expose, educate and engage multiple audiences to the reality of its “seven-front” war being waged against it by the Iranian regime and its terror proxies. To strengthen its international standing and legitimacy, Israel must bolster its own home audience while exposing the Axis of Evil’s media manipulation to Western and global audiences.
Risks to the home audience
Perceptions pushed by local and foreign mainstream media, whether intentional or not, may cause “battle fatigue” and despair in Israel’s resilient population, becoming part of an existential threat to the Jewish state. For example, Israeli media’s emphasis on returning the Oct. 7 hostages “at any price” may play to Hamas’s advantage. Similarly, foreign calls for a “ceasefire” may weigh on the Israeli psyche. These messages and antisemitic and anti-Zionist ones have become ubiquitous on social media platforms such as TikTok, with its Chinese-run algorithm, or pushed by Russian and Iranian bots.
These media exposure factors may affect the home audience’s perception of success and victory in the war and military and diplomatic actions and outcomes. While Arab Muslim culture, defined strongly by concepts of honor and shame more than by numbers of dead, may perceive and declare themselves “victorious” for executing the Oct. 7 massacre, despite the costs. Alternatively, Israelis may perceive the outcome in Gaza as “less than victory” because of the outstanding hostage issue and global disapproval.
The ‘Toda’a’ approach
To prevent this potentially harmful outcome, Israel’s government, media and civil society must move from a hasbara (defensive “explanation” of policy) communications approach to a toda’a (assertive perception) communications approach. For this to happen, Israel must deemphasize the importance of defensive explanations for its actions but rather create assertive offensive narratives to attack and undermine its enemies. Assertive information and perception management in both military and civilian arenas are essential ingredients in exposing and educating multiple audiences on Iran’s propaganda machine.
Israel needs to improve its soft power arsenal to impact various audiences, including the enemy. The enemy must perceive the loss and despair of a long war against Israel. Israel’s historical enemies, the Soviets, the Nazis, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Iranian regime—have all skillfully mobilized soft power. Though the Israeli public is remarkably resilient, its citizenry must be educated to identify the use of enemy perception warfare and proactively mobilize its own civilian soft power to shape foreign perception in the West and the Arab world.
Israel’s perception warfare must also undermine the mass indoctrination against the Jewish state on Western university campuses. The all-encompassing “intersectionality” narrative that has come to dominate the Western discourse, naming Israel the villain and Hamas the victims, must be defeated by undermining its historical and intellectual falsehoods. Assertive perception warfare has the power to reverse the inversion of legitimacy whereby Israel has been recast as a terror organization while Hamas is presented as freedom fighters. These Soviet-era narratives and tactics must be eradicated.
To achieve success, Israel must invest resources in civilian awareness, information operations and governmental allocations to bolster Israel’s national security against perception warfare threats. Soft power must move the Jewish state from defense to offense in its 21st-century existential war of perception. This would push Iran, its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi terror loyalists onto their heels, impeding them from driving the mendacious narrative that has successfully co-opted the Western discourse
{Reposted from JCPA}
