In recent weeks, I’ve found myself immersed in research about media propaganda, driven by the need to understand how, systematically, every military action by Israel always finds its justification in Western media that shapes collective thought. No matter how serious the action: whether it’s schools razed to the ground, hospitals bombed, buildings torn apart – there’s always a ready explanation, an immediate justification, a hidden enemy to strike.
The truth is that we are witnessing a masterful use of propaganda unseen for decades. Netanyahu is exploiting the events of October 7th exactly as the Bush administration used September 11th: as a pretext for an overwhelming war, transforming the entire world into a battlefield. With his political power slipping away last autumn, the attacks provided him exactly the opportunity he needed. He has tied his political survival to the war, perhaps seeing it as the last chance to definitively eliminate what he considers the “Palestinian problem.”
Western media systematically spreads a narrative that favors the Israeli version of events. The Zionist state knows perfectly well that perception shapes reality: while it commits genocide and war crimes with impunity, it can only do so thanks to a powerful propaganda machine that counters any international condemnation and manifestations of solidarity with Palestinians. At the center of this information war is a precise objective: to dehumanize Palestinians and flood public debate with unfounded and unverifiable accusations.
Hasbara, a Hebrew term that defines this specific form of propaganda, has become a sophisticated weapon in the digital age. It’s no longer limited to simply distributing press releases or official statements: it has evolved into a capillary network of viral videos, engaging infographics, strategic hashtags, all orchestrated by the Israeli state to control the global narrative. Hasbara literally is the doctrine that describes how Israelis must be aggressive in “explaining” and justifying their actions to the West, to manipulate their adversaries and allies, national and international, to serve their objectives.
The Israeli government has implemented this strategy on multiple fronts to obtain unprecedented support from the United States and Western and European governments for a large-scale war against the entire population of Gaza and Lebanon. The widespread collective opinion is that opposing Israel’s war is antisemitic, questioning its claims about October 7th events is similar to Holocaust denial, protesting against the mass killing of Palestinian civilians is siding with Hamas.
Take for example the issue of “human shields” Every time there are civilian casualties – and they are tragically numerous – the response is always the same: Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods: everything gets labeled as a potential military base. The evidence? Unverifiable satellite photos, confessions from alleged Hamas members, and statements that no one can independently verify.
Particularly cynical was the use of the mass evacuation order for northern Gaza: presented as a humanitarian gesture, it actually provided the perfect pretext to intensify the bombings. How can more than a million people evacuate in a few hours, without transportation, without fuel, and without a place to go? The unrealizable order became the justification for every subsequent civilian casualty: “We had warned them to leave.”
Modern propaganda has transformed Israel, a regional nuclear power with full Western support, into the perpetual victim. Despite controlling every aspect of life in Gaza – from water to electricity, from borders to humanitarian aid – it continues to present itself as threatened in its existence. The parallels drawn between Hamas and Nazism are not casual: they serve to justify a disproportionate response, transforming Palestinian victims into necessary “collateral damage” in the fight against an absolute evil.
But reality, however distorted by propaganda, always ends up emerging. Corpses cannot be hidden forever, the forced starvation of an entire population cannot be justified indefinitely, and the mass killing of children cannot be explained away with the rhetoric of “human shields” As time passes, the deceitful narratives collapse under the weight of evidence, revealing the true nature of this war and the desperate personal struggle that triggered it.
Dan ROMEO