Jerusalem has long been the focal point of the still unsolved problem of Palestine. Hamas and its armed wing, the Azadin al-Khassam Brigades, were formed in the 1987 and they emerged out of an existing network of Islamic charitable organizations. And it's somewhat surreal to see where the organization was in the early 90s. And what it grew to be. And you don't actually have to imagine.
I mean, you could see this for yourself. There's a great documentary from the early 90s put together by the late British journalist Robert Fisk. And the documentary is called From Beirut to Bosnia. In part two of this three-part documentary, Fisk goes to Gaza to see the impact of the Israeli occupation firsthand. And while there, he happens upon a funeral turned political rally, the funeral is for a fighter, a Hamas fighter named Zakariyya Sharabaji.
And the rally was put on by Hamas, an organization, still kind of its infancy. Have a listen to how this plays out. Watched at a distance by the Israelis, Hamas, the Palestinians who oppose Arifat, rallied their supporters within hours. The Israelis had taken away the torso of Zakariyya Shabaji, the dead gunman. Hamas had retrieved his head and buried it beside this memorial gathering for their latest martyr.
How Arifat and the PLO deal with these militants in Gaza will either guarantee or destroy the new accord with Israel. Now the man chanting in Arabic in that clip is saying, quote, with one voice, my dear brothers, with one voice, our movement is an Islamic movement. That is our identity. Now I recommend you go and see these clips for yourself. But for now I'll describe it for you.
There are no green flags, no guns, no knives, just a massive crowd, a couple of masked men and a megaphone, and a bunch of teenagers running along. But the defiant tone of the organization is abundantly clear. That's for sure. But as far as public outreach goes, this was as gritty and bare bones as it gets. It was all very, very grassroots. And you need to keep in mind that at this stage, much of the most spectacular elements of Palestinian resistance of the 60s, all the way through to the 80s,
mostly orchestrated outside of Palestine. And so even so far as branding and public relations and outreach and things like that were concerned, much of the most advanced stuff was taking place in the camps outside of Palestine. Even the folk band in Ashokin mentioned earlier, they were based in Lebanon. And so Hamas really didn't have a depth of knowledge to tap into. There was no real template for them to follow. They were in a very real sense starting from scratch.
Well, one of Israel's stupidest policy decisions in its entire history was about to give this young organization access to the best education they could have ever asked for. In 1992, in an effort to crush Hamas in its infancy, the Israeli government decided to deport the Hamas leadership in Gaza. Now, this deportation included some of its most intelligent and charismatic leaders, and list of soon-to-be exiles included figures such as the Hamas co-founder Abdulaziz Arantisi and several others.
The thinking was, I guess, I don't know, I tried to wrap my head around it even 30 years later. The thinking was that if you can remove the leadership from Gaza, you will squash their influence. And their minions then will be lost without them. The problem with that, though, is that Israel can't just send a bunch of Islamist militants to London or New York or Paris.
And Cairo and Amman definitely don't want them, and they definitely did not want to send them to the West Bank or to the Galilee or anywhere else between the River and the Sea, because they'll just end up creating more problems for Israel. And so the Israelis came up with what they thought was a great idea.
They exiled these leaders to Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, and there, and probably for the first time, the exiled leaders of Hamas and the leaders of Hezbollah met right there on the slopes of southern Lebanon. And you can say with some level of certainty that the axis of resistance was born right there.
Just over a year later, when Israel concluded that the plan had failed, and that maybe there were things going on that they didn't like, those leaders came back to Gaza having learned a ton about managing a resistance organization. Over the course of Hamas' 36-year history, we have seen the evolution of its communications and public relations and marketing evolve from something pretty crude to very sophisticated.
So now I want to dive into precisely how Hamas have learned from these past battles, both its own battles and those of similar organizations, and how it is applying those lessons into all elements of the communication war that we are watching unfold right as we speak. I think it needs to be acknowledged from the onset that Hamas has very successfully leveraged the social media landscape in this war, as well as the traditional media landscape available to it in the Middle East.
I'm actually going to start by speaking about its mass media strategy first. Hamas has clearly made a point to embed cameramen with many of its combat units, if not most of its combat units, and the result has been literally dozens of short videos, one to three-minute length videos, that feature a wide array of combat units doing everything from sniping Israeli soldiers at long distance to running up behind tanks and planting IEDs on their back doors.
But the first place that this footage appears, this combat footage, is actually on Al Jazeera's Arabic language programming. Sometimes Al Jazeera appears to have received the content in advance and releases it in a prepared segment. But other times they have interrupted live coverage, and mid-segment revealed that they have some new combat footage that they urgently need to show. And with few exceptions, Al Jazeera appears to have something approaching exclusive level access here.
The clips are rarely more than three minutes long, but Al Jazeera will play them two or three times, and then the pundits will offer their live analysis of what they have just seen. This is an arrangement that clearly seems to be working for both the resistance organizations and the media network itself. For Hamas, it gives them access to Al Jazeera's entire audience.
