The Endless Cycle: Gaza, Propaganda, and Selective Outrage
Why oversimplifying the Israel-Hamas conflict fuels misinformation and perpetuates violence.
It’s a sight we've come to expect every time Gaza lights up like an unhappy Christmas tree: immediate, visceral outrage flooding our social media timelines, replete with heartbreaking images and hashtags trending faster than avocado toast recipes. But, as with most things, especially in the Middle East, there's always more beneath the surface—particularly when Hamas is involved.
Let’s be blunt here: Hamas knew exactly what it was doing when it unleashed its horrific attack on October 7. This wasn't some impulsive, amateur move—it was cold, calculated, and cynically designed to provoke a brutal Israeli response. Hamas practically thrives on martyrdom, like some twisted cult glorifying death and destruction, teaching children that killing Jews is akin to winning a disturbing, real-life video game.
This is well-documented strategy, straight from Hamas's playbook: position military infrastructure underneath hospitals, schools, and mosques, then feign innocent horror when civilians inevitably become casualties. It's not just tactical, it's theatrical—using their own people as props in a grotesque performance meant solely for the world's cameras.
Yet while everyone obsesses over Israeli actions, few seem bothered about the relentless assaults Israelis endure daily. Since October 7, over 10,000 rockets have rained down on their homes from Gaza. Additionally, Hezbollah has launched approximately 17,200 rockets from Lebanon, the Houthis have fired about 55 rockets from Yemen, and Iran has directly launched around 550 rockets. This combined onslaught has displaced hundreds of thousands and left countless families traumatised. Yet, this aspect rarely surfaces in the passionate social media narratives, possibly because it's simpler to virtue-signal from afar about "justice" than to face the harsh complexities of suffering on both sides.
Meanwhile, back in the supposedly neutral, fact-based world of mainstream journalism (looking at you, BBC), bias against Israel isn't just common; it’s practically institutionalised. Hamas gets the sympathetic treatment—its terrorists rebranded as "the resistance," their atrocities conveniently glossed over or dismissed as "controversial operations". If Orwell were alive today, he'd have a field day writing "Animal Farm II: The Gaza Edition."
So, yes, the images from Gaza are horrifying. No sane person can deny it. But perhaps it's time we demand honesty about the real architects of this misery. Hamas’s entire existence is predicated on violence, hatred, and perpetual victimhood. And while Israel, like any country at war, can certainly make mistakes, pretending this conflict is a straightforward narrative of oppressor and oppressed is not just naive—it's dangerously dishonest.
Maybe one day we'll actually bother to dig deeper than our knee-jerk reactions. But until then, expect the cycle of propaganda, outrage, and misinformation to repeat itself ad nauseam.