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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-863612
Hamas's Quiet Win in the Court of International Opinion
(Jerusalem Post) Irwin J. Mansdorf - Hamas has invested in shaping perceptions, seeding narratives, and nudging otherwise well-meaning publics to amplify messages that serve its core goals. Across the U.S., protests and moral arguments have centered on stopping the war - an urgent, humane aim. Hamas aligns with the most resonant, emotive message in democratic societies: end the bloodshed now. The overlap of aims (different motives, similar message) is the sweet spot of modern psychological warfare. Democracies thrive when citizens speak freely. Yet free expression is not free of consequence. Genuine compassion can be repurposed into someone else's strategic communications. In the campus arena, young people are primed to rally around universal rights and liberation narratives. Hamas's playbook is to attach the group's demands to broadly appealing principles - ceasefire, dignity, academic freedom - so that every podium and placard becomes a force multiplier for a cause most demonstrators would never consciously embrace. The result is a perceptual victory: viewers at home encounter the same demand ("end the war now") from both a violent faction and their own neighbors. The shared chorus makes the faction sound normal and critics sound extreme. Persuasion beats performative certainty. Many people - especially the young - arrive at this issue underinformed and overexposed to social pressure. When presented with facts, a meaningful share changes its mind. That's a call to argue better, not shout louder. The writer is a clinical psychologist and a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs specializing in political psychology.