For Al Jazeera, it guarantees that viewership across virtually all demographics, you consider that younger audiences in the Middle East, just like in the West, typically don't watch the news the way that their parents did. The videos are usually analyzed by Al Jazeera's military analysts to general Fay Zidwadi. He's a retired general and a veteran of the Jordanian Armed Forces.
Anyone who watches the segments will very quickly realize that Fay Zidwadi is very professional and really knows what he is talking about. But he is also very sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, and so his segment comes off as kind of a combination between high level well thought out military analysis, but also a kind of professional moral boosting for the viewers. I'll mention more about Fay Zidwadi in a few moments.
Outside of Al Jazeera, Hamas appears to have found access to the world primarily through telegram, there's a messaging app originally created by a pair of Russian brothers, and it is through telegram that Hamas has brought their combat footage to the palms of millions of people all over the world.
Again, just for those who are not familiar, there are now dozens of videos from battles all over Gaza, shot mostly with GoPro cameras attached to the heads or chests of the fighters, and these videos give the viewer a first-person view of the accomplishments of the resistance.
Now, I will not be spending any time doing technical analysis of the battlefield tactics that are being deployed, but what I do want to focus on is the design language of these videos, and for anyone who has seen these videos, much of what I'm going to say will be very familiar.
The videos open with a dark green background and a logo of the Aluxa flood operation. Then before the combat footage begins, there is a short descriptor explaining where the footage was shot, and then the actual combat footage begins. But the videos feature so much more than just static combat footage.
To anyone who has seen these videos, they have been introduced to a new symbol of Palestinian resistance that along with the slingshot, the kufiyah, the rifle will forever be immortalized in the collective memory of Palestinian resistance. And that is the red triangle.
Now, from perhaps the second or maybe third video that Hamas produced during this war, they started to use these red triangles that would hover above IDF military vehicles or above Israeli soldiers to help point out to the viewer where the target is. Well, I have no idea if Hamas intended for these red triangles to become a social phenomenon or if maybe just the internet took over and did its thing, but the red triangle has taken on a life of its own.
In the Arabic speaking world, those red triangles are flooding social media. And of course, references to it have already found their way into the resistance music that has been produced over the last three months. The greatest impact of these combat videos is that they provide direct undeniable evidence that the IDF is not steamrolling through Gaza.
In fact, in many cases, the videos directly contradict the IDF statements. For example, since about mid-November, the IDF has been claiming that they have cleansed the north of Gaza and are now facing only moderate resistance only to have three classam videos released the next day from that very same north. Remember, the stronger side loses by not winning. The weaker side wins by not losing. Hamas just needs to show that they're still in the fight.
But Hamas' PR war is not just combat footage. Periodically throughout this war, the Arabic speaking world has heard directly from the voice of the battle itself. On several occasions throughout this war, the official spokesperson of the Kassam Brigades, a masked figure known only by his pseudonym Abur Abeda, has addressed the events of the battlefield directly.
His speeches are usually short and feature a combination of key updates from the field of battle, gratitude for support from those near and abroad, words of encouragement and a special sign off. The sign off translates into quote, this is jihad. It is either victory or martyrdom. End quote. Now I suspect that most listeners don't know this, but Abur Abeda did not make those words up himself. They were originally spoken by Sheikh Azadil Qassam himself back in the 1930s.
To give you an idea of how popular these speeches have become in the Arabic speaking world, just realize that Abur Abeda's last speech, released on the 100th day of the war, got 1.4 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours. And that, of course, does not include the millions who watched it live or who downloaded it on Telegram.
A quick scroll through Instagram, and you'll see that social media is a wash with scenes of coffee shops and gyms all over the Arab world where everyone just stops dead in their tracks to listen to these speeches as soon as they are posted. Abur Abeda himself, who has been the spokesperson for Hamas since the early 2000s, has become something of a folk hero, and resistance ink has been in full swing behind the scenes all along.
Amplifying this whole message is a robust music industry, part of which is organic and grassroots, and part of it is directly tied to Hamas. Hamas's resistance music is unsurprisingly part of the larger tradition of resistance music, that I've shared with you so far, but it also traces part of its roots to a broader Islamic music industry that also emerged in the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon in the 1980s.
And you can hear all of these elements in the work of a Hamas affiliated group known as the Wad, the promise, the Wad group is one of several musical groups that are tied to the Hamas movement. And I should be clear here, I don't actually know the nature of their relationship or its depth. The only reason I say that they are tied and I say it with some level of certainty is because unlike many other resistance bands, they always make songs just about Hamas.
And so I think the direct connection is pretty obvious there. I look at Al-Waid as a direct result of Hamas observing some of what has been done successfully and applying it to its own context. Al-Waid first popped up on my radar in 2006 and 2007, and it was around then that I heard one of their songs. The chorus of the new song Of course, as the war has rolled on, the band has been busy putting out new songs and new content.
