Inside the Hamas Propaganda Machine

In tunnels beneath Gaza, Hamas has built underground film lots.

We’ve all heard the claim: that Hamas is running one of the most effective propaganda machines in history. That every video of a bombed-out hospital, piles of dead children on donkey carts, every grieving American doctor or British aid worker or former US Green Beret we see is really part of some grand deception by the Palestinian resistance. According to Israel, nothing is what it looks like — everything is “Hamas propaganda.” Every civilian killed is Hamas. Every aid worker is Hamas. Every journalist killed — more than two hundred thusfar — was supposedly a Hamas operative. And those aerial images of an endless landscape of destruction? According to the script, they’re all AI and CGI — the work of “Pallywood” studios. We’re meant to believe that in tunnels beneath Gaza, Hamas has built underground film lots where screenwriters, set designers, makeup artists, and actors churn out Oscar-worthy performances, all while miraculously evading IDF drones, American-made missiles, and relentless tank fire. But here’s the truth: Hamas doesn’t have a propaganda machine. Israel does.

But here’s the truth: Hamas doesn’t have a propaganda machine. Israel does.

Israel, through its various global political incarnations — from lobbies like AIPAC and Christians United for Israel in the U.S., AIJAC in Australia, the Zionist Federation of Great Britain, the Canada-Israel Committee, and countless others — has pumped billions of dollars into global politics to tilt policy, and perception, in its favor, at the direct expense of the citizens of those countries. This influence is further supercharged by ultra-wealthy donors like Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, who alone poured more than $430 million into Trump and GOP campaigns since 2016 — making them the largest private donors to a political campaign in U.S. history. What does that money buy Israel? The erosion of Palestinian sovereignty — but don’t take my word for it. Let Donald Trump tell you himself, lest you think this too is Hamas propaganda.

What does that money buy Israel? The erosion of Palestinian sovereignty.

What Palestine does have are corpses, rubble, and eyewitnesses. Citizens armed with smart-phones and spotty internet connections are broadcasting themselves being slaughtered and somehow, that truth is what Israel insists is “propaganda.”

Israel’s propaganda system even has a name: Hasbara. It is not a theory; it is a documented, state-run operation designed to control global narrative. And we already know Netanyahu coordinated with ultra-right wing Israeli group Zaka for false testimony and atrocity propaganda about October 7 — manufactured lies to prop up Israel’s story.

And the contrast isn’t just anecdotal. A recent Nature study analyzed dozens of speeches by Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida and Israeli general Daniel Hagari. It found that while both used emotional appeals, Obaida’s rhetoric was grounded in tangible evidence — videos, photographs, and specific details — accusing Israel of targeting civilians and seeking to crush resistance. Israel, by contrast, leaned heavily on sweeping emotional allegations of “human shields” and “war crimes” by Hamas but rarely offered proof. The study exposes Israel’s real strategy: shaping international narratives through repetition and accusation rather than evidence. (Obaida was killed by the IDF as I am writing this, on Aug. 31, 2025.)

Israel, by contrast, leaned heavily on sweeping emotional allegations of “human shields” and “war crimes” by Hamas but rarely offered proof.

Yet every time Israel’s crimes are caught on camera — when civilians are massacred, hospitals are bombed, or reporters and doctors testify — its spokespersons are given endless platform to claim: “What you are seeing is not real. It’s Hamas propaganda.” Meanwhile, Hamas’s spokesmen are almost absent from Western media. And still we’re asked to believe that this underfunded, voiceless organization is somehow the world’s most effective propaganda machine — hypnotizing the globe — while Israel, with its vast resources and nonstop media presence, is powerless to stop it.

Perhaps Israel is simply confused about what propaganda is. What Netanyahu and his Zionist allies call “propaganda” is often just unfiltered truth: thousands of Palestinians recording their own slaughter and uploading it in real time for the world to see. The problem for Israel isn’t that Hamas is spinning lies, but that reality itself has produced an opinion contrary to what Israel wants the world to believe. This is why Israel massacres Palestinian journalists, bars foreign reporters, and kills civilian witnesses who might survive to tell the story. Perhaps the greatest propaganda effort the world has ever seen is Israel’s attempt to convince us that the truth itself is propaganda.

Such denial is as cruel as the crimes themselves.

Perhaps the greatest propaganda effort the world has ever seen is Israel’s attempt to convince us that the truth itself is propaganda.

The truth is, the world has woken up — not because of clever spin, but because Israel’s atrocities are impossible to ignore. There are simply too many sources for them all to be “propaganda”: international journalists, aid workers, human rights groups, livestreams from Gaza, and even Israeli human rights advocates themselves have documented the crimes. Gaza has been broadcast to the world in real time, and millions have traced the violence and propaganda back through history: the campaigns of Zionist groups like Lehi, Irgun, and Haganah in the 1920s, the Nakba of 1948, the occupation after 1967, the settlements, the daily theft of Palestinian homes, the imprisonment of children, and the systematic killing of civilians.

And history shows these tactics are not new. Israel’s record is also marked by deception. Consider its long trail of false-flag operations: The Lavon Affair (1954), in which Israeli operatives disguised as Egyptians bombed theaters, libraries, and U.S. facilities in Cairo. The King David Hotel bombing (1946), when Zionist militants dressed as Arabs killed 91 people; the 1994 London Embassy bombing, widely believed to have been set up by Mossad, with two Palestinian students framed; and, of course, the attack on the USS Liberty (1967), which killed 34 American sailors — an assault survivors insist was deliberate, meant to be blamed on Egypt.

