'Close but no Cigar’: Hamas’s psychological warfare against Israel between 2014 and 2023

This essay represents the continuation of my research, on the Hamas Organization’s novel methods of psychological warfare against Israel. The previous article, which covered the period between 2007 and 2014, demonstrated the relative clumsiness of Hamas’s attempts to influence Israeli public opinion. In the current study, which covers the period from 2014-October 2023, we examine Hamas’s attempts to improve its methodology, inter alia through the appropriation of Israeli popular culture and its retooling toward purposes of psychological warfare. This attempt, while bearing some impressive fruit, has still not seen any real penetration of the organization’s messages into the consciousness of Israeli society. Hamas remains tied to a conception of Israeli culture that mirrors its own (Arab-Muslim-Palestinian) culture, whereas in truth, Israeli culture has long since 'moved on’ from the days in which such material informed its daily existence.