The conflict between Hamas and Israel, which has been going on for more than two months, has shown a different kind of Hamas. Hamas has undergone many changes than ever before. They have built a larger tunnel system, have a longer range and a larger number of rockets, and are capable of multi-directional operations "on land, sea and air." These ascensions caused Israel to suffer huge losses, and even with its huge military and ** superiority, Israel was unable to achieve a decisive victory for a long time. However, among all aspects of Hamas's improvement, little attention has been paid to the improvement of one capacity, which has played a huge role – and that is Hamas's propaganda capacity.
For a long time, propaganda has not been taken seriously enough, and people tend to think that strength trumps words. However, in war, propaganda plays an irreplaceable role. For example, the United States has been pursuing a "war first" strategy, first demonizing the target country or person, and then claiming to intervene to spread "democracy and freedom". In this way, the United States will face much less international ** pressure. With the advent of the Internet age, war propaganda has taken on a new dimension. In the past, newspapers, television, and radio dominated propaganda, and information was easily monopolized by a few countries, whose armies were unaware of what the people of the world were doing on the battlefield.
But in the age of the Internet, everyone can speak out through social **, even unknown individuals or countries and organizations with less influence, and their words may spread all over the world in a short period of time. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Internet has allowed people around the world to fully understand the real situation on the battlefield, from the overall progress of the war to the confrontation of front-line soldiers. The role of social ** in the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield and the Palestinian-Israeli battlefield is clearly different. On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, social ** mainly plays the role of recording history, preserves the process of the war between the two sides, and provides a reference for future historical writing.
Although social ** also plays a role in propaganda to a certain extent, its effect is not very obvious. However, on the Palestinian-Israeli battlefield, the significance of social networking is particularly significant. In an era when social networking was not widespread, the propaganda machine of Israel and its Western allies was almost dominant, and the perception of conflict was always skewed in favor of Israel, which was considered powerful and intelligent, while its opponents were incompetent. Even in some conflicts in which Israel has suffered heavy losses, information is rarely available, such as in the Fourth Middle East War. This has led many people to develop a blind worship of Israel.
In contrast, for Hamas, which does not have the support of internationally renowned ** such as BBC and CNN, social ** has become the most effective and only means for them to compete for **support. Israel can easily blow up journalists with cameras on their shoulders to report the truth, but it has a hard time finding Hamas personnel with cell phones. Thus, on the one hand, Hamas has made the world aware of the plight of the people of Gaza and won more sympathy through social networkingOn the other hand, by showing ** and the course of the war, people see that Hamas is not weak and that Israel is not as strong as traditional propaganda portrays.
These initiatives have given many countries or forces that oppose Israel a favorable and confident belief in Hamas, which in turn has increased their support. We can note that since the military operation of Hamas, they have released many **, some of which are even quite good in terms of shooting quality. For example, the ** of the "Rachom" rocket artillery, tunnels and mortars shown before, if people who don't know the background see it, they will even think that this is the regular army of which country. This use of social networking to demonstrate its strength is important for Hamas. Images of Hamas militants using rocket launchers to attack Israeli tanks raise questions about the vigilance of the Israeli army.
Hamas's propaganda not only increases the likelihood of attacks on US bases and Israeli ships, but also puts more pressure on the West and Israel as a whole. This has reduced the pressure on Hamas on the frontal battlefield, which is difficult for other ** to achieve.