A mystery hovered over coverage of the 12th day of the war: Who fired at Al Ahly Gaza Hospital? And have we succeeded in convincing the world that it was not we who threw the bomb?
Channel 12 made great efforts to repair the PR damage done the night before. Then Arab affairs correspondent Ohad Hamo burst into the air and announced emphatically: "Apparently, an Israeli bombing of the hospital. Tough pictures... The IDF is bombing him." And even if minutes later the full picture became clear, the damage has already been done. Hamo's report, which was based on Palestinian reports, was translated into Arabic and widely distributed on social media, as a form of conclusive proof of Israel's responsibility.
In order to obscure the incident, Channel 12 News stood at the forefront of Israeli propaganda, issuing a collection of evidence on their broadcasts that refuted the initial report, and which was intended to belatedly disseminate to the world the IDF narrative that the jihad fired on itself. They pulled out a distant, dark video of the incident, in which footage of a failed rocket launch and an explosion immediately afterward, added Hamo's commentary in Arabic and Yonit's explanation in English, gave a photo of Bibi allegedly watching their propaganda video, broadcast it again and again and again, and told viewers that they had contacted foreign networks so that they too would broadcast the truth. In short, make every effort to repair damage that has been blown out of proportion.
Screenshot for TV, photo: Keshet 12
And it's not that Ohad Hamo is to blame for the country's PR woes. Even without him, half the world would have aligned itself with its eyes closed behind the Palestinians' claims, but the indisputable fact is that even more than a day after the incident, there is no international consensus on who was responsible for the shooting at the hospital.
Because today's wars are not the wars of yesteryear. War is not only tanks and planes, swords and Brazilians, but also psychological battles, wars of consciousness and information, and building a "victory picture" during the fighting. The battle for world public opinion is part of the campaign, not only to feel right in our struggle, but mainly because it has an impact on freedom of action on the ground. The narrative is the general clearing the ground and paving the way forward for the fighters.
And we once again discovered that hasbara is our biggest weak point. Don't believe us. Yesterday, confusion could be seen on all foreign news channels. The truth hung in the air, and everyone looked at it from a different direction. CNN invited a weapons expert, who explained without a doubt that the explosion was the result of a Palestinian rocket, while the Russian channel RT found an expert who claimed exactly the opposite. Sky News changed its version from hour to hour, while the BBC insisted on continuing to cover the war in a self-righteous and stupid manner, refused to make a decision, and promised an investigation into who was really responsible. We'll keep waiting.
In truth, we live in a time when truth is no longer important. It has lost its meaning. All the evidence in the world will not help convince the convinced. In a reality where you can fake everything and invent whatever you want, in a world fed by fake news, people decide who is right not based on facts and evidence, but on worldview. Truth and falsehood are irrelevant, and we tend to believe only those we like more or hate less. And as long as the world hates us, we have no chance of winning the version war.
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