Israel’s history is not only one of occupation, but of deception — from the Lavon Affair to the USS Liberty.

What many have learned is a century-long pattern of oppression and abuse — in stark contrast to the one-sided story Israel tells of itself as the perpetual victim whenever the occupied dare to resist. To dismiss this global awareness as mere propaganda requires a level of cognitive contortion worthy of satire.

On the other hand, Israel’s record is crystal clear. For decades it’s narrative has dominated media and politics across Europe, North America, and beyond — even shaping policy in places like India and Hungary. It has meddled in at least 30 presidential elections, and is seen as a threat in the Netherlands, stifled media criticism (as with the BBC), and criminalized dissent in supposedly free-speech societies (UK, Canada, Germany, USA). Israel is also well known for operating bot and troll farms in India, Africa, and elsewhere — alongside organized outfits like the Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) — paying operatives to create fake social media profiles and flood the internet with scripted responses to any news story critical of its actions. Just look for the laughing emoji reactions under posts about Palestinian civilian deaths; those aren’t coincidences, they’re propaganda campaigns.

It is only Israeli politicians who appear almost around the clock in Western television, print media, and on podcasts — insisting that what the world is seeing isn’t what it appears to be, that everything is manipulated and misconstrued by Hamas and Palestinian supporters. Israel even has its own networks running the Hasbara script continuously — some segments even admit outright that atrocities are being committed — while leaders still go on denying them. It’s Israel, not Palestine, who just struck a deal with Google to push its narrative across all of Google’s platforms.

By contrast, Palestine has its own meager media: the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation and the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV. The latter was bombed by Israel in 2018 and hasn’t posted to its YouTube channel since. Its current unsecured website hosts little more than recycled clips from other outlets with voice-over — hardly the stuff of a global propaganda empire. Critics sometimes point to claims that “Hamas-linked accounts” spread misinformation on X/Twitter after October 7, but even those reports admit the evidence is thin and attribution nearly impossible. The ADL (anti-defamation league) had to publish a web-page full of debunked “Hamas propaganda” misinformation that turned out to be fabricated by pro-Israel sympathizers and the IDF.

There is also no extensive Palestinian diaspora remotely comparable to Zionism’s, no powerful network of lobbyists, or corporate executives, or wealthy donors to reinforce the narrative. Palestine doesn’t promote automatic dual-citizenship to Americans, and they aren’t recruiting American students to enlist in its military (it doesn’t have one.)

While some pro-Palestinian and Islamic groups contribute to campaigns, the dollar amounts are trivial in comparison. The Palestine Liberation Organization had a small lobbying office in Washington, D.C. that was officially shut down in 2018.

And it is only Israel that maintains faceless blacklists like Canary Mission and Shirion Collective, which dox pro-Palestinian students on campus and work hand-in-glove with authorities to silence, expel, or even deport dissenters. And it is Israel — not Palestine or Hamas — that develops and exports spyware and malware like Pegasus, used to target journalists, government officials, and anyone who dares to voice dissenting opinions (or inconvenient facts) about Israel.

Only Israel has allies in executive management of major social media sites working to promote Israel and silence Palestinians. After a failed attempt to ban Tik-Tok in the US, the company curiously announced a former IDF solider and Zionist will be their “hate speech manager.” And despite this level of influence, Netanyahu still suggests the algorithms are Hamas.

And before I have even finished writing this op-ed, the U.S. Congressional GOP House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into Wikipedia for allowing negative information about Israel to appear on its pages.

The U.S. has a history of these curiously specific, and unconstitutional, protections for Israel that match no other ally or nation — from anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction) laws, to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold disaster aid from states that boycott Israel. If this is not the effect of decades of pro-Israel propaganda, then what is?

This is what propaganda looks like: money, machinery, and censorship on a global scale.

And yet despite all this power, the cracks are showing. Countries that once parroted Israel’s talking points are now calling it what it is: genocide. Arrest warrants are out for Israeli officials who travel abroad. Human rights groups, foreign governments, and ordinary people across the world are no longer buying the Hasbara.

If there is any silver lining to Israel’s most recent atrocities, it’s that the crimes themselves have torn the mask from its propaganda machine. Around the globe, public awareness of Israel’s narrative control has surged. In the U.S., recent polling shows that a majority of Americans under 25 now support Palestine over Israel — and that shift is beginning, slowly, to ripple into Congress, even as most members remain under the heavy pull of AIPAC.

This trend is unlikely to reverse. It collides perfectly with how young Americans consume information: direct from the source, through social media, not filtered through the cable networks and editorial gatekeepers where Israel’s Hasbara has long embedded itself. Older Americans remain tethered to those outlets, but younger generations are bypassing them — and they are seeing the truth for themselves. Political change, like scientific progress, advances one funeral at a time — as the old guard fades, a new generation takes its place.

That truth is striking Israel’s propaganda machine where it is most vulnerable: credibility. The task now is to turn this generational shift into political change. That means young Americans not only recognizing the lie, but also voting for candidates who refuse AIPAC money and reject Israeli influence over U.S. policy. Anything less leaves the machine running.

The floodlights are on. The illusion is broken. The only question is whether this generation will act on what it sees.

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