Hamas Hasbara: 'Anyone martyred is to be called a civilian'

The IDF blog posted a report on the Hamas Interior Ministry urges Arab Facebook and Twitter users to join the propaganda campaign against the IDF and Israel.

I actually think that's fairly reasonable, just as I do not object to pro-Israel "hasbara." But I do object to instructing people to engage in lies and deceit. Here's a sampling of the Hamas Interior Ministry's guidelines and recommendations:

• Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
• Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack,’ and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’ Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.
• Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.
• Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians.
• [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead.

A commenter by the name of Darren Hall, who hails from the UK, wasn't happy with what he read on the IDF blog. "Im a British person i find it horrific what u do to those people wouldent u fire missiles if u were in prisoned in your own land," he wrote.

I can forgive Darren for his poor English, but not for poor thinking and a myopic perspective.

No, Darren, I wouldn't fire rockets at Israel. And certainly not if a blockade had only been imposed as a result of Hamas aggression.

Also, if I did agree with you that firing rockets at civilians is a legitimate tactic, I would ask myself why Hamas chose to fire 3,000 at Israel and 0 at Egypt, which has also imposed a blockage against Gaza.

Just four months ago a Hamas spokesman referred to Egypt's closing of the Rafah crossing point as "a crime against humanity by every criteria and a crime against the Palestinian people."


I think I might know the reason for the selective targeting. Were Hamas to direct 1% of its rockets south, I have a feeling Egypt would simply flatten half of Gaza within 24 hours. No flyers, no phone calls, no text messages and no "knocking on the roof."