Hamas’ Online War

How disinformation from the terrorist group and its backers reaches millions daily.

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A female protester holds-up her cell phone featuring a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rally protesting the Israeli attacks on Gaza city, at the Palestine square in downtown Tehran, October 20, 2023. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In the wake of a deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza City last month, a social media influencer and self-proclaimed independent journalist named Plestia Alaqad took to Instagram to bring attention to the plight of Palestinian civilians. 

“Yesterday, a complete massacre happened at Al-Ahli Hospital,” she told her more than 2 million followers, blaming the casualties on an alleged Israeli attack. “Around 1,000 civilians were killed and martyred.”

But the death toll didn’t approach 1,000 or even the more conservative figure of 500 later provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. It was closer to 50. And multiple government and independent analysts attributed the bombing to a misfired Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike. Yet Alaqad’s post, which has garnered nearly 150,000 likes, is still live on Instagram. 

She’s one in a network of internet users knowingly—and sometimes unknowingly—amplifying Hamas disinformation amid the terrorist group’s ongoing war with Israel. The campaign is working. Online narratives minimizing atrocities committed against Israelis and magnifying Palestinian victimhood have reached audiences across the United States and Europe, particularly among young social media users, with resounding, real-world consequences.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Thank you, Charlotte, for this valuable reporting.

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    Marc Frischhertz

    It’s very similar to what the Trump nuts did with the 2020 election and Covid. They pick a narrative and then cherry pick facts, mixed with lies and misinformation and through in a little conspiracy. They flood social media and manipulate opinion. On the Palestinian issue it’s happening on TikTok, but the same thing happened on Facebook and Twitter with the older Trump supporters.

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    1. Eric Beasley

      Say what you will about Trump but he wasn't "Russian disinformation" and your hero Biden has been exposed as a corrupt China lackey.

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        Marc Frischhertz

        Thank you for making my point.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Bill B

          Interesting when they walk right into it.

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  3. Scianti7

    Thank you for this article. I had an idea that it has been a false information campaign on social media that has inflamed young people. I definitely figured our foreign adversaries are pushing the divisions to weaken us.

    I hope that the documentary movie Gal Gadot is bringing over from Israel with footage from Oct. 7th will be shown on campuses. I know how horrifying, sobering & devastating it was to see footage from the holocaust, I hope this documentary has the same effect. These are the people doing these things filming their crimes. I don't think American college students will think what they did is ok after seeing it, & realizing these were families just like them.

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  4. Mike E

    Israel (and others) could go on the (truthful) offensive by describing and documenting how the LBGT community is treated in many of these Muslim neighborhoods and countries.

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  5. BenP

    CNN's policy is to run headlines using Hamas' numbers, and include "according to Hamas-run agency" language. Does this happen in any other context? "Hey, here are some numbers that are almost certainly inaccurate. We're printing them anyway. This isn't irresponsible because we're warning the readers that they come from an unreliable source."

    Seems like the responsible option would be to not put unreliable numbers in headlines in the first place.

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    1. Scianti7

      I think since there aren't reliable ones you have to share the unreliable with a disclaimer. Otherwise, the perception of a cover up is rampant. These social nedia consumers are hearing inflated numbers beyond Hamas' inflated number. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

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  6. Hartzlk

    Correct me if I'm wrong or but I still have the impression that any anti-Hamas pictures, posts, or information originating from Palestine get silenced very quickly and permanently.

    Young inhabitants of the free world would have a natural blind spot to how a that like that manifests in news and information from that country. Even if Israel tells the truth about everything, I can appreciate that accepting that the only source of good information about a conflict comes from one of the two sides can feel too lopsided to possibly be fair.

    I do think the framing "Israel is Russia and Palestine is Ukraine" presupposes the wrong analysis. Asking "which side is bigger in the conflict" already misses the point. In a discussion about what you believe about what has happened, the first question has to be "which side tells more lies".

    But this all sounds way too familiar. Not about Israel and Palestine, but about every information battle waged over the past four years. And so, just one last thought before we collectively pass out from exhaustion on the topic:
    Let the person who has never been led astray by bad information cast the first stone.

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    Napalaska

    Let’s look at the last sentence of this fine piece:

    “But, she (Ivana Stradner) added: “They do not need to spread lies, all they really need to do is spread the truth about what’s going on there. Because the truth is on Israel’s side.””

    Is that truth the “whole truth” that Barrack “all of us are complicit in some degree” Obama is peddling? https://twitter.com/PodSaveAmerica/status/172080333354632032

    Let us never forget Obama’s policies empowering Iran. And let us never forget what he is doing right now in this age of social media: providing cover for all of those hostile to Israel (all Jews, it could be argued) to keep up the fight in the information wars that are waging in the noosphere.

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    Silvertide

    This is something I have mentioned in previous posts. The world is dealing with the fact that all information and even misinformation is going to be spread by cell phones and social media networks. Thus, when you see the Israeli communication officer come out after the refuge bombing and being dismissive of any civilian deaths and just caring about the terrorist killed you play right into the misinformation propaganda.

    A majority of people appear to not trust governments anymore and unfortunately not without reason. From the lockdown to Marijuana the government has overplayed its hand and now has lost trust with the people. It used to be easy when all of the world was blind to what happened outside its borders, and you could just make propaganda films to play before movies. Now, everyone has a phone with cameras and internet so it's very difficult to whitewash things.

    Unfortunately, by the time someone young enough to understand this comes into power in our government they will be behind the times in whatever new technology the kids will be using to get and assimilate information.

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    1. Scianti7

      It's unfortunate that much of the information is inaccurate, & that many young people have not been well trained in critical thinking skills on how to assess the glut of information they are bombarded with. Add in that our adversaries are using this to divide us, & we have a lot to untangle.

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    Rjosephpaquette

    My facebook feed is full of pictures of peaceful Palestinians, for example children on the beach. These posts have literally hundreds of hashtags to fool the algorithms. Hashtags include pickle ball, glamour photography and travel.
    Its clearly propaganda.

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  10. BEE

    I hate that we have these two completely unhinged apps dominating the online space in X and the CCP sponsored TikTok. Kids get their news primarily from TikTok and it's not accurate or informative at all.

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    1. Scianti7

      I am trying to teach my daughter to be critical of information & sources. I started when she first saw a you tube. She's 8 now.

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      1. BEE

        Good on you. It's a constant struggle that we all have to live with / teach in this information age. I remember the librarians teaching us how to use databases to find sources for our essays in middle school. Good times. Keep it up man!

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