The fighting in Gaza is an information battle as much as it is about violence. Both the invading Israel Defense Forces and its foes Hamas – the militant political party that governs the coastal strip – rely on an ability to “spin” the tragic outcomes of war to reassure their own citizens, undermine their opponents and attempt to convince the rest of the world their cause is worth supporting. The nature of this latest conflict, however, has drawn scrutiny from across the globe as news outlets and governments alike report wide-scale deaths and abuses by fighters on both sides. A growing coalition of international powers has become critical of what it perceives as Israel’s heavy-handedness in its violent response. Yet Israel and some of its allies don’t feel the need to justify its pursuit of Hamas any further than pointing to its classification as a terrorist organization. [ALSO: United Nations School Shelled by Israeli Soldiers]

Photos: The Israel-Palestinian Conflict View All 27 Images

On the ground, both Israelis and Palestinians believe the other side wishes to annihilate their very way of life, and likely don’t have the time or motivation to question the veracity of the reports they hear.

Or perhaps that kind of accuracy doesn’t matter. As George Orwell said, “All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.”

Israel has invested massive amounts of time and effort into polishing its external image, hiring well-groomed and articulate representatives to speak on behalf of their government. Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Peter Lerner appears frequently on outlets such as CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera, explaining his country’s concerns with a refined English accent.

Hamas, however, has fewer resources and fewer spokespeople to use to appeal to Western audiences. Its delegate to Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, for example, speaks with a strong Arabic accent and is not as fluent in English as his Israeli counterparts.

The same perception is true on social media. The @IDFSpokesperson Twitter account routinely updates its followers on military campaigns in and around Israel, using snappy graphics and subtle messaging to drive home its point.

Israelis check their cellphones while waiting for outgoing rocket fire or Israeli airstrikes from a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip on July 14.

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Hamas, however, is unable to maintain an English-language Twitter account without it being blocked for content violations​. Its main source of social media messaging exists through an Arabic-only presence. @QassamFeed, a Twitter account for Qassam Brigades, the organization’s military wing, soared in popularity this summer, eliciting citations from high-profile news outlets. Twitter shut down the account in mid-July citing privacy and security concerns​, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The social media company did not elaborate on its decision, but it could be related to policies barring illegal activity and Hamas' official status as a terrorist organization.

Beyond their respective public faces, neither Israel nor Palestine is exactly a shining example of an open and fair media system. Palestine ranks 138th of 180 countries for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, the nonprofit that advocates internationally for journalists’ and news organizations’ rights. The media spectrum there is listed as a “very difficult situation,” wedging it between Libya and Chad on the press rights rankings.

But Israel, a staunch ally of the U.S. and considered by most to be a Westernized country, ranks not much higher on the list at 96th. (The U.S., by contrast, is 46th, and the U.K. is 33rd. Finland is at the very top of the list). In the Jewish state, RWB reports, “freedom of information is often sacrificed to purported security requirements.”

Gaza terrorists could have used this tunnel to abduct or murder Israelis. We found & detonated it before they could. http://t.co/IY7DnVcOAX — IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 29, 2014



On Tuesday RWB condemned reports Israel was specifically targeting news outlets in Gaza, including the TV and radio stations for Al-Aqsa, both of which are ​state-run mouthpieces for the governing Hamas party.

“Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns direct fire on the Hamas broadcast stations. The fact that media serve as propaganda organs does not justify making them a military target,” RWB said in a statement. Other journalists working for media outlets such as Gaza's ​Al-Kitab TV have already been killed in the fighting.​

“Meanwhile, Israel is going beyond its military censorship procedures to exert control over program content,” RWB reports. “The Israeli Broadcasting Authority prohibited on 24 July the broadcast of a spot produced by B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO, which listed the names of 150 children killed in Gaza.”

In this video screen grab, an explosion hits the media complex that houses the offices of Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV and radio in central Gaza City early Tuesday.

APTN/AP

Those who have followed news in and around Gaza largely agree: Audiences there are less apt to think critically about information during the confusion and fog of heavy conflict.

“Propaganda is a very simple thing,” says Nina Kh​rushcheva, a professor at The New School​ in New York City and an expert on the intersection of international affairs and news media. “Once you start attacking nationalism, national identity, territorial identity, as a people, then you don’t have to invent much. If that is destroyed, there’s nothing left.”

Diana Soliwon for USN&WR

Government-run propaganda largely falls into two categories: Dictatorial propaganda, which is the result of an oppressive regime that stifles all alternative information, leaving only the state’s interpretation of the facts, and propaganda made up of public relations combined with a sense of complacency among the constituency. ​ If people aren’t motivated to seek out the truth for themselves – perhaps because they believe in a grave, imminent threat – then the most widely disseminated information usually becomes unquestioned as the truth.

Rational arguments and thought-through critiques perform well in calm environments where news consumers can stop and think about a specific event and how it fits into a larger context. Such luxuries melt away when teens are kidnapped and murdered and hundreds of people are dying from aerial attacks, all in the name of preserving a belief system and way of life.

The problem becomes exacerbated in the age of social media, where everyone with a smartphone and an Internet connection believes they can uncover ​any information they need, says Khrushcheva.

Gazans and Israelis may have information about each other. But do they know – or care – whether it's fact or fiction? ​