Throughout the current Israel-Hamas war, HonestReporting has exposed ties between employees of mainstream media organizations and the terrorist rulers of the Gaza Strip.
From freelancers who crossed into southern Israel with Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre to Palestinian journalists who were honored by Hamas for their collaborative work with the Hamas Government Media Office, there is strong evidence for Hamas’ control and manipulation of the narratives that emerge from the Gaza Strip and help shape the way that the conflict is reported on around the world.
However, it is not only local Gazan journalists whose work falls under the tyrannical thumb of Hamas. Throughout its 17 years of control over Gaza, Hamas has also wielded its violent power to censor the reports of foreign journalists and ensure that only news sanctioned by the internationally recognized terror group sees the light of day.
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Operation Protective Edge (2014)
There is no better example of this suppression of press freedom than the media guidelines that were released by Hamas during Operation Protective Edge (July – August 2014).
According to an August 2014 report released by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center, both the Hamas-run Ministry of Interior and the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Journalist Bloc released guidelines during the early days of the Operation on how social media users and traditional media personnel located in Gaza should report on the ongoing conflict.
A key instruction by Hamas was to never publish information about or share photos of rockets, so as not to publicize the proximity of rocket launchers to densely populated civilian areas.
Other regulations that Hamas set out for social media users during Operation Protective Edge included the requirement to refer to all killed Gazans as “innocent,” to never share an up-close photograph of Hamas members, and to describe all Hamas activity as being in response to Israeli actions.
The regulations and their enforcement by Hamas were so severe that even the Foreign Press Association in Israel was forced to release a statement on August 11, 2014, condemning the “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”
According to the Meir Amit Center, by controlling the information coming out of Gaza during the early days of the Operation, Hamas was able to craft a narrative of Israel as an aggressor and the people of Gaza as victims of the Jewish state’s wrath.
However, as the Center notes, there were a number of instances where foreign journalists in Gaza did acknowledge the close proximity of rocket launchers to civilian areas. In some cases, these journalists only publicized their experience once they had left the Gaza Strip (and were outside Hamas’ realm) while others were forced to leave the Strip soon after issuing their reports.
Related Reading: Repeat Performance: How the Media Failed to Learn the Lessons of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge
Hamas Issues Strict Rules for Journalists
Operation Protective Edge was not the only time that Hamas sought to wield its coercive power over journalists in the Gaza Strip.
In August 2022, a year after heavy fighting between the IDF and Hamas during Operation Guardian of the Walls, it was reported that Hamas had issued strict rules for Palestinians working with foreign media outlets, including orders not to report on Palestinians killed by errant Hamas rockets and to blame Israel for hostilities in their reports.
As The Times of Israel reported at the time, these regulations were reversed after an outcry from representatives of foreign media outlets. However, as the media outlet noted,
The rules would have gone much further than existing Hamas restrictions. They appeared aimed at imposing the Islamic group’s narrative on media coverage of the conflict by implicitly threatening Palestinian reporters and translators who live under its heavy-handed rule.
Even if the rules are officially withdrawn, Hamas has still signaled its expectations, which could have a chilling effect on critical coverage, AP reported.
Hamas Sells Its Narrative
Aside from the aforementioned ties between Gazan freelancers and Hamas as well as the threatening and abuse of journalists who are critical of its terror regime, another way that Hamas has sought to craft the public perception of its current war with Israel is by attempting to sell its narrative to the West, particularly through mainstream media organizations.
In January 2024, the Hamas Media Office published a booklet entitled “Our Narrative…Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” This document, which sought to justify and contextualize the terror group’s October 7 attack against southern Israel, was released in both Arabic and English. The publication of a Hamas document in both languages was unusual and shows how the group is intent on not only influencing Arab public opinion but also the opinion of those residing in the West.
“Our Narrative” is a masterpiece of propaganda and misinformation, replete with claims such as:
- Hamas was only attacking military sites and never attacks civilians;
- Many of the victims were killed by Israel and not Hamas;
- This “battle” started 105 years ago, and Hamas was backed into a corner and forced to attack Israel.
For this reason, despite being among the key targets of Hamas’ information campaign, most mainstream media outlets ignored its publication at the time.
However, both Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Voice of America (VOA) fell for Hamas’ propaganda machine and publicized the terror group’s baseless claims, ultimately giving it an air of legitimacy and spreading its extremism to an international audience.
In retrospect, however, given the prevalence of sources branding Hamas as a “national liberation” group, battling “colonialism,” it’s clear that the Hamas narrative has found a receptive audience in too many places. The Hamas document even called for an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation, preempting the arrest warrants issued against Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Another more subtle way that Hamas cultivates the narrative around the ongoing war with Israel is by releasing unsubstantiated casualty figures as fact under the guise of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which seeks to portray Israel as an aggressor intent on destroying all of Gaza’s Palestinian residents, not just the terrorists embedded within it. When mainstream media organizations republish these figures, they are helping to spread Hamas propaganda around the world.
Hamas inflates the Gaza death toll, and the media buys it. Here’s how they twist the numbers to mislead the world. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/xemTDOAlET
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 15, 2024
Over its 17-year reign in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has sought to manipulate the way that local Palestinians and foreign journalists report on hostilities with the IDF, seeking to control the narrative and sway the minds of uninformed audiences around the world.
Through Hamas’ issuance of constricting media guidelines in 2014 and 2022, its use of violence against opposition journalists, the recently unearthed evidence of collaboration by certain Palestinian freelancers with the terror group, and its propaganda campaigns focused on influencing mainstream media outlets, it is clear that any news emerging from Gaza must be treated with a critical eye and not taken at face value.
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