Disinformation is Hamas’s greatest strategic victory

Last week, hundreds of Australian doctors circulated a call to the government to take action against Israel.

We want to believe they were motivated by humanitarian concerns. But their call made minimal demands of Hamas and claimed that Palestinian terrorism convicts held by Israel are simply hostages. The call repeated misinformation that has its sources in Hamas’s propaganda.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, its data and its doctors are deeply complicit in the Hamas disinformation campaign. They are extensively supported in their spread of disinformation by Hamas-affiliated Gazan journalists who, in turn, are contracted by our own media.

They accuse the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of atrocities by “targeting children, women, the elderly and civilians”. There is no such evidence concerning Gazan casualties, as we have detailed in depth in a report for the Henry Jackson Society, previously noted in The AJN (08/05).

A controlling presence of Hamas military command at Gazan hospitals reflects its control over health information and its misuse of civilians in a human-shield policy, which accounts for many alleged health worker casualties. Hamas’s military presence is also a crime against hospitals, which lose their status as protected humanitarian sites when they are repurposed for military bases.