The Hebrew newspaper “Haaretz” revealed, on Wednesday, that the office of the Israeli army spokesperson led a fraud operation against the Israelis during Operation “Guardian of the Walls / Sword of Jerusalem ” in May 2021, in an attempt to show that it had achieved victories at the expense of the “Hamas” movement in the Gaza Strip .

According to the newspaper, the operation aimed to raise awareness among Israelis of their army's attacks in Gaza and the "price" paid by Hamas and the Palestinians.

The Israeli army used fake accounts on social networks in order to hide the fact that it was run by the office of its spokesperson, to publish publications that include videos and other fake accounts to market to the Israelis.

The tweets and videos were posted under the hashtag #Gazarepents, with captions including: "We have to show how strong we are... Share so everyone knows we're responding in a big way."

According to the newspaper, this plan began a few days after the start of the operation, after the Israeli army spokesman felt that the Israeli public was more impressed by Hamas' missile strikes and was not sufficiently affected by the army's attacks, which in turn tried to show that the campaign he led stemmed from the public.

In addition to the fake accounts known as "bots", the Israeli army used two very popular accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, and they were identified as secret, and hashtags were launched through them, including "Let them die", "Kill them permanently", and "Destroy Gaza with everyone in it." .

It was noted that the accounts were deliberately referring to right-wing personalities, politicians, and activists in their tweets, but the response from the Israeli public in comments, likes, and so on was very weak. Despite this, the army spokesman's office won an internal award for the fraud.

The Israeli army admitted that it carried out the fraud and that what happened was a "mistake", but said that the videos that were published were authentic and were not fake, and that most of them were filmed by Palestinians.

The newspaper says that the Israeli army participated for years in qualitative operations during which it tried to break the narrative of the other side and influence the residents of Gaza, Lebanon and others, and to achieve operational achievements, within the framework of a psychological war it leads.

During Operation "Guardian of the Walls/Saif al-Quds," a campaign was launched targeting the residents of Gaza through social media, and tweets were made from official accounts such as the army's spokesperson for the Arabic language, or the Israeli prime minister's spokesperson for the Hebrew language as part of this psychological warfare.

An Israeli security source said that what happened was prohibited by law, and even during the spread of the Corona virus, the Israeli army was not allowed to use some of its capabilities to locate the injured, and this is a sensitive matter.

Hedi Zilberman, a former spokesman for the Israeli army, was a major part of the operation, and he was behind the misleading attempt to carry out a ground operation to get Hamas members to enter the tunnels with the aim of destroying them while they were inside, but the operation did not succeed, and he had exploited Gilad Cohen, an officer in that fraud. The Israeli army used to run the "Abu Ali Express" channel on Telegram, as part of the "war of awareness" on social networks, which made its page the most influential among Palestinians, Arabs, and even Israelis and military correspondents before it was terminated.