Israel's month-long military offensive in Gaza drew global condemnation, even from the United States, because Hamas let innocent Gazans be killed to produce more heart-wrenching images of dead civilians, Human Events senior writer John Hayward told
Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"That was the Hamas strategy all along," Hayward told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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Hayward said Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization that effectively controls Gaza and has used it to launch rockets and tunnel attacks into Israel, also controls "the media environment" where the actual fighting took place — and used that leverage in ways Israel never would.
"When reporters get close to reporting something bad for [Hamas], they get threatened," said Hayward. "Reporters will talk about Hamas threatening to kill them if they show pictures of rocket launchers being set up in dense civilian areas."
He said Hamas' media tactics, coupled with "the fact that Israel has an effective missile defense" that kept its civilian casualties to nearly zero, "has made this a story about dead people in Gaza."
But he said the media narrative tilted somewhat toward Israel in this latest violence with the discovery of elaborate tunnels dug by Hamas to enable guerrilla attacks into Israel.
Comparing them to "the mines of Moria from 'Lord of the Rings,' " Hayward said "the tunnels in Gaza are the thing that really frightened the Israelis and changed the character of the conflict. And it's changed the media environment as well."
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