[News] Understanding Psychological Warfare as Israel Prepares Its New Gaza Offensive

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/understanding-psychological-warfare-as-israel-prepares-its-new-gaza-offensive/>
Understanding Psychological Warfare as Israel Prepares Its New Gaza
OffensiveAugust 22, 2025
------------------------------
A huge disinformation campaign has been used to intimidate and silence
pro-Palestinian voices. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

*By Robert Inlakesh
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*

The point here is that Israel is committing a genocide; it has not once
launched a campaign that seeks to actually destroy Hamas militarily. They
seek to force the population to submit.

As Israel threatens its new offensive aimed at occupying Gaza City, dubbed
“Operation Gideon’s Chariots II”, a psychological warfare campaign is
taking place against the people of Gaza, one that the corporate media has
participated in. This comes despite Israel’s military leadership knowing
well that its occupation plans are doomed to fail.

On August 4, Israeli media began leaking reports that its Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu had made the decision to occupy the entirety of the Gaza
Strip, replacing previous proposals to annex large portions of the
territory. This then created headlines and spread fear across Gaza over
what Israel has in store next for the brutalised and traumatized population.

Initially, Israeli Channel 12 and 14 had broken the reports citing an
anonymous source in the Prime Minister’s office. Notably, when Channel 12
reported on the breaking news scoop live on air, their analyst appeared
perplexed by the report. Channel 14 had also stated earlier that day that
Israel had reportedly ordered the assassination of Hamas leaders abroad,
another strange leak, as this could easily jeopardize operations that rely
on the element of surprise.

By the end of the day, the Hebrew media had switched their reports to focus
on a proposed occupation of Gaza City, in the north of the besieged
territory, and not the entirety of the Strip. The next day, however, on
August 5, Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said he sought a “full conquest
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqv2qjg5vvo>” of Gaza according to a
“senior official” in his office.

First, a mini-cabinet meeting, followed by an 8-hour cabinet meeting, was
convened to agree upon and approve the occupation plan for Gaza City
specifically. On August 8, the cabinet approved the plan, which was
followed by the release of satellite imagery
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/satellite-images-show-israel-building-forces-possible-ground-invasion-rcna223722>
by NBC News that featured a reported military buildup at the ‘Karni
Crossing’.

Then came the assassination of Gaza’s most loved and well-known reporter,
Anas al-Sharif, a massive blow to the entire population of the besieged
coastal enclave on August 10.

*Psychological Warfare as Israel’s Primary Tactic*

The reason why it is paramount that we look at the buildup to Israel’s
offensive is that this is as much part of the war as any ground efforts,
and this must be understood by both the public and journalists alike. Fear
is the greatest means of achieving forced displacement of Palestinians,
which often fails in the absence of effective propaganda.

>From the very beginning, the way the plans were leaked to the Israeli media
was suspect and was designed to instill both confusion and fear, which is
why nobody could even decipher what the plan specifically sought to achieve
and how. Keep in mind here that both the reports of total occupation and
the occupation of Gaza City alone had come from sources working for the
PM’s office.

Then came the reports of internal divisions erupting between the Israeli
Defence Minister, Israel Katz, and the military Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir.
All of this from anonymous sources or carefully calibrated public
announcements. Why is this even suspect? Because Israel imposes strict
military censorship over everything it does, but suddenly we have all these
reports from anonymous sources about clashes over the military strategy in
Gaza.

Although these disagreements could be genuine, they could also be
purposefully misleading and misdirecting attention away from the
government’s broader regional ambitions, such as preparations for attacking
Lebanon and/or Iran.

What is certainly suspect is the satellite imagery released by NBC News,
featuring a military buildup. This imagery had to have been cleared by the
Israeli military in order for it to end up in the hands of the corporate
media. Satellite imagery around military sites is blocked otherwise.

Israel’s military censorship is so incredibly strict that we still have no
proper damage assessment reports from either the 12-day Iran war, nor the
Hezbollah-Israeli conflict last year, let alone it being possible for
foreign media agencies to gain access at will to imagery of significant
military buildups without there being direct approval for them to access
such images.

If we also look at the assassination of Anas Al-Sharif, part of the reason
for murdering him was to stifle the flow of information coming out of
northern Gaza, but this is not the primary reason, as there remains an
abundance of reporters and civilians with smartphones who are able to
continue documenting Israeli atrocities.

The main reason for killing Anas al-Sharif, at the time they did, was to
spread fear and communicate the message to Palestinians that they would
kill anyone in the upcoming operation. That was the real reason,
psychological warfare.

Keep in mind that in the buildup to Israel’s ‘Operation Gideons Chariots
I’, where they claimed the military would annex portions of Gaza and that
this represented “Phase 2” of the war, the Israelis also assassinated
prominent al-Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat on March 24, starting their
operation officially around a month later.

