In 2009, Al-Aqsa published Hamas’s first feature-length film, which celebrated the life and death of an Al-Qassam Brigade militant from the first intifada. The movie encouraged “mosque youth” to act as informants for Hamas-controlled intelligence organisations. Another video segment carried an interview with a son of Umm Nidal, a Gazan whose four sons became suicide bombers. “I ask all Muslim sisters, mothers and daughters and sisters, that the Al Aqsa expects us, the next generation, to fall into line for it, God Willing and Exalted,” he says. “Do not withhold from us the commanders, do not withhold from us the soldiers, and do not withhold from us lovers of martyrdom.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 2016, the US State Department named Fathi Hamad, Al-Aqsa TV’s founder and director, a “Specially Designated Terrorist” because the station’s continual airing of “programs designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers”.
The second prong of Hamas’s media strategy centres on its role as a competent governing force in Gaza, highlighting the various state functions it claims to fulfil. Popular programmes include EayanA alaAldifa (Eyes on the West Bank), which is concerned with the issues of people in West Bank, Ashab al-ard (Landowners), which deals with problems of ordinary Gazans, and Nafidhat Al-khayr (The Goodness Way), which highlights the humanitarian issues and support given by Hamas to families in need.
In recent years, this emphasis has gradually bled over onto its social media channels; a study of Hamas’s X account from 2015 to 2018 found that the group mostly posted about “its internal governance and foreign policy, with the smallest focus on resistance”. And just as on television, all this output is tightly controlled. In 2014, Hamas Interior Ministry offered guidelines to “social media activists” via a video from its official website. “Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine,” it ordered. “Before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank, don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”
It continued: “Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack”, and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza’. Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of ‘the role of the occupation is attack’, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.”
Yet as with so much in the region, this all changed on October 7. That day, Al-Aqsa broadcast footage of burning cars in Israeli towns alongside a video of a group of young Israeli men with arms tied behind their backs. “This picture is your picture, this night is your night, this flood is your flood, and this blessed action is for all of you,” the anchor declared triumphantly. The programme then cut to a message from the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau Saleh al-Arouri, who called for an uprising in the West Bank: “[The IDF] won’t be able to attend to confrontations on other fronts,” he promised.
Israel is losing the propaganda war
unherd.com