Israel has long deployed its propaganda tactics known as “Hasbara”—Hebrew for “explanation”— in an attempt to portray a positive image of its illegal occupation of Palestine to the world.
The latest Gaza ceasefire deal on Monday brought another exchange of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners, and offered the Strip’s 2.1 million residents a brief reprieve from relentless Israeli bombardment.
Celebrations erupted across Gaza after the release of 1,968 Palestinian prisoners, following Hamas’s handover of the 20 remaining living captives.
A new wave of Israeli disinformation quickly spread on social media, alleging that the absence of female captives among the released was because Hamas killed them all.
Far-right American activist Laura Loomer, a staunch Israel supporter and major critic of Qatar, was among the prominent accounts leading the campaign on X (formerly Twitter), where she alleged that “Hamas raped and murdered all of the women” captives.
Social media users were quick to debunk the allegations, pointing out that Hamas had already released all female captives throughout the past two years as stipulated by past ceasefire agreements.
The response reflected a growing global awareness of Israel’s PR tactics.
Dr Rana Sharif, UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, told Doha News in an e-mail that people all over the world witnessed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“No amount of public relations efforts will undo the material violence they have inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza for the last two years,” she wrote.
Sharif added that the global support for Palestine has been persistent and growing over the last two years.
“People are learning, asking questions, undoing the decades-long attempt to sanitise a history of settler colonialism by Israel.”
Dr Marc Owen Jones, Qatar-based disinformation expert, told Doha News on Tuesday that the online rumours are perpetuated by professional agitators with an agenda.
“I think many of those spreading those rumours are Hasbara, or professional agitators like Laura Loomer who care less about the truth and more about perpetuating an agenda demonising Hamas and Palestinians, to ensure the survival of the myth that Israel [equals] civilised,” he said in an e-mail.
Release of female captives
On October 20, 2023, nearly two weeks after Israel waged its genocide in the Gaza Strip, Hamas released the first two female captives, mother and daughter Judith Tai Raanan and Natalie Raanan, based on humanitarian grounds.
Within three days, as Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Hamas released two elderly female captives, Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper—also based on humanitarian grounds.
During the week-long temporary truce between November 24 and December 1, 2023, Hamas released at least 60 living female captives. Israel then resumed its brutal onslaught in Gaza, rejecting all attempts to reach a ceasefire.
During the second ceasefire between January 19 and March 18 of this year, Hamas released 33 Israeli captives, including nine female living captives and the body of one deceased female. The remaining female captives, 10 dead and two alive, were found by Israeli forces during their ground invasion of the Strip.
All the female captives released by Hamas appeared to be in healthy conditions, and some even praised Hamas’s treatment during their captivity.
Freed Israeli captive, Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, told the press upon her release that Hamas “treated them gently”, which upset Israeli officials and provoked a halt to media interviews with released captives.
Israel’s PR disaster
Israel has long deployed its propaganda tactics known as “Hasbara”—Hebrew for “explanation”— in an attempt to portray a positive image of its illegal occupation of Palestine to the world.
Its strategy failed as the world witnessed the livestreamed genocide unfolding in Gaza.
Sharif pointed to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, where nearly 60 percent of Americans “view Israel unfavourably”.
“The state is no longer able to monopolise the communication apparatus, despite all its efforts and resources. We are witnessing a shift that is translating to more pro-Palestine engagement online and in the streets,” she said.
In the early days of the genocide, major mainstream outlets circulated unverified claims that Hamas had beheaded babies during its surprise attack on October 7. Despite a lack of evidence and major news outlets debunking the claim, many Western reporters continued to amplify the claim.
Weaponising feminism
The most recent hasbara campaign exposed the Israeli regime’s determination to weaponise feminist rhetoric, parrotted by Western media, to portray female Israeli soldiers as victims while ignoring their role in military operations against Palestinians.
“The IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] celebrates itself for ‘gender equity’ by parading around women who serve in its military. This entirely erases the harm and violence caused by the military industrial complex,” Sharif noted.
She also highlighted the concept of colonial and imperial feminism, which defines the use of the language of liberating women by colonisers to justify their crimes while depicting Palestinian women as “disposable, threatening and deserving of death”.
“Colonial and imperial feminism is categorically at odds with Palestinian life broadly and Palestinian women, more specifically. Palestinian women are seen as demographic threats who are targeted for kill,” Sharif explained.
“Rights do not exist for Palestinian women and we have seen this over the last two years in Gaza[…]Palestinian women will never be dignified by the categories of the state, and consequently, none of the ‘rights’ they tout extend to them. They are written outside the purview of those protections,” she said.
Israel’s social media tactics
Responsible Statecraft revealed on October 3 that Israel has been paying upwards of 18 U.S. social media influencers $7,000 per post to share pro-Israel content on their feeds.
A Eurovision News Spotlight report last month revealed that Israel spent $50m in deals with several platforms, including Google, to deny the famine it created in Gaza. The effort failed as images of emaciated Palestinians dominated online feeds, exposing the reality on the ground.
Sharif stressed that debunking Israel’s attempts at disinformation campaigns is important and necessary.
“We must also understand that so long as the settler state exists, we must expect such campaigns to not only exist but to intensify in voracity,” the expert said.
Jones also pointed to Israel possibly ramping up campaign efforts as it faces a public relations disaster amid the horrors uncovered in Gaza after the ceasefire.
“Israel will want to use the ceasefire to try and rebuild their shattered reputation. The coming weeks and months are also going to be a PR disaster as bodies and corpses and graves are recovered in Gaza, and journalists [are] perhaps allowed in to document the destruction,” Jones explained.
“For this reason, Israel [is] probably [going to] double down on their propaganda efforts,” he added.
