As the Israel-Hamas ceasefire went into effect on Sunday, one image stood out: a picture of the Israeli women surrounded by Hamas gunmen and a rabid mob of Gazans maniacally taunting them as they were handed over to the Red Cross.
Meanwhile the images from the Israeli side showed people in the streets hugging and crying and cheering and comforting and expressing gratitude and hope.
The incongruity brought to mind a specific tactic of Hamas’s online army of rapid-response spin doctors whose craft we might call “Hamasbara.” For example, hawkish comments by a settler figure would be portrayed as proof the Israelis were going to re-settle the Gaza Strip. Or a video of an IDF soldier acting goofy in an abandoned home in Gaza or Lebanon was, we were told, proof of Israeli national callousness. Of course, the IDF does investigate misbehavior: It is looking into claims made about 100 soldiers out of the 300,000 serving in this war.
Those numbers prove the opposite point from the one the Hamasbarists were trying to make, but it was curious to see how many people fell for this kind of thing. These folks wanted, they needed, to believe the worse about Israelis.
On Sunday, this trend was no longer puzzling. If you were going to support Hamas in the war against the IDF, you had to perform the following mental gymnastics: The worse Hamas behaved, the worse you thought of Israel—or you’d be forced to face your own twisted depravity for instinctively siding with Hamas.
Hamas soldiers changed out of their civilian clothes and into their uniforms and swarmed out around hospitals along with gleeful civilians and “journalists” who’d taken off their media vests to join the celebrations—none of which were taking place among rubble and famine, despite al Jazeera’s claim that Israel destroyed about three out of every four homes in the strip.
The world got to see a very different Gaza on Sunday. “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahood” they chanted, a popular refrain commemorating a famous Muslim massacre of Jews.
So Hamas sent back to their families Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher. Who is Israel releasing in return, as demanded by Hamas? There’s Zakaria Zubeidi, who was involved in a terror attack in which six people were killed. There’s Mohammad Abu Warda, in prison for his role in bombings that killed 45. Mohammed Naifeh was serving consecutive life sentences for attacks that killed five. Three members of a Hamas cell responsible for the deaths of 30 innocents are reportedly on the list. And on it goes.
To be sure, not every Palestinian inmate has this much blood on his hands. But more than enough do to make one cringe at the clash of values between the two armies.
Israelis are going into this deal with eyes open; they are not naïve. They just believe that life is valuable, though their enemy does not. The asymmetry has clearly inspired some in the pro-Hamas camp to manufacture a false equivalence. The cease-fire has made fools of those who believed it.