Has the West been taken in by Hamas’ lies and anti Israeli narrative?

[OpheliaWasntMad]

https://nypost.com/2026/09/21/opinion/journalist-admits-anti-israel-narrative-driving-protests-is-based-on-hamas-lies/

This journalist admits that his reporting from Gaza was not accurate because he was afraid of retaliation from Hamas.
Why have so many believed every report from Gaza journalists?

It’s extraordinary how quickly some people dismissed the suffering of Israelis in favour of anticipating the future suffering of Palestinians.

Not sure what you’re suggesting? You think more and bigger protests would have helped? There weren’t enough protests? Protests two days after October 7th is still too late?

This is actually an astonishing response.
Are you actually saying that it was wrong to put up posters to keep the women and child hostages at the forefront of people’s minds because that is “a political message “?
But it’s OK to have thousands March on the streets every Saturday.

I never said political posters were wrong? Political posters are put up, torn down, plastered over every day of the week. It's unremarkable really. My point was that no political posters are immune to that, no matter what emotive images they may choose to use on them. It's the same thing as people putting Israel flags over Palestinian flags.

I'm saying that people weren't protesting over what Israel might do they were protesting against what Israel said they were going to do. If governments around the world would have listened to what Israel said they were going to do(like those protesters did) and stopped the flow of arms to Israel then a hell of a lot of suffering would have been averted.

It’s interesting ( and very revealing ) that you’ve chosen to justify the tearing down of these posters rather than condemn it.
aijac.org.au/australia-israel-review/the-last-word-why-they-tear-down-hostage-posters/

@SingingShrews
If you can’t condemn the tearing down of posters of kidnapped babies then I have nothing more to say to you.
I will not be responding to you again.

No, I can't bring myself to care enough about political posters being torn torn/papered over etc to 'condemn it'. If we were talking posters of a kidnapped child in the UK who might be found because of the poster then I would 'condemn' that but that's not what these were.

If that means you can't have further discussions with me that's fine by me, I don't think that much was being achieved by you misrepresenting every post I made anyway 🙂

You can join me on the naughty step.

The Bibas babies didn’t survive their captivity. They were strangled by their captors. Their heartbroken mother was also murdered ( although I don’t know how she could have survived seeing her babies murdered in front of her )
The poor father was finally released- a gaunt skeletal figure - only to be told his wife and children had been murdered in captivity.
Such suffering is real .
Hamas successfully controlled the narrative so successfully that even in the earliest hours after October 7th pro Pal posters were denying the rapes and ripping down the “emotive”!!!! And “political “ posters of kidnapped babies.

I think this thread is evidence that there are people who do not have any empathy for Israeli suffering. I consider that the success of Hamas distorting and controlling the narrative.
Hence the thread title

Yes, terrible things were done to Israelis and others both on Oct 7 and to those who were kidnapped. It doesn't make the posters any less political than the marches about the terrible things that happened to 1000s of Palestinian children and babies and their mothers and entire families too.

Keep politics out of music. Isn't that what we were all told last week when Sheeran kicked his mate off the tour for talking about killed children? If that is politics how are posters not politics? Football shouldn't be political, Eurovision shouldn't be political and by political people were talking about the mass killing of children. So how are posters not political?

It's just another case of one rule for thee but not for me.

And then of course it is followed with the standard oh look they are too dumb to make up their own minds about what they are seeing happening around them, they must be puppets of Hamas. You could write a script at this stage.

I chosen some excerpts to copy here from the report previously linked to
“In the weeks since October 7, a new phenomenon has swept through the streets of major cities around the world: posters bearing the faces of the 240 Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza have been plastered by Jews and their allies on walls, lamp posts, and bulletin boards, only to be torn down by an assortment of bigots from a variety of backgrounds.
Social media platforms have been flooded with videos of confrontations between the vandals and those who have caught them in the act.
A blond student at the University of Southern California can be seen giggling as she carefully removes the hostage posters from a campus bulletin board. A woman in Paris says, “It’s all propaganda.”
A man with oversized headphones walking away with a wad of crumpled posters explains that they are “perpetuating the narrative of the victimisation of the Israelis, which is completely false.”
A young woman in a green hoodie peeling posters off a New York City wall simply says, “They’re fake.”
At the same time, activists have been claiming that photos of the blackened bodies of Israeli babies were generated by artificial intelligence and the events of October 7 were staged.
Attendees at a Los Angeles screening of a 45-minute video of Hamas atrocities were physically assaulted by protesters; activists tried to dissuade invitees from attending the event, calling the footage “propaganda”.
The irony, of course, is that it is Hamas that made a point of documenting and broadcasting its savagery. The number of videos from that day is staggering; TikTok, Telegram, and other platforms have been awash with graphic depictions of the carnage.
In at least one case, the terrorists used an elderly woman’s phone to upload a video of her murder to her Facebook profile, which was how her family learned of her death.
What is happening here?

Those who tear down posters bearing the faces of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas or 84-year-old Ditza Heiman, 13-year-old Alma Or or 59-year-old Michel Nisenbaum cannot countenance the notion that Jews can be victims – or that others might see them as such. To them, Jews are invariably evil, always the aggressors. There is no such thing as an innocent Jew.
“Perpetuating the narrative of the victimization of the Israelis,” as the bigot cited above said, cannot stand – facts be damned.

https://aijac.org.au/australia-israel-review/the-last-word-why-they-tear-down-hostage-posters/

It’s worth a read.

