The death of a grandmother filmed on Facebook, armed fighters announcing on the telephone to Israelis the death of their loved ones, humiliating videos of hostages in Gaza… The massive propaganda of Hamas, in this new conflict with Israel , aims according to experts to “paralyze” Israel through terror. On the third day of the surprise and massive offensive launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement, compared by Israel to September 11, 2001, more than 700 Israelis were killed in just over 48 hours and 2,150 injured, according to the army. On the Palestinian side, 560 people were killed and 2,900 injured, according to local authorities.
Alongside the armed conflict, Hamas does not hesitate to exploit social networks. Mor Bayder told AFP that this Saturday she did not receive the usual message: “Mori, my love, are you up?” Instead, the young Israeli claims to have discovered on social networks the “brutal murder” of her grandmother, during the attack carried out by Hamas in a border village in the Gaza Strip. “A terrorist broke into her house, murdered her, took her phone, photographed the horror and posted it on her Facebook wall. “That’s how we found out,” she said in a chilling testimony posted on the social network, echoed by several family members.
Also read: Several Harvard student associations hold Israel “responsible for the violence taking place”
On the Israeli television channel Canal 13, Mor Bayder, in tears, assured that the killer had called his aunt to force her to see the images of the old lady “lying in a bath of blood” at her home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz located two kilometers from the Gaza Strip, where several Israelis have been missing since the Hamas attack. Same depiction of violence in numerous other photos and videos distributed massively since Saturday on the web by Hamas or its relays. “It’s intentional: the goal is to trigger a feeling of helplessness, paralysis and humiliation,” said Michael Horowitz, security analyst for the consulting firm Beck International.
Thus, this unbearable and yet viral video showing the apparently unconscious body of a young woman naked in the back of a pick-up, to the cheers of armed men. Her mother identified her as Shani Louk, an Israeli-German in her twenties who attended the rave party that turned into carnage in the desert at dawn on Saturday. Other images of a family prostrate on the ground went around the world. A crying little boy of six or seven years old does not want to believe in the death of his sister, asks if she will come back: “no” his mother replies in a sob before throwing herself on her child to protect him, moment when the legs of what appears to be a hostage taker pass in front of the camera.
Also readHamas attack on Israel: what is the difference between “state of emergency” and “state of war”?
These propaganda methods are not new on the part of Hamas, notes researcher Ruslan Trad, from the Atlantic Council’s digital analysis laboratory (DFRLab). “But they are much more sophisticated”, and “unprecedented on such a scale” due to the large number of victims on the Israeli side, equally unprecedented. These narratives also find a powerful echo because they are “systematically relayed by Iranian and Russian trolls, and amplified by state media,” adds David Colon, professor at Sciences Po Paris. To which is added, according to him, “the ambiguous attitude of China with the platform like TikTok which allows a lot of shocking content”.
As for “Hamas and the Palestinian media, whether associated with it or not, themselves provide evidence of war crimes,” underlines Michael Horowitz, while the movement is already classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union since its suicide bombing campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s. “Hamas and its allies do not fear being accused of having committed war crimes and massacres (…) they consider the global institutions as useless and supported by the West.