Arab News wrote, "Pro-Israel video tries to blame Palestinian people for Gaza destruction: expert" and "Critics claimed the ad was propaganda, attempting to unfairly attribute the devastation in Gaza to the Palestinian people."
How can anyone watch that ad and think that is the message? The ad explicitly blames Hamas three times in text, once in audio, and does not blame Palestinians at all for Hamas' crimes. It shows nothing but sympathy for Palestinian people, portraying them as wanting normal lives.
We see this often. Israel is in a war with Hamas, it is targeting Hamas, it says over and over again that the enemy is Hamas and not Gazans. But Israel haters take anti-Hamas statements - even to the ICJ - and claim they refer to all Palestinians.
The only people conflating Palestinians with terrorists are the people who claim to be pro-Palestinian. The only people who make a clear distinction between the two are the Israelis.
Reality is more complex. Most Gazans are indeed unhappy with Hamas, but they hate Israel and Jews even more. They cheer murdering Jews. They are not innocent.
But they are also not the targets, and Israel is a nation that adheres to laws.
The Israel haters, on the other hand, claim that any attacks on Hamas are attacks on Gazans. They do not make any distinction between militant and civilian. They consider Hamas deaths to be just as bad as civilian deaths.
And this conflation between civilians and terrorist isn't all for propaganda purposes. These people are really on Hamas' side. They justify the most heinous terrorist attacks against Jews. They really consider Hamas to be as innocent as Gaza civilians are, and even heroic. They vacillate between denying and celebrating October 7 rapes and murders of women and children - just like Hamas.
They conflate civilians with Hamas because they identify with Hamas themselves,
