Has Hamas lost the war?

Even its propaganda is starting to fall flat

Israeli troops on manoeuvres in Gaza

On Saturday, when Israel attacked the al-Taba’een Hamas command centre in Gaza City, jihadi propagandists swung into action straight away. The group had placed the military facility inside a school compound for precisely such an entrapment. Now it was time to cash in.

At first, things seemed to be going according to plan. “Nearly 100 killed in Israeli strike on school, Gaza officials say,” blared the Washington Post, a typical example. In the story, Mahmoud Bassal, a “Gaza civil defence spokesman”, was given space to hype up the supposed atrocity without any indication that the Gaza civil defence is controlled by Hamas. Women and children had been massacred, western audiences were told. Footage was released of scores of bodies wrapped in blankets laid out in the playground. Hamas sat back and waited for the international outrage to place Israel under pressure.

This time, however, Jerusalem was prepared. In short order, the IDF released a list of the names and mugshots of the terrorists who had been targeted, as well as their ages and the ranks they held within Hamas and Islamic Jihad. First, it provided the details of 19 such combatants. Then, when Hamas revised its numbers to say that only 40 had lost their lives, Israel released a further batch of information about 38 dead terrorists.

The truth remains elusive. Aside from treating Hamas’s numbers with well-deserved scepticism, Israel has not offered a definitive answer on the numbers of civilians killed. In war, it takes much time to ascertain the numbers of the dead; all these years later, estimations of the casualties of the Iraq war, for instance, range within a spectrum of hundreds of thousands. The IDF has, however, confirmed that small and precise munitions were used in the strike to avoid harming civilians sheltering nearby and published a video showing that the compound was still intact, contrasting with unverified social media footage of the bodies of women and children.

Track records, however, speaks for themselves. In the past, Hamas’s strategy for manipulating the media, and consequently world opinion, has worked shamefully well. From casualty numbers to myths about Israeli soldiers menacing detainees with dogs, from allegations about starvation and genocide to specific lies about strikes on hospitals, its narrative has been lapped up by many influential organisations and figures who should have known better. The group has mastered the art of tapping the repressed Israelophobia in western audiences by appropriating the progressive language of human rights and anti-colonialism. All this has had a mass effect. The way in which Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime have felt comfortable openly celebrating the hordes of keffiyeh-clad westerners on the streets of our capitals, safe in the knowledge that their praise would put nobody off, is testament to the propaganda genius of the jihadis.

“As the vilest writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers,” Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710. “And it often happens that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.”

On this occasion, however, Hamas’s efforts were far less successful. It is true that the foreign secretary, David Lammy, condemned Israel’s strike on the terror headquarters, tweeting that he was “appalled” by the attack and “the tragic loss” of life; he was echoed, predictably enough, by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who declared that there was “no justification for these massacres”.

But players such as these are of little consequence in comparison with the United States. Although Kamala Harris stated that “far too many” civilians had been killed in Gaza, it was ambiguous whether she was referring to the supposed innocent victims of the al-Taba’een strike or the war in general. This throat-clearing was followed by a pointed insistence that Israel had a right to “go after Hamas”. All rather different from the hostile American rhetoric that has come to be expected of late.

Ironically, many of the casualties of al-Taba’een were taken to the al-Ahli hospital. This was the same place that had become notorious in November after it was hit by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket that was wrongly blamed on Israel. At that time, the world’s media reported that up to 500 people, mostly civilians, had been killed. In the end, it turned out to have been a much, much smaller number, and the rocket had fallen not in the hospital but the adjacent car park. In the face of such manipulation, is the world finally showing signs of fatigue? After all, even the most sophisticated lies remain vulnerable eventually to the truth.

It seems that Hamas’s old tricks are beginning to fail them. With the November election dominating the news agenda stateside, the Olympics sucking up airtime in Europe and the Gaza rallies being diverted towards the far-right in Britain, the story is getting less oxygen. The Gaza activists, whose marches were once a disturbing fixture of city life across the west, ignored the al-Taba’een attack. In fact, they have been a shadow of their former selves all summer. With the universities on holiday and their Gaza encampments either deserted or dismantled, the wind seems to be ebbing from the sails of terror.

For Hamas, this is more than simply a frustration. It represents the collapse of its main strategy for victory, by which confected international outrage is supposed to hamstring its superior democratic foe. This growing impotence comes as the group finds itself abandoned by its allies, exhausted in its fox-holes and suffering crippling military pain. For some months, it looked as if its propaganda efforts would succeed in forcing Israel not to invade Rafah in the south. To his credit, Netanyahu eventually shook off American concerns and the city fell quickly and with very few civilian casualties. As a result, the IDF now holds the Philadelphi corridor, an alley of land across the border between Egypt and Gaza.

This achievement alone is throttling Hamas. For more than a decade, arms, ammunition, cash and supplies have been smuggled through the Philadelphi corridor into Rafah from Egypt, both via subterranean tunnels and with the assistance of corrupt officials at the regular crossing. All of this has stopped. Deprived of the ability to resupply and reeling from the deaths of two of its three most important leaders, Hamas finds itself peering into the abyss. It is no coincidence that it seems to be taking more kindly to the prospect of negotiations with Israel.

For the jihadis of Gaza, the war is starting to look like a miscalculation. Israel is wounded but showing intimidating levels of resolve and military might, with much more held in reserve. For this Hamas brought itself to the brink of destruction? For this it brought such suffering upon the heads of its own people? In launching the October savagery, it aimed to drag Iran and Hezbollah into a regional conflict that would herald the fall of Jerusalem. But its allies held back from the fray and have shown no sign of changing their minds. An Iranian reprisal for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran will come. But most analysts expect it to be calibrated to fall beneath the threshold for open war.

Small wonder. In April, after hundreds of Iranian projectiles had been fired into Israeli skies, the Jewish state showed its superiority by destroying a key strategic target with just two missiles. Last month, it clinically assassinated both Mohammad Deif in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as well as Hezbollah’s number two, Fuad Shukr, in southern Lebanon. These were men who had been hunted for decades and not just by the Israelis. Jerusalem has also let it be known that any attack by Iran and Hezbollah will meet with a response commensurate to its scale rather than its effectiveness. This time, the message is clear: launch another 300 missiles at us and – even if every last one is intercepted – you’ll get pain, not fear, in response.

Guerilla warfare in Gaza will likely drag on for a long time. But Hamas is losing badly. Whereas Israeli troops can be rotated out for rest and recuperation, no such luxury is afforded the terrorist butchers as they squat in their own filth underground. Major challenges lie ahead for Israel in the form of Hezbollah and Iran. But Netanyahu’s boot is on the windpipe of Hamas and the world is starting not to care.