Despite its extraordinary discipline and repeated battlefield successes over the past two years, Israel has been judged in many quarters to have failed in one vital domain: the war of information. While Israel has neutralised enemy commanders, destroyed arsenals, and advanced through hostile territory, it has consistently been outflanked in the propaganda theatre, leading armchair generals to declare that no amount of military action can kill “an idea”.
The elimination of Abu Ubaida shows that Israel constantly adapts
Hamas and its allies have skilfully harnessed imagery, narrative, and the symbols of victimhood to mobilise global opinion, especially in the West. Yet in recent weeks, there has been a discernible shift. Israel is no longer content to dominate militarily while ceding the information front. It is striking directly at the heart of its adversary’s propaganda machinery, challenging the famine narrative, releasing horrific October 7th footage, and even putting the Prime Minister on Triggernometry.
The targeted killing on Saturday of Hudhayfa al-Kahlut, known as Abu Ubaida, marks the highpoint in this change. For over two decades, Abu Ubaida was not simply a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, but its most recognisable voice. The operation in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood was conducted with precision munitions, drawing on intelligence from Shin Bet and IDF Military Intelligence.
This was not merely the elimination of a senior terrorist, but the removal of the organisation’s most effective propagandist. Hamas has long blurred the line between combatant and communicator, recognising that narrative can wound as sharply as rockets. The terrorist spokesman was, in strategic terms, as vital to the cause as any field commander.
The killing also speaks to a wider truth about Hamas’s propaganda strategy: it is not merely rhetoric but deception. Again and again, figures involved in the dissemination of falsehoods and staged spectacles present themselves as journalists. They wear the uniform of the press in order to weaponise the respect free societies afford to truth-seekers. Yet these are not journalists when their role is to sell lies to international outlets. It is depressing that much of the press accepts such impostors as colleagues. The same credulity extends to Hamas fighters who usually dress as civilians, even as they launch rockets or carry out ambushes. Yet when propaganda requires, the terrorists will don uniforms – but it is the vest marked “press” they reach for, confident that Western media will report their words as truth.
Understanding why Abu Ubaida’s elimination matters requires understanding who he was. He first appeared publicly in 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada. By 2004 he had become the official spokesman of Hamas’s military wing, and in 2006 his announcement of the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit cemented his role. Over the years he became one of Hamas’s most recognisable figures across the Arab world, cultivating admiration particularly among Palestinian youth. During Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, his broadcasts became rallying cries. After 7 October 2023, he emerged as Hamas’s most prominent external face, though his actual face was always covered by a keffiyeh or balaclava, inspiring hordes of feeble, woke protestors in the West to do the same. His statements reached tens of millions.
Every detail of this arch-terrorist’s persona and presentation was carefully calibrated, as is the case with so much of the performative Palestinian cause. His chosen name carried heavy religious weight in a centuries-old Islamic war. Abu Ubaida ibn al-Jarrah, the figure from whom he drew it, was a close companion of the Muslims’ Prophet Muhammad and a commander in the earliest Islamic conquests. By adopting this name, Hamas bound its propaganda directly to Islamic theology and history, signalling that its struggle is not in fact nationalist but jihadist, anchored in religious legitimacy. It is precisely this fusion of militant rhetoric with Islamic symbolism that made his voice resonate so powerfully among Muslim audiences worldwide, despite its effeminate high pitch, including in Western cities where Hamas has long sought to mobilise sympathisers.
The timing of his death added weight: almost 700 days into the war and nearly two years after the 7 October massacre, his removal was a symbolic blow. Hamas has now lost its leading spokesman after more than twenty years. The psychological impact is considerable: the group is deprived of the singular voice that carried its cause across the Muslim Arab world. Islamic war narratives often lean on anniversaries, and Abu Ubaida has been deprived the opportunity to mark the upcoming landmark.
Israel has demonstrated before its ability to reach into distant arenas to remove high-value targets: the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, or the strike on Houthi leader Ahmed al-Rahawi and his ministers in Yemen last week, both signalled this capacity. Yet the elimination of Abu Ubaida strikes deeper than political leadership. It disrupts the enemy’s capacity to wage narrative war, the very domain where Israel has long been said to falter.
As the conflict enters its next phase, the battle against lies becomes no less important than the battles fought in tunnels and streets. Hamas has always understood that perception is a weapon. Israel is now hoping to prove it has the will to contest that battlefield too. The international media may continue to reproduce Hamas’s fabrications, willingly or naively serving as another battalion in the war against the Jewish state and against truth itself. But by eliminating the architects of those narratives, Israel has begun to redress the imbalance. If the press will not uncover the lies they are fed by terrorists posing as press, Israel will cut them off at the source. Victory today depends not only on controlling territory but on defeating falsehood and destroying enemy morale.
What comes next? The elimination of Abu Ubaida shows that Israel constantly adapts. It has demonstrated once again an agility that can confront the challenges on which it has previously faltered. Its flexibility and strategically clear-minded adaptation are refocussed to fight the battle it faces, rather than be worn down. Much as it tackled the Iranian regime’s “ring of fire” before targeting the head of the beast in a focused 12-day offensive, it has now tackled enough of the quagmire in Gaza to confront Hamas’s strongholds and their real centre of gravity – jihadist ideology and narratives. That shift will determine not only the fate of Hamas’s propaganda war, but the balance of truth and falsehood in the wider struggle. Critics have said you can’t kill an ideology. Can Israel prove them wrong?
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