It could also be argued that while most of the lessons from the blunders on the military battlefield that led to Oct. 7 have long been learned and implemented, the media battlefield’s mistakes are still far from being internalized, and they have led in part to the antisemitism that is currently spiraling out of control in America and around the world.
My book reveals that unleashing that overwhelming and no longer shocking hatred of Jews was actually the goal of Hamas
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
head Yahya Sinwar and the Hamas leadership, who were unaware of the Nova music festival taking place 5 km. (3.1 miles) east of the Israel-Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
border fence.
They were, however, well aware that the Paleostinian cause was gradually being forgotten, as the Abraham Accords were about to expand to Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...and then to other countries and leave them behind. They wanted to bring the Paleostinians to the forefront of the world’s agenda, and no one can deny that they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Hamas’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction...
said very openly in a speech to the International Union of Moslem Scholars in Doha, Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
, on January 9, 2024, that Hamas initiated what it strategically called Operation al-Aqsa Flood to return the Paleostinians to the international agenda.
"The world, the international community, and global decision-making circles no longer raised the issue of Paleostine," Haniyeh complained as he justified the attack. "The world began to deal with it as an internal Zionist matter, to be handled in its own way. There were no international resolutions, no conferences, and not even talk of a two-state solution. Such talk was no longer circulating among decision-makers worldwide. The issue became completely marginalized."
THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE
SO HOW DID they succeed in drawing back the world’s attention? By using what Haniyeh called "verbal jihad" and taking advantage of several assets, which are each explained from behind the scenes in the book.
Their first asset was the element of surprise, which caught both the Israeli government and the American Jewish establishment completely off guard. And Israel was even less prepared for Oct. 7 on the media battlefield than it had been on the military battlefield.
The IDF may have mishandled Oct. 7 completely, and its functioning was briefly limited, but at least it continued to exist. The Israeli government employed no English spokesperson on Oct. 7, nor did it have a consul-general in New York, where most of the international media is based. There was no strategic plan ready to deal with a crisis and media circus of this magnitude.
Hamas, by contrast, did have a strategic plan for the narrative war — formulated by their notoriously brilliant veteran propaganda chief Abu Obeida — which Hamas documents have revealed was prepared well in advance, alongside their military plans. They also had an army of trained journalist loyalists who worked for top international media outlets during the war, due in part to Israel’s decision not to let independent media into Gaza since 2014.
These terrorists, whom the world accepted as journalists, became part of the blood libel machine, funded by the Qataris who maintained an open channel of communication between Hamas and their government mouthpiece Al Jazeera, which was deeply involved in all aspects of strategically broadcasting the war to the world.
This all overwhelmed the leadership of the American Jewish community, which had been concentrating on building bridges with progressive groups to deal with intersectionality but found itself abandoned by purported allies when it needed them most. Jewish college students were nowhere near ready to go on defense in a fight forced on them and certainly not to go on offense.
Just like Hamas had 16 years to prepare for this war while Israel had not one day, anti-Israel groups in the United States and other countries around the world had been preparing for Oct. 7 for decades, with unlimited funding at their disposal. They were an integral part of the strategic plan — and the blood libel machine — and unlike Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, their success has not been halted.
CONTINUING TO SPREAD HATRED OF JEWS AND OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
They have continued to spread hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, gaining positions of influence and scaring ordinary Jews who had no connection to what was going on in the Middle East, some 12,000 km. away. They exploit their numerical advantage and their head start on social media and AI platforms in what is nowhere near a fair fight.
Sinwar’s goal was to initiate a future multifront war that could succeed after Israel lost the world’s support, and ideally after Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
obtained a nuclear capability. That may appear more unrealistic now because of Israel’s military successes on seven fronts, but if international condemnation of Israel continues making the Jewish state even more isolated, it certainly cannot be ruled out.
That is why the book urges future governments of Israel to make the narrative war a top priority — as this column has repeatedly — which even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself admits openly has not been the case since Oct. 7. It is also why the book offers readers more than 30 tools for fighting for Israel on social media and AI platforms.
Those tools were praised in the book’s endorsements by hasbara (public diplomacy) heroes Natan Sharansky, Michael Oren, Nachman Shai, and Gil Troy, as well as Noa Tishby, who put the book in context in the foreword she wrote.
Because the narrative war has been at the forefront of international headlines lately, Wicked Son advanced its publication by a month, and it went on Amazon on the eve of the massacre’s Jewish calendar anniversary, Simchat Torah. I symbolically — and chillingly — received my first copy from the Pomeranz bookstore in Jerusalem on Oct. 7.
So I really did write a book, and I hope it makes the positive impact it needs to, so there won’t be anything like Oct. 7 ever again — on either the military or media battlefields. â–
The writer is the author of the book The Blood Libel Machine: Exposing the Anti-Israel Hate Network and How to Fight Back, which can be ordered from Pomeranz Books in Israel and Amazon around the world.