The explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 was a vivid illustration of Hamas’s ability to wage a propaganda war.
The claims made that night by Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas, highlighted the power of social media to influence global opinion about the conflict in the Middle East.
The health ministry claimed that the explosion had been caused by an Israeli airstrike and that hundreds of people sheltering in the hospital courtyard had died in the blast and ensuing fire.
Its spokesmen initially put the death toll at between 200 and 300, and raised it to 500 later in the evening. Overnight, they gave wildly varying figures of up to 800, before settling on 471 the next morning.
Through myriad pro-Palestinian accounts on social media and messaging services such as Telegram, the claims spread quickly around the world before Israel was able to rebut them.
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Independent experts later raised doubts about the Hamas version of events. The scene of the explosion did not seem compatible with the number of dead claimed by the health ministry.
US intelligence agencies briefed American media that the “probable range” of fatalities was 100 to 300. A separate report, allegedly from European agencies, said it was at most 50. The Israelis published compelling evidence the following day that the explosion was likely to have been caused by a Palestinian rocket misfiring.
Despite this, Hamas’s claims helped to ignite demonstrations across the Middle East and put pressure on Arab states such as Jordan to distance themselves further from Israel.
Unlike Israel or western governments, Hamas does not have communications professionals working in a government department that is accountable to the public.
A series of spokesmen — some civilian, some military — make appearances on disparate social media accounts or on friendly television channels, such as the Iranian-funded Press TV.
• How Hamas uses Telegram to spread terror and war propaganda
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This decentralised approach has often proved more effective than Israeli attempts to win the battle for public opinion.
Israel says the health ministry’s account of the hospital explosion shows that it cannot be trusted when it comes to the death toll in Gaza as a whole. The ministry claimed on Sunday that the number of lives lost since Israel began its bombardment of the Gaza Strip had risen to 8,005.
Mark Regev, Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman and the former Israeli ambassador to London, challenged the reliability of the figures on Times Radio on Monday. He and other Israeli spokesmen say that Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group, cannot be relied upon.
Having come under pressure, on Thursday the health ministry published a list of more than 6,000 names of those it said had died in the bombardment, along with identity details.
The United Nations, as well as international aid groups such as Save the Children, say that when it comes to death counts there has been little difference between the estimates put out by both sides in previous conflicts.
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The biggest difference between Israeli and Palestinian claims of the numbers of Palestinian dead from previous battles was 12 per cent.
