“Hamas is much more effective than Russia in terms of psychological warfare” – L’Express

It is customary to analyze wars through the prism of civilian victims, material damage and military losses that they cause. But according to Gabriel Weimann, professor emeritus of communications at the University of Haifa and author of a book entitled Terrorism in Cyberspacethe war in Gaza is also being played out on the psychological front.

In a study titled “Coping with Hamas’s Psychological Warfare during the Gaza War”; Taylor and Francis) which he co-authored with his daughter, social psychologist Dana Weimann-Saks, the professor describes a carefully orchestrated strategy to reach Israeli society on a moral level. But if Hamas, as a terrorist group, has an advantage over Israel (subject to more constraints as a democratic state), the response of the Hebrew state is proving effective, judges Gabriel Weimann with The Express. In future conflicts, he warns, “psychological warfare will certainly play an essential role.” Particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence. Interview.

L’Express: According to you, the attack of October 7 not only marked the starting point of a “physical” war, but also of a “psychological war” rigorously planned in advance…

Gabriel Weimann : Absolutely. Hamas invested the psychological front from the start of the October 7 attack. The objective: to break the enemy morally, harm the cohesion of its society and undermine its resilience. All thanks to a plan developed in advance. Around midnight on October 6, Israeli intelligence noticed that hundreds of terrorist operatives had activated SIM cards located in Israel.

The goal of the operation was to be able to access Israeli social networks when the time came to broadcast images of the hunt, murders, and kidnappings that they would film with their front cameras during the attack, as well as to be able to send their videos to the leadership of Hamas in Gaza. Intercepted telephone communications also show that the operation was meticulous to the point that Hamas leaders pressed the fighters when the videos were not sent quickly enough! It was the start of a real psychological war, of which the hostages are one of the essential cogs…

Why that ?

The hostage-taking was not only intended for future negotiations with the Israeli authorities, but also to put pressure, as part of this psychological war, on Hamas’ three priority targets. First, Israeli society – that it feels threatened, that it loses confidence in its leaders. Then the army – that the soldiers are reluctant to go to the front. And finally, the politicians – may they be divided among themselves and suffer from the mistrust of their people and their soldiers. The goal: to sow chaos and doubt. In short, divide and conquer.

Hamas, for example, released a video in December showing three hostages saying: “We are the generation that built the country, we participated in building the army, and I don’t understand why we are here. We don’t “We don’t need to be victims of air force bombing.” A month earlier, the terrorist group sent messages directly to the phones of hostage families, indicating that the Israeli government had refused their offer of prisoner exchanges. They even went so far as to create a copy of the website of the Jerusalem Post to spread a false article claiming that because of the “Hannibal” doctrine (which allows a soldier’s life to be risked to avoid kidnapping), the government was “100% opposed to the survival of soldiers captured by the enemy”. The strategy of chaos.

Is this something new on the part of Hamas?

On the contrary. Hamas often used this method before October 7. In Arabic, we speak of “Harb al-Azzabat”, the “war of nerves”. In 2006, for example, the group already carried out a similar campaign to exchange a captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for terrorists detained by Israel. Like today, Hamas used Israeli society to put pressure on the government, by making Gilad Shalit appear in a poignant speech which was widely distributed on the internet. Unsurprisingly, this led the Israelis to pressure the government to accept the deal. As a result, Gilad Shalit was eventually released in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners.

Psychological warfare expert Ron Schleifer even wrote, regarding the 2018-2019 Hamas-Israel clashes, that Hamas “succeeded, through a skillful combination of mass riots, media manipulation, and rapidly adapting to changing circumstances, subverting the strategic priorities of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), undermining Israeli morale, and eroding Israel’s sovereignty in its southern region – all while dissuading Israel from launching a major military operation scale in Gaza.

What about the effectiveness of the psychological warfare that Hamas is waging today?