In the buildup to the first ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ operation, the same
fearmongering we see today occurred over the allegedly new tactics and even
weapons that Israel was reportedly going to use to “crush Hamas” and
“return the hostages”. Donald Trump even proposed that the US would “own”
Gaza.

The lies about what Israel and the US are set to do have been endless, all
designed to strike fear into the people of Gaza. In reality, every single
time Israel launches a new “operation” in the Gaza Strip, it results in the
use of the exact same tactics that preceded it.
*What We Should Expect*

Although there is no way to precisely predict what Israel is about to do in
the Gaza Strip, we can figure out the nature of the new operation and what
it could realistically result in. To begin with, Israel simply does not
have the capacity to occupy Gaza City without greatly exhausting its
forces, losing huge numbers of soldiers, and leaving itself open on the
northern front with Lebanon.

According to Israel’s own internal military estimates, setting up an
occupation of Gaza would take between 2 to 5 years, with some military
officials having argued it could take a decade. It will also take at least
200,000 soldiers to occupy Gaza City alone, and this is a conservative
estimate.

At the same time, the Israeli military is issuing evacuation orders to
around 850,000 Palestinians living in northern Gaza, which contradicts
their goal of occupation anyway, because that would constitute ethnic
cleansing, not the imposition of a system of occupation.

The prominent Israel Lobby cutout think-tank, the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP), even published
<https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/make-hamas-face-choice>
a recent piece by Israel’s Ehud Yaari, expressing doubts about the
viability of the occupation plan. Below is an important excerpt from that
piece:

“On August 8, Mr. Netanyahu had his cabinet adopt a resolution to ‘take
control’ of Gaza City after moving its population of 800,000 to the
southern sector of the Strip. The target date was set to October 7, but few
take this threat seriously, especially in view of the IDF’s grave doubts
about the wisdom of the idea and its practical implications. One also has
to keep in mind the fatigue of the combat units after almost two years of
fighting, during which tens of thousands of reservists were called to serve
for unprecedentedly long periods…

“…At any rate, Hamas cadres would join incognito the massive migration of
displaced Gazans as they did in Rafah and Khan Younis, rather than make a
hopeless last “heroic” stand. Thus, the doctrine of separating civilians
from Hamas has a very slim chance of success.”

Even the Israelis themselves understand that the plan has no legs. But why
is this? Well, it comes down to some of the points touched on by Yaari, but
it goes much deeper.

The Guardian recently leaked data from an Israeli military database,
revealing that, in May of 2025, the internal estimates were that Israel had
managed to kill 8,900 Palestinian fighters, which was only 17% of the total
number of people it had killed up until that point in the Gaza Strip. What
is the relevance of mentioning this when it comes to the occupation plans?
It is very simple; it reflects a failure to even put a dent in the
Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.

According to both Israeli and US intelligence estimates, the fighting force
of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades alone was said to be anywhere between 30,000
to 50,000 fighters, this is not taking into account the number of fighters
belonging to some dozen armed groups, and also civilians who decided to
take up arms independently in some cases. All these intelligence agencies
also agree that Hamas has recruited enough fighters to replace those it has
lost, according to the information it makes public.

Also consider that Israel and the US often project optimistic statistics
and assessments through their media, in the interest of concealing war
crimes and the fact that Israel is currently perpetrating a genocide.

As I have argued here in my pieces for the Palestine Chronicle throughout
the genocide, Israel is not going after Hamas on the ground and waging a
war; it is committing a genocide as its primary strategy.

To reiterate my argument briefly here, the Israelis have bombarded the Gaza
Strip with the intention of making the territory unlivable and eliminating
a large portion of the population. The goal is very simple: they seek to
defeat the people by taking the war to them directly, and along the way
will use their intelligence branches, special forces, and air force to take
out armed fighters, but this is not the main goal.

This is why we have no footage of the Israeli military engaging in intense
gunbattles or taking the fight to Hamas, in around 23 months of all-out war
in Gaza. Beyond a few special force raids, the fight on the ground is never
taken to Hamas, and when it comes to the tunnels, they choose to bomb the
entrances or exits, but have not conducted the kinds of daring operations
that would have been necessary to root out the resistance fighters.

On the other hand, the battle footage that we do have comes almost
exclusively from the Palestinian side, statistically. We have countless
hours of footage showing ambush operations from the Palestinian resistance.

This footage tells us the story of what is happening on the ground, which
is that the Israeli army invades areas in heavily armoured vehicles and
tanks, not daring to put infantry next to these vehicles, then setting up
in fortified positions afterwards, from where they carry out demolitions or
kidnap civilians. Their main targets of each major incursion into any given
area have been hospitals.

