Why Hamas excelled in psychological warfare

By Hisham Aliwan

The peak of victory is to be able to break the will of your enemy without a fight, and at the very least to defeat him with minimal effort, time and cost, according to the book "The Art of war" by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu (died 496 BC.Ad), that is, about 2,500 years ago. 

It is equally important to avoid a long war and the material and moral drain it entails. Therefore, the armies resort to the elements of misinformation, surprise, shock and intimidation to accelerate the collapse at the other end.

In its current offensive on Gaza, Israel has lost most of the elements of a quick and decisive victory in the near future. Its lies are short-lived, and the initiative is with Hamas, which attacked first and imposed the rhythm of the war on it, its place, time, circumstances and elements. It has only the unprecedented mass bombing since the Second World War to cause the necessary psychological trauma and impose a complete defeat on the entire Palestinian people, not only on Hamas.

The unexpected surprise that the destruction of tens of thousands of housing units, including towers and complexes, the demolition of universities, hospitals and mosques, the bombing of the Legislative Council building, up to the bulldozing of cemeteries, in a few weeks, the extermination of entire families, the numbers of martyrs and wounded reached record numbers (more than 20 thousand martyrs and more than 50 thousand wounded), and the displacement of all residents of the Strip to small areas lacking all the elements of life in the south of the Strip near the border with Egypt, did not break the resolve of the fighting, but absorbed the severe shock that its military and media performance gradually escalated instead of declining, which constituted an adverse shock to Israeli society, It has no analogues in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for a whole century.

Psychological defeat on October 7

Israel's military and security prestige was severely shaken following the Hamas attack on the Gaza Strip on October 7. But its media image was more horribly tarnished after the launch of its counterattack on the Gaza Strip, which destroyed almost everything that Israel had built over many decades in the Western consciousness, from a contradictory image of itself (the victim is morally and militarily superior to its weak, evil enemy) to the appearance of the monster in all its ugliness in public, in the time of social media, and where nothing can be hidden.

Despite the Israeli military and technological superiority accompanying another no less important superiority, which is the field of psychological warfare, the comprehensive Palestinian resistance (Hamas, factions, and all categories of the Palestinian people), managed not only to keep up with the enemy in psychological warfare tactics and information warfare, but even surpassed it. This achievement is equivalent to, and may exceed, what was achieved militarily in the October 7 operation.

In the same context, it is necessary first of all to diagnose the important psychological breakthroughs accomplished by Hamas in its surprise attack on the Gaza Division and its settlements, before paying attention to the elements of psychological warfare that currently lie at the heart of Gaza's resistance strategies to the fierce military attack:

1-The Myth of attacking in order to defend existence: the myth of Israel, since it was armed gangs in the shadow of the British mandate imposed on Palestine after the first World War, has been based on the initiative of attacking Palestinians in particular, and Arabs in general. Settlement is already an offensive step accompanied by continuous processes of assault and displacement:

- Immediately after the declaration of the partition of Palestine in 1947, the Israeli forces launched an offensive to impose new borders.

- In 1956, Israel, along with Britain and France, participated in the tripartite aggression against Egypt following the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

- In 1967, it destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian armies in a few hours, occupied the West Bank, the Golan and the Sinai.

- Only the 1973 war was an exception, when the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched the offensive, and the Israeli confusion was at its peak.

- The danger of Hamas' attack on the Gaza Strip is that it undermines the myth fifty years after the October 1973 war.

2-The Myth of military, security, technological and media superiority, which is the second myth that collapsed. And there are four sights that can not be overlooked:

A-The sweep of the positions of the Gaza Division and the killing of hundreds of soldiers and officers, and the capture of more than a hundred, an unprecedented number, by an attack carried out by only 1,200 fighters, with shocking images broadcast a little later: (dragging soldiers from over the Merkava tank, burning tanks in the camps, liquidating soldiers in their positions, arresting officers, transporting Israeli settlers on motorcycles to the heart of the Strip).

B-The clear superiority over all Israeli security measures, especially the separation wall, which cost more than a billion dollars, and falls within this context of the systematic misinformation practiced by Hamas in the months before the attack, when Israel was deluded of the desire for peace, while maintaining the highest degree of secrecy of the operation, although it carried out maneuvers and training on the operation itself in front of the eyes of Israeli censorship.

