Hours after the start of Hamas’s incursion into Israel, its militants began to flood the networks with propaganda of violence. The Palestinian terrorist organization used two totally different narratives. In the first, the militants released bloody videos recorded rudimentarily with cell phones on Telegram, which has generated internal divisions. Hamas’s official accounts, however, used a completely different type of narrative. Faced with blood, they used perfectly shot images, with drones and sophisticated means, in which they insisted on showing their ability to outwit the hitherto all-powerful Israeli army. The dynamic copies a type of propaganda that the Islamic State started and that places emphasis on the so-called heroic narrative.
The official Hamas videos that have emerged so far show members of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of this Palestinian organization, almost with the glamor of Hollywood. In one of them, they train in flying with paramotors – paragliders with a propeller – to land in a simulated Israeli town in which they infiltrate armed. In another video they explain how Mubar 1 works, the homemade anti-aircraft system with which they intended to combat Israeli missiles. Two other clips reveal the tunnel system with which they have managed to outwit enemy intelligence.
«A lot of selfishness and low empathy»
This dynamic has been studied in recent years to understand the effect that the Islamic State (ISIS) intended to cause and what real results it achieved. One of the most revealing studies on the effects of this propaganda was carried out three years ago by the University of Chicago, in a joint effort between the departments of Political Science, Neurology and Psychology. The experts discovered that the commitment to this type of speech allowed it to “expand its appeal to different recruiting groups characterized by needs associated with the attraction to extremism.” That is to say, the videos were demonstrated as a weapon capable of increasing ISIS’s ability to influence and a tool for recruiting people with “a high level of selfishness and a very low level of empathy.” The experts also began the analysis of propaganda mechanisms to counter the influence of ISIS on Western youth and came to the conclusion that they were useless. In many cases, they even backfired by hammering home ISIS messages.
Screenshot of three of the videos broadcast by Hamas on its official channels.
Hamas, by betting on this type of narrative, reveals that it is interested in showing itself as the most operational group in the region, in order to attract groups of young people from the West Bank, where they are a minority given the predominance of the more moderate Fatah party. Furthermore, according to academic analysts, Hamas always takes into account that it needs the support of Gaza voters and they are the ones it has to convince of its power and the necessity of its actions.
The adoption of the same communication techniques does not mean that there is a relationship between Hamas and ISIS. In 2017, the murder of a police officer in Jerusalem by three Palestinians was simultaneously claimed by both terrorist groups. Hamas then accused the Caliphate of lying and trying to sow confusion. The Palestinian group is also linked to Hezbollah, Lebanon’s pro-Iranian and Shiite militia. The Islamic State has among its enemies avowed Shiites and has murdered hundreds of followers of this branch of Islam.
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