Anyone who has the thought process to be so offended and angry as to tear down posters in PUBLIC SPACES of innocent people (including a baby, children and the elderly) taken hostage because they are rightly portrayed as victims, can only be truly deranged and full of evil hatred.

Make no mistake this would never have happened if the hostages were not Jewish (although not all were).

I'll never forget seeing a video 3 women in hijabs furiously tearing the posters down, with pure anger on their faces, no one intervening and the heavily accented person filming laughing and egging them on.

I was acutely aware that we would never see posters of Palestinian children being ripped down by Jewish people, or anyone on the pro-Israeli side.

The same as we will never see people from the Jewish community in the UK plan and/or carry out an attack on Muslims in revenge for Oct 7th, or even the Manchester Synagogue attack, or in Australia for the Bondi massacre!

This is the difference in the mentality of both side of this conflict and it says everything IMO.

I am definitely not under any illusion that Hama’s are the good guys. I don’t think Netanyahu is a good guy either.

Asking for a two state solution is not choosing the good guy. There are no good guys in power, only the innocent people are the good guys.

There are two endings. Rebuild and expansion for Israel in Gaza (which will never be forgiven) or a two state solution.

America needs to back out of Iran, they’re not coming off well, bombing a bloody school. Russia needs to back away from Ukraine.

If everyone would stays in their own country, stop
land grabbing, the world might concentrate on the barbarism civil internal conflicts happening in Sudan, Nigeria, the Congo.

I've seen people on the 'pro Israel' side writing messages on bombs that were going to be used to kill children, laughing about killed children, making jokes about killed children, a child was killed in the US by a pro Israel loon, another child was held under water while a pro Israel loon tried to drown them, people have been shot and stabbed by pro Israel loons, pro Israel loons have attacked Palestinian protesters on numerous occasions with 'pure anger on their faces', people in the UK give money towards the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians etc etc

Where does this narrative come from that people who are pro Palestine are feral and hatefilled and the pro Israel 'side' are lovely and peaceful? Personally I think that it comes from racism and Islamaphobia because it certainly isn't rooted in reality.

Same. I don’t understand why it is bad to protest before the full impact is felt.
It would be too late to protest by then. The wars would have had to reach a climax, laws would have to be passed and enforced, taxes levied and paid…

Protests have always broken out as soon as wars start. Putin invaded Ukraine, were protesters supposed to wait for the full impact to be felt before protesting Putin’s invasion? I recall the marches against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan- no one waited until the full impact had been felt before protesting against war beyond self defence.

To wait until the full impact is felt would be too late for all issues, climate change- it would be wrong to protest climate change before the full impact is felt? The poll tax- wrong again to protest before the full impact of a new tax is felt? Assisted dying- wrong to protest until the full impact of assisted dying is felt? Cutting welfare benefits for disability- can’t protest cuts until after they’ve been done and the full impact felt?

I don’t understand that view point.

Yes some would have, but many people were trying to stop the war so the hostages could go home and no more people killed. Even the families of the hostages were starting to mobilise because the air strikes on Gaza were endangering their loved ones and they knew (correctly) that negotiation during a cease fire gave the hostages the best chance of coming home alive and uninjured. The longer the hostilities continued, the more likely the hostages would be tortured/raped/starved/murdered - which we found out to be entirely true.

By November, the families of the hostages were joined by thousands of Israelis demanding a ceasefire and a negotiated deal to secure their release.

A lot of the protesters felt they were doing the right thing to prevent more suffering for both Israelis and Palestinians.

I’m not excusing any of the bigots that tore down posters of the Israeli hostages or destroyed the memorials for killed Palestinians. There is plenty of hate, and no point arguing over how many haters there are across the spectrum of views and protests that mushroomed in the wake of Oct 7th.

I can understand the alarm and concerns, even in the earliest days, about the possible consequences for innocent Palestinians.
However your analogy about protests about assisted dying vs protesting against Israeli actions before they have taken place ( and in the immediate aftermath of October 7) isn’t a helpful analogy.

What I found particularly difficult to understand was the way those early marches didn’t mention the hostages or condemn Hamas.

I anticipate that someone will do a quick google and find one example of a rare pro Pal marcher holding a placard condemning Hamas but I’ve seen loads of the marches in London and I didn’t see anyone on the March with placards that condemned Hamas.
In fact an Iranian man with a placard condemning Hamas had to be separated from the crowd by police as pro Palestinian marchers wanted to attack him.
So my viewpoint is that if someone were sincerely concerned about Palestinians they would recognise how Hamas has contributed to their suffering and be willing to condemn Hamas AND Netanyahu and the IDF on their placards .
Do you understand that viewpoint?

I agree with this ( providing the memorials are not for Hamas members obviously)

I can understand your concern.

What I found particularly difficult to understand was the way those early marches didn’t mention the hostages or condemn Hamas. This was very obvious from the start. You had people justifying it as a revolutionary move, saying they deserved it from keeping the Palestine people under control, human beings do choose selective outrage.
Similarly there was people who were shouting from the rooftops to carpet bomb Palestine, destroy the rats.
There are a lot of sick people in the world who don’t understand that human is human, neither side is ever right when it comes to slaughtering innocent people.
It needs to stop.

As we needed more evidence... more evidence has been provided nonetheless.

Perhaps the unbearable suffering the Israelis are going through might be alleviated if they started treating the Palestinians as human beings with the dignity and rights that they deserve.