It is difficult to evaluate it. What is certain is that it was initially effective. On the day of the attack, thousands of Israelis flocked to Hamas Telegram accounts to get news of the hostages. The abuses filmed on October 7 went viral on social networks. As for the videos orchestrating the release of the hostages, they ended up being broadcast on Israeli television. All this obviously had an impact on Israeli morale. But in many ways, this campaign is still struggling to bear fruit. There have been very few desertions from the Israeli army – more than 100% of reservists have come forward. And if Hamas propaganda has obviously accentuated the trauma of Israelis, this seems to me more due to the physical attacks of October 7 than to the narrative disseminated by the terrorist group. Not to mention that the response provided by the Israeli authorities to counter this campaign is proving relatively effective.

What does it consist of?

The authorities first warned the Israelis in advance (including the families of the hostages) that they would likely be targeted by Hamas communications, as in the past. However, it has been shown that anticipating the intentions of an upcoming message generates greater cognitive resistance to it (in that it encourages critical thinking). During the first two months of the war, the IDF spokesperson repeated every evening on television that Hamas would try to spread “fear, disinformation and psychological terror” and that “rumors” should be avoided. and unverified information. In addition, the Israeli authorities endeavored to describe as concretely as possible what was likely to happen. “The days to come will be characterized by moments of relief and moments of pain,” for example declared the IDF spokesperson to prepare the Israelis.

The Israeli authorities have also continually portrayed Hamas as another “Al-Qaeda”, “Nazis”, even the devil, which reinforced the idea among Israelis that they must unite against it. Finally, they also practiced the strategy of “selective avoidance”, i.e. diverting attention from derogatory information (the authorities did not broadcast Hamas videos on television, except during the liberation hostages).

Is Israel simply “retaliating” in this psychological war, or is it also engaging in a similar offensive?

There is definitely a symmetry. For example, the Israelis dropped leaflets from the air to the inhabitants of Gaza. They also targeted social media, television, to call on Gazans to stop supporting Hamas, or even pressure Hamas leaders to accept Israeli offers of a ceasefire.

But Hamas has an advantage in this war: as a terrorist organization, it is not subject to the same ethical and legal obligations (the laws of war, international law) as a democratic state. Of course, there is propaganda on both sides, but even if Israel can count on relays, such as influencers, a democratic state could not go so far as to involve pseudo-journalists in its ground operations as has been done. does Hamas. An analysis of the 131 Palestinian journalists killed during the war found that 78 of them were active members or affiliates of one of Gaza’s three terrorist groups, and that some of them were involved in actual attacks against Israeli citizens and soldiers.

In your study, you emphasize that from Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great via the Korean War, psychological warfare is a historical strategy. Is it expected to develop further with social networks or artificial intelligence?

In any case, it is clear that it plays a central role in the two most publicized conflicts currently, namely the war in Gaza and that taking place in Ukraine. If we consider the actors likely to open new fronts or get involved in future conflicts (China, Iran), psychological warfare will certainly play an essential role. Especially, in fact, with the emergence of AI. The images we see from the war in Gaza already provide a glimpse of the potential of this technology. You may remember this photo of a Palestinian baby crying in the chaos of a bombing that went viral early in the conflict. It had been generated by an AI.

But there is also hope. AI can also be used to counter fake newsnotably the deep fake. It was thanks to an AI-based analysis that it was demonstrated that the photo of a Palestinian father with his five children amid rubble was in fact a fabrication!

You mentioned the war in Ukraine…

Russia is waging a large-scale psychological war against Ukraine – a strategy that has often succeeded in the past. But it is now clear that this campaign failed. The Ukrainian people have not been broken, nor their army, nor their leaders. This is due to a number of errors. For example, Russia was too violent, which damaged its credibility. She didn’t use the right communication channels, and she suffered too many setbacks on the physical front for it not to have an impact on the psychological front. In short, Russia did not conduct this campaign professionally. To date, Hamas is much stronger and more effective than Russia in psychological warfare.