The images of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel—during which around 1,200 men, women and children were killed—instantly became the centerpiece of an intense information warfare campaign. For the first time since the Second Intifada , global public opinion was exposed to mass Israeli civilian casualties as images of atrocities committed by Hamas and other armed groups as well as Gazan civilians circulated widely on social media.

Israel and pro-Israeli advocacy groups emphasized the horror of the massacre by distributing the images, mostly to western audiences , through paid advertisement videos on YouTube and X (formerly known as Twitter), in family-oriented videogames, and in screenings of a 45-minute supercut of the footage for select audiences, including in Washington, D.C. and Hollywood. The goal was not solely to raise awareness of the shocking events of Oct. 7, however. Instead, with the ads, the government claimed a right to defend its people and implied that the attacks extended a carte blanche for retaliation.

The full article can be read in Foreign Policy.