Top Hamas Terrorist: Israel Beat Us in the Media, Too

Contrary to the perception of many Israelis, it was Israel that won the propaganda war in this week’s battle with Hamas – not the Gaza terror group, which found its efforts to generate international sympathy thwarted, said Salah Bardwill, the top Hamas terrorist, who on Wednesday night said that some 50 of the 62 people killed in Monday’s clashes with the IDF were actually Hamas terrorists.

Israel managed to put down the “popular revolt,” Bardwill wrote in a Gaza newspaper Thursday – and managed to set a “media trap” for Hamas, which found itself on the defensive in many media outlets that had previously been sympathetic to the suffering of Gazans. Much of the credit goes to the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichai Edri, whom Bardwill said had managed “to bury the uprising of the people in all possible ways.”

The IDF stressed in its messages about Monday’s events that it was all the work of Hamas, and that it was not a “march of the people.” That message had stuck, and thus Israel achieved a media victory, he wrote.

“The question they posed was Did Hamas participate in the march?” he wrote. “If we answer yes we appear to be encouraging innocent civilians to endanger themselves, with Hamas appearing uncaring about the fate of protesters. If we tell the truth and say Hamas is part of the people, and the people have a responsibility to rise up – and participate in the suffering of the people – then we lose the advantage of claiming that this was supposed to be a non-violent march,” since Hamas believes in violence. And, if Hamas denies any part in the march, it confirms Israel’s claims that they do not have the welfare of Gaza residents in mind, and are willing to sacrifice them to achieve its goals.

“Hamas is seen as a terror organization in Europe,” he wrote. This gave the media there the “excuse they need to support the massacre of the unarmed population and not to condemn it.” One reason for the media’s apparent preferred disposition to Israel is due to the fact that “no one denies the relations between the occupation forces and the world media, which has changed history in order to justify the enemy’s crimes.” And, in case anyone does protest against Israel’s tactics, “they sow fear into them by bringing up the Holocaust, which causes a holocaust in the lives of anyone who questions this as well.”