They starve our people to crush the Jewish soul.
Our enemy is not just fighting with guns and bombs. They are experts at weaponizing emotion — guilt, shame, grief, fear, rage — and turning it against us. Let's not fall into their pernicious trap.
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Last week, I wrote an essay arguing that if Israel is forced into an impossible choice between rescuing the remaining hostages or defeating Hamas and eliminating the existential threat it poses from Gaza, then it must choose the latter.
It wasn’t an emotional argument; it was a cold, rational one — one I didn’t enjoy making. The moral weight of that tradeoff is unbearable.
Of course, in a just world, we would save every hostage and defeat Hamas. But if forced into a binary, I reasoned, the long-term survival of Israel must take precedence over short-term victories or emotional relief.
Then, hours later, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad released images and videos of two Israeli hostages. Emaciated. Hollow-eyed. Starving. Their bones visible beneath loose, pale skin. Human beings reduced to the edge of death by cruelty. The haunting resemblance to photos from the Holocaust wasn’t just uncanny; it was deliberate. A psychological weapon aimed straight at the Jewish soul.
And in that moment, I felt something I wasn’t prepared for: overwhelming shame.
Shame for having just written that essay. Shame for thinking in strategic terms while real people were being tortured in real time. Shame for making a moral calculation that suddenly felt, at least emotionally, unforgivable.
But then I remembered: This is exactly the goal. This is psychological warfare at its most insidious.
You see, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their patron Iran are not just fighting on the ground or through missiles. They are fighting inside our minds. They are experts at weaponizing emotion — guilt, shame, grief, fear, rage — and turning it against us.
They release hostage footage not to inform, but to destabilize. They engineer moral whiplash; one moment we are mourning Israeli children murdered on October 7th, the next we can’t help but feel sorry for Palestinian children killed in Gaza (likely as Hamas’ human shields), then we are tormented by the sight of Jewish hostages on the brink of death. It’s a carousel of anguish, carefully orchestrated to paralyze decision-making and erode public will.
They know that democracies struggle to act decisively when their people are emotionally torn. They exploit our morality against us. They use our humanity as a lever to break our resolve.
This isn’t a side effect of war. This is the war.
And it’s not just Israel. Psychological warfare is now a global epidemic. Russia perfected it in Ukraine. China uses it through disinformation and intimidation campaigns. ISIS used it by filming brutal executions. What Hamas does to the Israeli and Jewish psyche, other regimes do to dissidents, journalists, soldiers, and civilians around the world. In fact, the battlefield is no longer just the front lines; it’s your phone screen, your social feed, your moral intuition.
Today, psychological warfare has a new and terrifying accelerant: social media. What used to require leaflets, radio broadcasts, or foreign agents now takes a single upload. A video of a tortured hostage. A crying Palestinian child. A falsified IDF strike. A manipulated infographic. The most emotionally manipulative content spreads faster than the most accurate reporting. Why? Because algorithms reward outrage and pain.
Terrorist groups and their state sponsors understand this perfectly. They no longer need to convince the world; just confuse it. Or break it. A single hostage video can undo months of strategic planning. A single viral tweet can inflame global protests. A single day’s imagery can fracture public opinion — and demoralize a nation.
While psychological warfare targets entire societies, its most devastating impact is on the individual victims — the hostages themselves. They’re not just being held for bargaining purposes. They are being used as psychological grenades. Their suffering is designed not only to torment them, but to haunt the rest of us. It’s calculated and cinematic. Their frailty, their trauma, their horror all filmed, edited, and deployed with brutal intent.
Their families are also victims. They live in a state of paralyzing purgatory — too hopeful to grieve, too shattered to live. And worse, their pain is not just personal, but politicized. Weaponized. Their anguish becomes a pressure point for the entire country. This kind of warfare doesn’t kill the body; it crushes the spirit.
There is a bitter, horrific irony at the heart of all of this: Hamas uses both human shields and hostages — but for opposite purposes. It hides behind Palestinian civilians to deter Israeli strikes, using our morality as a brake. And it parades Israeli hostages to provoke emotional chaos, using our morality as a trap. In both cases, human lives are instrumentalized. Reduced to props in a narrative of cruelty. The message is the same: We know you care, and we’ll use that against you.
Of course, psychological warfare is not new. Ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote about it centuries ago: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” The Mongols slaughtered entire towns and left the bodies on display to terrify the next village into surrendering without resistance. The Nazis perfected the use of propaganda to turn lies into ideology. The Soviets used disinformation to breed distrust, undermine the press, and destabilize democratic institutions from the inside out.
Today, psychological warfare has become more surgical, more viral, more personal. It no longer needs to convince you to switch sides. It just needs to make you question yours, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
The psychological warfare waged against Jews is uniquely cruel and precise. It doesn’t just manipulate emotion; it rips open ancient wounds. To see a starving Jewish hostage on camera is to be transported instantly to the Holocaust. Not just metaphorically, but viscerally. The imagery is designed to trigger generational trauma. To shatter the defenses of a people who have spent lifetimes trying to overcome unspeakable suffering.
The perpetrators know exactly what they are doing. And they want us not only to feel devastated, but to feel responsible.
The cost of this manipulation is not just emotional; it’s strategic. Hostage footage doesn’t just pull at the heartstrings. It drives a wedge through Israeli society. Between those demanding unconditional rescue and those prioritizing military objectives. Between families of hostages and the government. Between Left and Right, young and old, emotional and rational.
And this too is part of the war. A divided society cannot win. A conflicted army cannot lead. A shamed nation cannot act. This is not accidental; it is strategic design.
So, yes, we must mourn. Yes, we must feel. Yes, we must hold onto our humanity. But we must also recognize when our empathy is being manipulated by those who reject empathy entirely. Psychological warfare only works if we let it.
That doesn’t mean becoming numb. It means becoming wise. We must learn to separate real grief from engineered spectacle, real shame from weaponized guilt, and real strategy from emotional sabotage.
Israel is in an impossible position. There is no easy answer. But whatever choice is made — about hostages, about Hamas, about this war — we must remember that part of the battle is in our heads, in our hearts, in the stories we tell ourselves about right and wrong, weakness and strength.
Our enemies know this. So must we.
Ultimately, the only way to withstand psychological warfare is not just with better weapons or better technology, but with stronger minds. We need psychological preparedness. We need citizens trained to recognize manipulation. We need schools teaching media literacy. We need leaders who won’t govern by viral pressure. And we need moral clarity that doesn’t evaporate under emotional heat.
This is not just a military war; it’s a war for our conscience, our narrative, and our ability to think clearly, especially when under threat. If we lose that war, it doesn’t really matter if Hamas dreams of destroying us. We’ll have done it to ourselves.
Hamas are the epitome of evil. Israel must crush them!
Very difficult truths in this article.