Muhammad Mahdi Rahimi, journalist and researcher
“No female hostage is still alive,” “Hamas killed all the female hostages.”
These few words have become one of the most widely repeated claims on pro-Israeli social media pages in the past 24 hours. A short message that might sway the forgetful or uninformed, but for anyone who’s followed two years of war and genocide in Gaza, it’s laughably absurd and deeply tragic.
Proving this claim false doesn’t require deep research or fieldwork. All you need is a short-term memory. In previous ceasefire and hostage exchanges, long before the remaining 20 male soldiers who were captivated, all female and elderly captives were prioritized and exchanged first. While the Zionist regime was relentlessly bombing Gaza, trying to kill its own captives to strip the Resistance of its leverage, Hamas’s special forces were protecting those very captives in underground tunnels and secret shelters. Yet now, after a ceasefire agreement, the fabricated story of “missing female hostages” has suddenly become the central talking point of the Zionist propaganda machine.
Worn out, ridiculous tactics
It hasn't been long since the last round of prisoner exchanges and the widely publicized ceremonies held by Al-Qassam Brigades. In one such ceremony, an Israeli captive kissed the forehead of his Palestinian guard in gratitude for months of protection.
Just a few months ago, a freed-female Israeli captive who had been safely and respectfully held and exchanged in Gaza was raped by her own fitness coach after returning home.
The dignity and honor of al-Qassam fighters were evident on October 7, 2023. And with every false accusation of rape, murdering or burning children, the Zionist propaganda machine only further discredited itself in the eyes of the global public. During the ongoing genocide, it was Israeli soldiers who tried to demoralize the Palestinian people by posting images of Gazan women’s private clothing online and cruelly depriving them of basic needs and hygiene for two years.
Now, these same criminals are trying to rebrand themselves with lies. But the sheer absurdity of this latest claim at a time when Israel's propaganda apparatus is at its weakest, actually reveals something much more telling.
A dying propaganda machine and a new idea!
As previously noted in “The loosen grip,” the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation shattered Zionists’ monopoly over the narrative on Palestine. The global tide of public opinion, even in the US which is considered as Israel’s staunchest ally, has drastically shifted. Recent polls show that, for the first time in the history of the conflict, more than half of Americans hold a negative view of the Zionist regime. This is why Netanyahu repeatedly lamented the loss of the "PR war" and emphasized the need to "change the algorithm" on social media to suppress anti-Israel and exposé content.
It’s becoming clear that the next battlefield Israel will open is the war for public opinion in cyberspace. For this reason, TikTok, a platform with massive influence over young Americans and its pop-culture, was sold to pro-Israel investors under direct pressure from the US government. These new owners have openly declared the need to inject pro-Israel content. Netanyahu has explicitly said platforms like X (formerly Twitter) should be used as weapons. This recent campaign about female hostages marks the beginning of that strategy.
Aware that a direct move toward censorship would provoke widespread backlash (possibly worse than the current crisis), the regime has, for over a month, launched various media campaigns to rebrand itself and ease into a new status quo. But signs of weakness are showing. The similarity of the content and networks spreading it quickly drew attention from digital activists. Soon, leaks revealed that the Zionist regime and its supporters were paying influencers hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars.
The plan to whitewash its image and create a repressive digital regime is still in motion. But given how clumsy the current efforts have been, it’s likely more sophisticated and covert campaigns are on the way.
Yet this failed campaign contains one key point that’s worth addressing.
The colonial “Winning Formula”
Zionist regime’s latest online campaign is trying to revive a familiar and once-effective strategy: framing Islamic culture as inherently at odds with women’s rights. This tactic has worked well for them in other regional conflicts. Since the Abraham Accords, the US and Israel have used this narrative; first in Sudan’s unrest which led to a civil war, and then in 2022-2023 Women Life Freedom riots in Iran. The fragmentation of Sudan and the unprecedented attacks on Iran, two key Islamic nations using the women’s rights pretext, were the groundwork for the offensive strategy deployed by the West in the region, which reached its peak following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, the genocide in Gaza, and the subsequent Zionist invasions of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.
Western think tanks have correctly identified a fundamental tension between anti-imperialist Islamic groups and the global Left over the issue of women’s rights.
Knowing this, the US and the Zionist regime, better to be known as modern heirs to colonial strategies, are once again investing in this fault line, hoping that by using this divisions, they can conquer public discourse. But this difference in worldview doesn’t have to stand in the way of unity. The patience and resilience of Palestinian women over these past two years have already corrected many people’s misconceptions about Islam. Their endurance could become a starting point for deeper understanding and an honest dialogue about what Islam actually teaches regarding women, one that’s not dictated by media manipulation.
Just as the “Palestinian issue” has become a key to unlocking many puzzles in both international and domestic politics, it could also hold the key to rethinking the global "women’s issue" itself.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
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