Now, a counterargument to this could be that Israel is perhaps hiding its
battle footage. Yet this argument makes no sense for two simple reasons:
The first is that it would benefit Israel to release this footage as
propaganda, and the second is that there is an abundance of footage
published across all social media platforms from the soldiers themselves,
which further supports the argument I make here.

The Israeli soldiers only ever publish battle footage when it is them being
ambushed, often falling over each other and scrambling in the way you would
expect people without combat experience to behave. All the rest of the
footage features them blowing up homes, universities, mosques, and schools
for fun, operating bulldozers, or defecating on floors and wearing the
underwear of dead and displaced women, etc.

Again, this greatly contrasts the mountains of footage showing Palestinian
fighters running up to armoured personnel carriers to throw IEDs into the
vehicles’ hatches, sniper operations, daring ambushes where militants
emerge from tunnels and jump between the rumble of destroyed buildings to
fire an RPG round at a tank from close range.

The Palestinians are waging a guerrilla war, consisting of ambush attacks,
while Israeli forces stay as far away from danger as possible, making sure
to stay inside their armoured vehicles with the hope of reducing their
overall death toll. Although Israel has been proven to hide its military
casualties, during its war with Hezbollah, Iran, and Gaza, there does
appear to be a massively disproportionate injury-to-death ratio amongst
their forces.

The most recent Israeli reports indicate that 80,000 soldiers have been
injured, yet they acknowledge losing less than 1,000 at the hands of the
Palestinian resistance groups. These statistics always change, and often we
are told various contradictory casualty counts, but the official numbers do
in fact reflect much higher injury rates than death rates.

Eventually, perhaps we will gain access to more accurate Israeli casualty
figures through leaks, like has just happened with the Palestinian death
toll revelation, yet it is clear enough for now what kind of war is being
waged on Gaza, and it is one that targets the civilian population.

If Israel actually seeks to occupy Gaza, this will mean that it must
finally change its strategy in the territory and actually go after Hamas
and the other armed groups there. With this will come a massive surge in
Israeli military casualties, news which will begin reaching their own
population and would inevitably drain their fighting force even further.

Already, the Israeli military is suffering from a manpower issue, and its
soldiers are fatigued, many refusing to show up for service when called
upon to re-enter Gaza, while around 25,000 of them suffer from diagnosed
mental conditions as a result of their service.

So we now understand some of the reasons why the occupation project will
fail. So what is likely to actually happen?

If we go by past examples and what Israel is capable of doing, it is likely
that we will see an escalation of bombings, particularly aimed at killing
large numbers of civilians in targeted massacres around Gaza City. The goal
of this would be to try and force people to flee the area. Some will choose
to flee to the south, but it is more probable that many will simply move to
other parts of the north or areas around Gaza City itself.

The number of those displaced to the south will depend upon the fear that
Israel is capable of instilling into the displaced refugee population in
the Gaza City area, which is why there is such a campaign of psychological
warfare and such a dragged-out process of approving the military initiative.

Next, they are also likely to launch incursions into areas as they did
earlier on during the war, temporarily setting up in fortified positions
and even creating new temporary military bases. This will depend upon how
fierce the resistance to them is and whether they muster a force capable of
performing the tasks they set. Keep in mind that they have done these
incursions many times before, and each time the results were virtually the
same.

Currently, Israel allegedly controls over 80% of the Gaza Strip, yet as we
have seen in areas like Rafah and Beit Hanoun, the Palestinian resistance
is still capable of carrying out ambushes on their forces in these
allegedly “cleared” and “secured” locations. Keeping with this, upon entry
to Gaza City, the Israeli soldiers would likely put their flags up and take
videos for TikTok and claim they are victorious, without actually having
achieved any of their publicly stated objectives.

This analysis here assumes that Israel isn’t simply misleading the public
and preparing for a larger campaign on other fronts, such as against
Lebanon and/or Iran, instead.

While the Israeli occupying forces will undoubtedly escalate the nightmare
unfolding in Gaza, it is important to understand what they are actually
capable of and what is viable strategically from the perspective of its
leadership.

In 2014, the Israeli military found out what happens when they actually try
to take on Hamas in a standup fight and know they will suffer immense
losses, so they use the most cowardly tactics ever used by a modern
military. In southern Lebanon, Israel also failed last year to even seize
border villages like Khiam, and this was under the most favourable
circumstances they could have possibly asked for there.

The point here is that Israel is committing a genocide; it has not once
launched a campaign that seeks to actually destroy Hamas militarily. They
seek to force the population to submit, and with that comes the defeat of
all the armed resistance groups. Yet, the people of Gaza endure.

*(The Palestine Chronicle)*


*– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He
focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this
article to The Palestine Chronicle. *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20250822/1e2f5019/attachment-0001.htm>