Has there ever been a war like this?

Centuries ago, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote the still-bestselling The Art of War. In this brief treatise, he delineated five essentials for military victory: 

1. He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
2. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
3. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
4. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
5. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

If Sun Tzu were writing this book today, he might need to add an essential: 

He will win who masters the art of propaganda, shaping the narrative and controlling the flow of information.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, there was global outrage. There was also an immediate, aggressive, and coordinated mobilization on many fronts of this propaganda war.

Propaganda on the College Campus

From the moment Israel retaliated for the October 7 attacks by Hamas — and, allegedly, even before —  student and non-student activists were ready to protest. At Harvard University, 34 student clubs signed a statement just one day later stating that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” 

In response to Jewish students’ concerns over the encampments and disruptions led by anti-Zionist activists, protestors and professors alike dismissed their fears, accusing them of “weaponizing antisemitism.” Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi insisted, on the topic of these protestors: “There is nothing antisemitic about opposing a genocidal war, or in criticizing Israeli apartheid.”

Propaganda on Media Platforms

Social media platforms have been gripped by both misinformation and disinformation. On one hand, social media provides a megaphone to people with extreme views, allowing them to express and spread these ideas. In one example of this phenomenon, conspiracy theorists rallied in online spaces to call October 7 a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Israel.

But social media algorithms actively reward posters who share inflammatory content — which, while sometimes true, can also be deeply misleading or entirely inaccurate. TikTok, found to be US teens’ favorite social media platform, has been accused of “[showing] a disproportionate amount of pro-Palestinian and antisemitic content to users.” 

A closer examination revealed the staggering misuse of footage from unrelated conflicts to incite anti-Israel sentiment: “‘A little boy crying for his sisters in Gaza,’ reads a post accompanying the video, which was widely shared in recent weeks on X… Yet the boy’s cries actually rang out hundreds of miles away, in Syria, nearly a decade before Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza over the past three weeks.” Another investigation by The New York Times revealed that 40,000 bots had been deployed to disseminate pro-Hamas propaganda.

Propaganda in the News

Legacy news organizations are increasingly complicit in the spread of propaganda. Numerous breaking news stories on alleged Israeli atrocities have been proven false — only to be quietly removed after being widely circulated. The damage, however, is already done. “There really so far does appear to be a flood of misinformation in a very short time,” political science academic Daniel Silverman observed, “in a way that’s having a material impact on the diplomacy around the conflict, on the mass mobilization and protests, some of which have the ability to lead to violence.”

Wikipedia — not a traditional news site but more accurately a conglomeration of news sites — wields enormous influence. A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League found “clear evidence that at least 30 editors worked in concert to introduce antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information.” 

News sites and platforms such as Wikipedia are viewed as credible by most of their readers. When bad actors share information about Israel that is manipulated or inaccurate, it undermines global understanding of important issues, further fueling a distorted view of Israel and the Jewish people.

Propaganda on the World’s Stage

On the political stage, Israel’s advocates are fighting a difficult battle. Israel’s foes have weaponized and leveraged every political tool and institution available to them, including the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. 

In one example, despite significant evidence of systemic sexual violence committed by Hamas (and other militant Islamists) during the October 7 massacre, the UN’s findings were shared in a milquetoast speech given by Representative Pramila Patten and a press release for this address titled Reasonable Grounds to Believe Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Occurred in Israel During 7 October Attacks, Senior UN Official Tells Security Council. 

Patten stated: “We found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred in at least three locations.” But she quickly shifted focus: “I must also state that I am horrified by the injustice of women and children killed in Gaza by countless bombs, gunfire, and outraged by the level of deaths and pain with entire families, often generations, wiped out.”

Just a few weeks ago, the UN released a more comprehensive investigation entitled “More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023. Even its title reveals a favorable prejudice not shown to the study of Israeli victims of the October 7 violence. 

The report’s framing indicates a misunderstanding of what systemic sexual violence is. It equates reproductive struggles in Gaza’s “collapsed health care infrastructure” with acts of war and labels Israel’s stripping of suspected Hamas militants “gender-based persecution” and “specific persecutory acts intended to punish them collectively.”

While the report details several allegations of sexual misconduct by individual Israeli soldiers, it provides no compelling evidence of any systemic or systematic sexual violence by the IDF. Nonetheless, the UN recommends listing Israel in its next report on conflict-related sexual violence “owing to the prevailing climate of impunity, the systematic and widespread nature of the sexual violence, and the pattern to use sexual violence as a weapon to uphold a system of oppression of Palestinians as a group.”

The bias in these reports exposes the dangers of relying on these so-called “neutral” organizations.

A War We Must Fight

During a recent discussion with Israel’s newly appointed ambassador to the United States, Yechiel (Michael) Leiter, he outlined the seven-front war Israel is currently fighting:

• Hamas
• Hezbollah
• Assad’s regime
• Iranian militias in Iraq
• Iran
• The Houthis
• Iranian uprisings in Judea and Samaria 

He concluded by mentioning one more front: “the delegitimization of Israel around the world.”

This last war is the one Diaspora Jews cannot ignore. Not all of us can fight on Israel’s front lines. But we can, and must, fight the propaganda war.

We must assert that Israel has a right to exist.

We must advocate for the safety of Jews worldwide.

We must affirm that Israel is a homeland to the Jewish people.

We must reject claims that Zionism is a form of racism or settler-colonialism.

We must communicate that the Jews who founded Israel — and many of those defending her today — see Israel as their last, irreplaceable lifeline.

This fight has many soldiers. Some are advocating for vulnerable college students in the courts. Some are campaigning online for increased moderation of social media sites like X and TikTok. Some are writing responsive op-eds and denouncing news sources that publish false or misleading stories. And some are at the polls voting against politicians who defame and demonize Israel.

We may not have wanted to fight this war, but we are its soldiers. 

Sun Tzu might not have foreseen this battle.

But we do. And we must fight for victory.