Propaganda is always obvious in retrospect. Whenever we go back, to the 1940s for example, or the Cold War era, and look into old posters, commercials, and magazines, it is clear to us how almost every piece of media was used to alter public opinion to garner public support, and control the masses. As Isa Blagden once wrote in her 1869 book The Crown of a Life, “If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.”
Propaganda, as defined by Edward Bernays, is “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses… Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” In one of his books, he discusses that the masses are governed, and their minds are molded by people they never know and constitute the real government that controls the public mind and dominates its ethical thinking. This powerful weapon is used by states in order to legitimize wars they wage under different pretenses but with one true goal, Power. We have countless modern examples of how the Western propaganda machine paved the way for their military invasions and wars that haven’t stopped ever since the Second World War. The most recent in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, where narratives of spreading democracy and peace were exposed to be mere lies to justify the implicit goal of controlling the resources of those countries and terminate any disturbance of the economic and monetary dominance of the US dollar and Euro.
Hasbara, a Hebrew word that means “explaining”, was first introduced into the Zionist vocabulary by Nahum Sokolow, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement that led to the occupation of Palestine. It is a strategy used by the Zionists in their information warfare in order to attain their objectives by whitewashing their blood-soused image in the media. To accomplish this, diplomats are targeted, as well as politicians, public figures, and the general public through regulating and influencing the flow of information on social media and major news outlets.
On October 7, The “Toofan Al-Aqsa” (Al-Aqsa Flood) operation was launched by the Palestinian resistance to stop ongoing plans of normalization and a “new Middle East” where the occupation has the blessing of various Arab countries to fully expel Palestinians from their homeland. Since the first day, the propaganda machine hasn’t taken a breath, spreading lies and trying to influence the public into supporting the occupation.
One of the first endless lies was the one of “forty beheaded babies.” Zionist media and officials spread lies that the Palestinian resistance beheaded forty babies. That lie was then backed up by CNN reporter Sara Sidner (who later apologized) and the US Presidency when Joe Biden claimed in a press conference on the 11th of October, “I’ve been doing this a long time, I never really thought that I would see… have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.” Claims which the White House later walked back from. The lies continue when the fighters, who were doing a surprise attack in which every second counts to achieve deeper infiltration, were accused of mass rape. The news spread quickly, to depict Palestinian resistance fighters as some form of primal, animalistic monsters. Such claims could not be backed by evidence, as admitted by the Zionists themselves.
Another lie spread by the Zionists during their demonizing campaign is that Palestinian fighters committed a mass shooting and killing of “civilians,” mainly women and children. These claims were easily exposed as the Palestinian resistance released GoPro footage of their fighters taking care of kids that were present during the surprise attack. Another video was released in which an “Israeli” mother speaks of what happened when the fighters entered her home, describing how they reassured her no harm would come to her or her children. Furthermore, occupation pilots who flew their Apaches to fight against the Palestinians admitted that “there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian,” slowing the rate of fire and selecting the targets only after the tremendous rain of bullets and missiles.
Other news outlets wrote articles about the resistance residing inside and under hospitals, laying the basis for the subsequent bombing of Al Ahli Hospital. Zionist social media officials first took credit for the bombing and said they successfully killed “a multiple number of terrorists.” After the global outrage, they blamed the bombing on a misfired Palestinian rocket and showed fake evidence, then deleted their tweet, and uploaded another tweet that was also debunked as a lie. They also staged a phone call between, as they claimed, resistance fighters saying the missile was one of theirs that misfired and fell on the hospital. This strategy was used more than once, as after bombing the Indonesian hospital in Gaza on November 9, the occupation uploaded a video on Twitter claiming Palestinian fighters were taking refuge in the hospital to “legitimize” their bombing of hospitals when in fact the object their video zooms in on is merely a police baton.
The effort to barbarize the Palestinian resistance continued all over social media where tons of different lies were told and fake images were created and propagated. From Ben Shapiro sharing a photo of ”dead Jewish babies”’ that turned out to be created by Artificial Intelligence, to the “Israeli” Occupation Forces (IOF) sharing stories of Hamas’ alleged atrocities, which were in reality committed against Palestinians. Some of the lies include: a video of “Israeli” children put in cages was actually a video of Palestinian children encaged by the IOF, a pregnant woman was cut open and the baby was pulled out of her only to die slowly – which is a real story from the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre against Palestinians, claims of a baby thrown into an oven which is a true story from the Nakba when the IOF entered a bakery and told the baker to throw his child into the oven, after refusing, they threw the child into the oven and his father after him. And how could we forget the IOF claims about one of their units collecting explosives put into children’s school bags to attract kids, when in fact it was the strategy used by the occupation in southern Lebanon where they scattered cluster bombs in the form of toys that would explode when picked up by children.
Another branch of the propaganda machine is the “Israeli” unit 8200, a unit that is in charge of utilizing information-gathering tools and using them to spread the occupation’s narratives widely. These officers are scattered in major social media outlets such as Google and Meta and play a big role in implementing their policies, as we have seen Palestinian news and coverage of the ongoing genocide getting shadow-banned and removed from platforms like Instagram. Mainstream news channels also play a significant role through their headlines in which they use subtle wording differences that change the readers’ gut reactions to the events such as using terms like “dead Palestinians” or “dead journalist” instead of saying they were “killed”. Israeli airstrikes become “mysterious blasts”, and verified reports end with “Palestinians say”, all to discredit and undermine Palestinian suffering. After all this work, “Israeli” hostages blow up this fabricated image since after being released by the resistance (despite the occupational government refusing to take them back) affirmed that they were treated with utmost respect and care and were given everything needed and available in besieged Gaza. As we have seen, hasbara mainly works by spreading lies through international news outlets and social media campaigns in order to control the flow of information, parallel with blackmailing people who call out their lies. The more undercover version of this is the occupation’s public diplomacy program, in which it invests in making public leaders, politicians, journalists, famous influencers shape their audiences’ perceptions of the occupation into a positive one. Despite all this manipulative effort to disrupt the truth, their lies are being exposed repeatedly and people won’t be deceived easily again.
It is truly ironic that the whole propaganda war against the Palestinian resistance and the efforts to turn their image into savages is simply trying to retell the stories of the atrocities committed by the Zionists against Palestinians by swapping the attacker with the victim. Maybe the only truth spoken by the Zionists is the one declared by their former Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, that “If the international media is objective and shows both sides, it serves Hamas.” It is true that an objective media will in fact be righteous in a fight between a nuclear power that breaks almost every international law and commits a genocide against civilians, and a resistance group that are exercising their internationally legal right to defend themselves against occupation and fighting to defend the last of their people.
The intricately woven veil of “the most moral army in the world” has fallen to no return, revealing to the west one of the most blood thirsty armies in history. No matter how hard the propaganda machine tries to gloss over the image of “Israel,” it will all be in vain as it has fallen from grace once and for all. Despite global governments’ constant political, economic, and military support to the ongoing genocide, the masses refuse to be deceived again by their governments, and stand side by side, in every corner of the world, demanding the freedom of Palestine.
Edited by Karine Ballout