Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7th – and Israel’s punitive response – rhymes with previous inflection points in a conflict that has been raging and simmering for over 70 years.
The main beats of the escalation are familiar: a terrorist organisation knowingly targets Israeli civilians in Israeli territory, sparking a massive military response that targets militants in Gaza and knowingly kills Palestinian civilians. Yet there was something different about “Black Saturday”. There was a visceral brutality to Hamas’s attack that shocked Israeli society and commanded the attention of a world that had begun to look on the Israel-Palestine conflict with fraying interest.
Whatever one’s politics, it is hard to turn away from images of kidnapped families. It is impossible, too, to avoid an atavistic sense of horror at the sight of young people fleeing a music festival, strafed by indiscriminate gunfire. Hamas knows well the provocative power of this imagery, as all terrorist organisations do – which is why, in addition, to reminding the world of its existence and the collective suffering of Palestinians – it likely anticipated the scale of Israel’s response. In the days following the massacre, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege” on Gaza (illegal under International Humanitarian Law); by Tuesday morning, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson rear admiral Daniel Hagari openly characterised Israel’s bombing campaign as being focused “on damage and not on accuracy”. The wholesale destruction of apartment blocks, schools and hospitals, amid the cutting of water and electricity supplies, confirms that, as the days pass, Israel holds true to its word. A ground incursion is imminent; a more protracted conflict seems all but inevitable.
The strategic harnessing of brutality carried across global media, combined with a catastrophic failure of state intelligence and the provocation a “long war”, makes the October 7th massacre more akin to 9/11 than the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and brings with it the familiar risk of political stasis. It is worth recalling that the main goal of al-Qaeda was to provoke exactly the type of response wrought by the US; to tear open a sense of national vulnerability knowing that the vacuum would be filled by the illusion that terrorism can be brought to its knees by might.
Israeli strikes kill at least 36 in Gaza and Lebanon as Qatar suspends mediation efforts
Pro-Palestine supporters and young voters urged to ‘choose wisely’ in election, march hears
Gaza: Nearly 70% of war dead are women and children, says UN rights office
Israeli settlers delight in Donald Trump’s return
In the coming cycle of violence, we will be confronted with grimly familiar images of death and suffering. How these images are distributed and consumed reflects a rapidly shifting media landscape
The war on terror failed. An extended bombing campaign and ground incursion into Gaza – likely to achieve tactical goals including the destruction of infrastructure and thinning of Hamas’s ranks – will similarly fail. Military power will not erase the “Palestinian question”, nor can it destroy the crushing reality of life in Gaza that has birthed so many Hamas fighters in the first place. A reflexive sense of rage and thirst for revenge among Israeli forces may have been understandable given the horror of the October 7th attack, but the worst decisions are often taken in the most emotive times: the historical failures of counterterrorism – and the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict itself – bears that out.
In the coming cycle of violence, we will be confronted with grimly familiar images of death and suffering. How these images are distributed and consumed reflects a rapidly shifting media landscape.
The ubiquity of smartphones and social media guarantees a relentless stream of content over which Hamas and Israel will battle – and with which individuals in society can curate a political/moral stance.
Social media implores users to stand with Palestine or Israel (rarely both), or insists they denounce Hamas terrorism or Israeli war crimes (rarely both). This content – divisive by its very nature – is intended to be shared ad nauseam, boosted by algorithms that systematically prioritise polarising media, regardless of any concern with truth.
The irony of this is that it plays into the essential trap of terrorism: whether one supports Israel’s sovereign right to self-defence or Palestinians’ right to self-determination, the ongoing frenzy of social media activity helps Hamas to cement their identity as the public representatives, and defenders, of Gaza: they become synonymous with Palestine, strengthen their status as regional players in the Middle East and force the “Palestinian question” back on to the public agenda.
Twelve days into the war, Hamas is being battered, but it is controlling the narrative. The United Nations warns that Gaza is on the brink of collapse; Israeli affirms that the siege will not loosen until all hostages are returned. At the time of writing, Israel and Hamas are trading blame over a horrific explosion at the al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital that has killed hundreds of civilians. More so than any other moment of the war since Black Saturday, this explosion – and the disinformation swirling around it – captures the emotional gravity of a conflict that threatens to drag regional actors into a cascade of escalation, for which civilians would pay an even greater price.
The standoff could not be grimmer; much now depends on US president Joe Biden’s crisis diplomacy. It is impossible to see how the situation will develop from here, but a toxic mix of political tribalism and the performative nature of social media ensures many have already decided which side to take and what content to share – shifting realities be damned. The re-emergence of anti-Semitic conspiracies and anti-Arab sentiment offer ugly markers of history repeating itself; yet we are in uncharted territory. One of the world’s most emotive conflicts has flared to its most brutal iteration at a time when media culture incentivises and rewards mass participation, carrying with it unprecedented flows of disinformation and the very real possibility of miscalculation. Never before have so many had a hand in shaping the fog of war at a moment of such consequence.
Dr James Fitzgerald is Associate Professor of Security Studies at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University and Visiting Professor at the School of Communication, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro