Disinformation is Hamas’s greatest strategic victory
We want to believe they were motivated by humanitarian concerns.
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.
A pitched armed battle between Hamas and the IDF at Kamal Adwan Hospital over the new year resulted in the deaths of 19 identified terrorists and the arrests of 240 others. Kamal Adwan Hospital director Ahmed Kahlot, and his successor, Hossam Abu Saffia, both held ranks within Hamas.
Hamas’s control of the Kamal Adwan Hospital was confirmed by visiting Kurdish volunteer doctor Baxtiya Baram in May 2024, saying, “I saw with my own eyes that hospitals were used to hide Hamas leaders … we saw them and even spoke with them.”
Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, was a major Hamas military base and the scene of other pitched battles, where Israeli hostages were held and where spaces were dedicated for military command, prisoners, interrogations, communications, and military transport (by ambulance). Its administrator was a Hamas appointee.
Even Palestinian Authority Security Forces spokesman Adnan Al-Damiri criticised Hamas in December 2024 for using Gaza’s hospitals as military bases (specifically for publishing notices for named people to report to Nasser Hospital for interrogation by Hamas military intelligence).
Hamas combatants are mainly adult males. Men form a quarter of the Gazan population and children comprise half. But official records of Kamal Adwan Hospital show the extraordinarily high rate of adult male deaths indicate that most patients were likely fallen combatants.
Yet, foreign doctors disregard this and instead propagate Hamas disinformation. A New York Times opinion piece by Dr Samer Attar in May 2024 described an international delegation of doctors who volunteered in Gaza’s hospitals during April 2024. He claimed that, when he was at Kamal Adwan Hospital in April 2024, “I did not see fighters … Most people I treated were women and children.”
A British obstetrician, Deborah Harrington, who was at the Al Aqsa Hospital in January 2024, also claimed, “What I overwhelmingly saw was children.” In a truer version of the Al Aqsa Hospital, official Gazan hospital reports show that the amounts of adult male deaths far exceeded that of children and were more than double that of women.
Dr Mark Perlmutter, a US surgeon who led a delegation to the European Hospital in March 2024, claimed, “I would say 70-75 per cent of the people that we operated on were elementary school age or younger.” Yet, the statistics for that hospital show children were the group with least number of injuries, which reflects that the IDF was taking preventive measures to reduce incidental harm to them.
Foreign physicians often come with a politically partisan agenda on visits organised by anti-Israel advocacy organisations.
Medical Aid for Palestinians, who recruit surgeons to volunteer in Gaza in coordination with the Hamas Ministry, has connections with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a proscribed terrorist organisation. Even Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) brings extremely well-established partisan anti-Israel policies. The French social philosopher, Michel Foucault, observed that what is medical is political.
Unfortunately, the anecdotal impressions of visiting physicians and the assertions of those parroting Hamas statistics or propaganda are misleading or mistaken. The tragic reality is that disinformation is Hamas’s greatest strategic victory since October 7, 2023.
Hamas will continue to sacrifice its civilian population so that memes about Zionists’ thirst for blood can work their evil ways against Israel around the UN, governments and courts. This is part of its hybrid war strategy.
Sadly, Australian doctors may not recognise that they are rebottling sick medieval antisemitic libels for today’s thirsty market.
Gregory Rose is an honorary professor of law at the University of Wollongong.
Lewi Stone is a professor of mathematical epidemiology at RMIT University.