How Hamas controls the headlines — and Israel lets them

Once again, we watched a familiar and infuriating pattern unfold this morning: Hamas issued unverified claims of an Israeli “massacre” at an aid distribution site in Rafah. 

Within minutes, the world’s most influential media outlets were amplifying the story—without confirmation, without scrutiny, and often without attribution.

CNN and others cited the Palestine Red Crescent and a Hamas spokesperson who claimed over 30 civilians had been killed by IDF fire. The source? A terror group with every incentive to distort and weaponize tragedy. But that didn’t stop the narrative from spreading like wildfire.

Meanwhile, the facts told a very different story.

• Security footage from the scene showed no sign of gunfire or casualties.

• IDF soldiers in the area reported they had not opened fire—because doing so near thousands of civilians was expressly forbidden.

• And the IDF’s official response? It came five hours too late, long after the damage was done.

But the real issue isn’t just the international press serving as a megaphone for Hamas propaganda. The deeper crisis lies in Israel’s persistent, and increasingly indefensible, failure to meet this moment on the information battlefield.

This is a nation that shows remarkable courage on the battlefield and achieves stunning successes in intelligence operations—often under impossible constraints and against ruthless enemies. There’s no reason that same excellence shouldn’t exist in the public diplomacy and media arena as well.

Yet time and again, Israel allows a vacuum of verified information to be filled by its adversaries. No rapid response. No aggressive fact-checking campaign. No real-time communication strategy. Just silence followed by a sluggish trickle of denials and generic statements.

In modern warfare, perception is power. And in that battle, Israel is losing badly—often by default. It’s not just a communications failure. It’s a strategic failure. One with serious diplomatic, legal, and humanitarian consequences.

Until Israeli leadership takes information warfare as seriously as it takes the battlefield, it will continue to fight—and lose—the war of public opinion. And that negligence is no longer just frustrating.

It’s indefensible.