C- Keeping up with technological superiority with counter-tactics that have not yet been disclosed in detail. How did Hamas manage to cross the technological gap between it and Israel. How did you get sensitive and detailed information about Israeli sites and bases, which is the secret of operational success

D- Finally, Hamas achieved media supremacy through the broadcasting of successive recordings of the military media documenting the offensive operations in the Gaza Strip and in the settlements, quickly and almost immediately, with the greatest impact on the Israeli recipient, at an intense time, which is shocking and intimidating, and also aroused strong sympathy among the recipient who is already pro-Palestine, and in the wider public, especially among the youth groups in Western societies. The image of the hero inspires young people in any case, before the image is later strengthened by the political and ideological basis that confirms the Justice of the cause.

Israel invested the Hamas attack to strengthen its image as a victim more and more, and to justify the subsequent violations of international laws, while inventing accounts of the atrocities committed by Hamas men in the settlements, in particular the tale of the slaughter of children, the burning of settlers, the rape of women.

The Israeli media and psychological attack

In return, Israel used the Hamas attack to further strengthen its image as a victim and to justify subsequent violations of international laws, while inventing accounts of the atrocities committed by Hamas men in the settlements, in particular the story of the slaughter of children, the burning of settlers, and the rape of women.

Thanks to the huge media machine dominated by its friends in the West, Israel has managed to direct a massive coordinated campaign to demonize Hamas, comparing it to ISIS. It was adopted without question or discussion by the leaders of Western countries, starting with US President Joe Biden. This made the west stand in solidarity as a deaf bloc behind the Israeli attack. The general "Western" consensus was that there would be no ceasefire before victory over Hamas was achieved. It is a deadly kind of psychological warfare to spread despair among Palestinians from any glimmer of hope to stop the massacre, only to turn against the resistance.

All Gazans, not just Hamas, were described by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as "human animals" two days after the October 7 attack, which was the prelude to the most heinous campaign of extermination without borders and no restrictions. But the shocking surprise of Israel was that its lies were exposed with record speed:

The victim's narrative has collapsed in an alarming way.

- Israeli counter-narratives have appeared refuting the claims of the Netanyahu government (many settlers in the Gaza Strip were killed either deliberately because they were held hostage by Hamas, or accidentally because of panic).

- Scenes of the horrific killing of children and women in the Gaza Strip, the siege and sabotage of hospitals, and the assassination of journalists, doctors and paramedics have spread.

- At that crucial moment, the image of the victim moved from one party to another, and world solidarity with Palestine and Gaza expanded to an uncharacteristic extent.

- The tools of Israeli media influence were damaged, and they were overcome by scenes of steadfastness and courage in the fighting, and rare human cases of composure in the face of horrors. Gaza has become an unbreakable symbol.

Psychological Counter warfare

With the start of the Israeli ground offensive on the Gaza Strip on last October 27, tanks penetrated into the rear. Without strong resistance, it encircled the north of the Strip and theoretically separated it from the south, and made Hospitals its main targets, before moving to the main stronghold in the city of Khan Yunis in the South, following a humanitarian truce for a few days.

Here a new stage of fighting began, and with it psychological warfare. In the early days of the ground invasion, mystery and frustration prevailed for a little while, before the guerrilla war broke out among the ruins of houses, with frequent broadcasts of scenes of Palestinian guerrilla operations, the daily destruction of troop carriers, bulldozers and tanks, with a homemade Yassin shell, sometimes by placing a "guerrilla action" canister on the body of the tank itself, killing soldiers from a distance of zero, sometimes with vehicle ambushes as happened in Shujaiya, and the continued shelling of rockets into the Israeli Interior up to Tel Aviv and beyond, and to the Jerusalem area.

Abu Obeida's voice has become a danger that should be silenced, as are the cameras of photographers documenting Israeli massacres in hospitals and boarding schools. Perhaps the most psychologically painful scenes are that of the Palestinian fighter with his feet in" slippers", in sports clothes, firing a projectile at Merkava among the rubble, or those barefoot fighters climbing a dirt hill, preparing to pounce on enemy positions. Not to mention the prisoners being filmed appealing to their government for a ceasefire.

The psychological counterwar culminated with the broadcast of scenes of destroyed tanks and wounded soldiers, after the capture of an Israeli soldier's camera.

All that Netanyahu wanted was a picture of victory in Gaza, even if it was fake (the arrest of Palestinians from a shelter school and humiliating them as Hamas members, the capture of an abandoned tunnel near the Erez crossing).

But Hamas stubbornly refuses to give its enemy this opportunity.

Source: Assas Media