I find it hard to understand why the Arab media insists on describing what is taking place in Gaza as a war between Israel and Hamas. The war Israel is waging in Gaza is not against Hamas, but against the entire Palestinian people. Tel Aviv dubbed this campaign the “Israel-Hamas” war – and the mainstream Western media dutifully followed – in order to win public sympathy for a state bravely battling an organisation labelled “terrorist” by many countries. The framing deliberately obfuscates the reality that the state in question is an occupying power that has been practising terrorism against a civilian population for decades and that the organisation in question is, in fact, exercising its universally sanctioned right to resist foreign occupation with all the means at its disposal.
A significant part of the conflict is unfolding in the media. Whoever wins the propaganda war wins half the battle. Israel has succeeded in making much of the international media use the name it chose as a cover for the genocide it is carrying out against the Palestinians. But why should we, in the Arab region, adopt Israel’s terminology and become unwitting tools in its propaganda war?
It takes only some simple arithmetic – comparing the few dozen Hamas leaders Israel has killed to the toll of over 50 thousand civilians, mostly women and children – to understand what is really going on. Never before has a warring power unleashed such an arsenal – including a range of massively lethal 500- to 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs – against apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques across an entire densely inhabited territory with such methodical devastation.
Israel has relied on two more falsehoods to supplement its “this-is-a-war-against-Hamas” narrative. The first is that Hamas started the war and Israel is therefore defending itself against the aggressor. The second is that the conflict began on 7 October 2023 with Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Flood Operation. In fact, this operation was just one response to nearly a century of Israeli aggression and terrorism against the Palestinian people.
The Arab media should be doing more to debunk Israeli lies and propaganda, not falling into their trap.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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