In the Arabic media world, a new celebrity has emerged since October 7, getting praise from everyone from professors to pop stars in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. Hudhayfah Kahlout, known by the nom de guerre Abu Obaida, has served as a Hamas military spokesman since 2006, and is currently the terrorist group’s public face. Rany Ballout explains how he has shaped perceptions of the war:
The hype around Abu Obaida’s broadcasted speeches is vast, with prolific commentary and reactions largely praising him as a savior, with thousands of captions across the web. Arab social media depict people, including children, glued to TV screens awaiting his speeches. Large banners featuring his picture appear in many Arab and Muslim states and cities, such as Beirut, Turkey, and Jordan. His banners have also appeared in soccer stadiums in Tunisia and Libya. . . . As a result, large segments of the Arab and Muslim population embraced Hamas’s information war against Israel, celebrating the October 7 assault as a major military breakthrough.
Given Abu Obaida’s influence, the content of his public pronouncements reveals much about the way Middle Easterners perceive the current war:
Most notably, the speeches themselves remain fundamentally religious. The speeches predominantly frame the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis as a historical and perennial conflict between Islam and Judaism. [They] often refer to the purportedly imminent demise of the Jewish state, with the “al-Aqsa operation” beginning the decisive era of Israeli defeats.
Despite the immense destruction, human toll, and suffering in Gaza, Hamas depicts an effective and victorious battle against Israel; . . . most Arabic media and a majority of the Arab public appear to have subscribed to Hamas’s war narrative against Israel.
Thus, while the West sees the war as a brutal assault by a powerful military on a helpless civilian population, many Arabs have an equally false view that Hamas is waging a successful campaign against the IDF. This perception, Ballout observes, resembles the “delusional portrayals of the previous Arab-Israeli conflicts since the 1950s,” and is apt to perpetuate the cycle of what Shany Mor has termed “ecstasy and amnesia.”
Read more on National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/hamas%E2%80%99-delusional-war-propaganda-209810