One of their songs released in December makes a series of very specific references to the current war and the retreat of the Golani Brigade. Have a listen. Of course, as the war has rolled on, the band has been busy putting out new songs and new content. Now in this particular case, the song makes reference to specific elements of the current Gaza War and how it is viewed through the eyes of the resistance and its supporters and sympathizers.
But there is something else going on here that to the untrained ear would be impossible to hear. The music itself is to the rhythm of a type of song or songs that are used at the time. Now, complimenting the work of a Lwad are truly countless songs made by independent artists who in this sound cloud era are able to produce and distribute their music without the need
of major labels or producers. One of the most popular songs to emerge during this war was released by Afro-Palestinian artist Ahmed Al-Ali. The song is called Gaza calls us today. And from what I've heard, the song is called Gaza calls us today. And from what I could see on social media, this song has kind of taken on a life of its own as a kind of anthem of this war. The lyrics from the portion that I played can be translated as follows.
Quote, we are not worried about your threats or your siege. We will meet every escalation with ten of our own and we will meet them with rocks and bullets. Gaza calls today, so hasten to the struggle. They strike Gaza from air and sea, but on land they fear us. They cannot do it. We will break their legs and cripple them. The hour of war draws near. It was promised to us in the word of God. You came here, brought by your own two feet,
but we will wipe you off the face of the earth. And quote, and so I think by this point, it is clear that in the self-portrait of the resistance, it is the fight and the damage inflicted upon the enemy that they hope to preserve and not the death and destruction that Israel has visited upon the people of Gaza. Give you a glimpse of how powerful these songs are as shapers of mood and memory. Just consider this.
In December, when a temporary ceasefire was brokered between Israel and Hamas, hundreds of female prisoners and children were released from Israeli captivity in exchange for prisoners being held by Hamas. One woman emerged from a bus, raised her fingers to the sky and said, Oh, hot assaifig balisaf, hohna arjalam hamma daif, hohna arjalam hamma daif, hohna arjalam hamma daif. Raise your swords and bring them together. We are the men of Muhammad Blif.
Muhammad Blif is the elusive faceless commander of the Kassam Brigades. And that is a line directly out of dozens of resistance songs. Now to wrap this all up, I will show you how resistance ink allowed for one of the most memorable cultural moments of this war. And it's a moment that pulls together all of the elements of resistance ink, the combat footage, the media relations, the whole thing. Everything
comes together in this one moment. In December of 2023, Hamas released one of its videos to Al Jazeera, though this time the video was quite short, it was actually only about 30 seconds long. And in this video, Hamas marksman carrying a rocket propelled grenade, fires it at a house holding Israeli soldiers and successfully hits the house. And having successfully hit the house, he prepares to retreat. And when he retreats, he shouts
out, hallelujah, hallelujah, which means now do your analysis, Dwayri. He was giving a nod to the Al Jazeera military analyst, Faiz Dwayri. It was this fighter's peak beyond the fourth wall, a way to just reach out and say, just as you are watching what we do with admiration, speaking to Faiz Dwayri, just as you are watching what we do, we are also watching with admiration what you do. And so this one's for you. Now within hours,
hallelujah, Dwayri became a meme. It's as though the entire Arabic-speaking world discovered for the first time that behind the cameras and the blurred faces, this combat footage is just a bunch of young men who are watching the news and seeing the same coverage that we are seeing. Well, in any case, you can predict what happened next. I think the first hallelujah Dwayri song came out in 24 hours. By the end of the week, I had heard three.
And I think that's how resistance ink works. It takes a flattering self-portrait and expresses it in highly localized images and songs, ensuring that the generations of the future continue to look back at the struggles of the past with a kind of nostalgic pride that comes with confronting insurmountable odds. I liken resistance ink to a massive inside joke or like
a family story that only those familiar with the context can only appreciate. Resistance ink is a massive social project that ensures that long after the participants in the battles have died, their message lives on. And if that sounds dramatic or hyperbolic, then I will leave you with this. In 1936, a Palestinian poet wrote about the battles of the great
revolt, but the battles of Bal'a, Bet Amirin, and other events of the great revolt. And he wrote about how unprecedented these battles were and how nothing of that scale had taken place on this land since the battle of Hattin between Salah Adin and Ayubi and the Crusaders.
And that was his story. Well, a few decades ago, nearly a century after the original poem was written, a band turned the poem into a song, ensuring that the memory of even those battles would survive for at least one more generation. And that was his story. In 1936, a Palestinian poet wrote about how the battle of Hattin between Salah Adin and Ayubi and the Crusaders. And that was his story.
In 1936, a Palestinian poet wrote about how the battle of Hattin between Salah Adin and Ayubi and the Crusaders. And that was his story. In 1936, a Palestinian poet wrote about how the battle of Hattin between Salah Adin and Ayubi and the Crusaders. And that was his story.