The power of a smile
In the exchange of prisoners during the temporary ceasefire, Israel has lost control of the narrative
In a video taken by Al Qassam Brigade on the 26th of November , a released mother and daughter smile and wave goodbye to resistance fighters
When a temporary ceasefire was arranged between Hamas and Israel on the 23rd of November, the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages began.
Israel has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians since 1967. It is also the only country in the world to prosecute children in a military court. Since October 7th the number of Palestinian prisoners has doubled to more than 10,000. Many of these are held in ‘administrative detention’ (indefinitely without trial), and over the past week Israel has captured almost as many prisoners as it has released.
Interviews began to emerge with the released Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are children, where they described starvation, solitary confinement, physical and sexual abuse and having witnessed fellow prisoners beaten to death.
In stark contrast, videos of the release of Israeli hostages were also emerging where they could be seen exchanging hugs and jokes with their Hamas captors.
Interviews with the Israeli hostages are few and far between, since Israel banned them from making media appearances. It said that medical officials will first assess whether the released hostages were fit enough to be questioned about their ordeal by Israel’s national security branch, Shin Bet.
This was likely in reaction to an interview that emerged prior to the ceasefire, of an elderly Israeli woman who was released by Hamas because of medical concerns. In the video she describes being treated well by her captors, being given specialised health care, and eating the same food that the resistance fighters were eating. A video of her release showed her grasping the hand of resistance fighters warmly and saying ‘shalom’ as she departed.
Ahed Tamimi who was released on the 30th of November said that the Israeli Occupation Forces had threatened to kill her father, who is still in custody, if she spoke out about her treatment.
Israel's national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir has also banned Palestinians from celebrating the prisoners' release, according to Israeli media. "My instructions are clear: there are to be no expressions of joy. Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism," said Gvir.
following the release of Israa Jabis, the Palestinian woman who was denied treatment for severe burns, her family home was stormed by IDF and family members were forced to leave. Media at the scene were assaulted and stopped from filming.
Early on in the exchange, a letter emerged from an Israeli woman Danielle Aloni, captured by Hamas along with her 5 year old daughter. In the letter she thanks the resistance fighters for treating her daughter with warmth and patience, “letting her into your rooms whenever she liked” and “treating her with sweets and fruit even when they were in scarcity”, “My daughter felt like a queen in Gaza” she said.
The letter was treated with a degree of scepticism, with the assumption that the captors are suffering from Stockholm syndrome, or that the letter was sequestered under threat from Hamas. Even Palestine supporters displayed scepticism. Since (and well before) the 7th of October they have watched videos of settlers taking up arms and attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, chanting “Death to Arabs” and mocking the genocide of Gazans. It’s hard to reckon with the idea that any Israeli could “hope for a lifelong friendship” with resistance fighters, as the letter states.
But the excess of gratitude in the words of the letter are difficult to construe as coerced.
Some commentators on X have harkened back to an interview with a young boy who was on the 1969 flight hijacked by Leila Khalid and fighters of the PFLP. With a grin on his face, He tells the interviewee he didn’t feel frightened or menaced at any time during the experience. When asked if he had had an opportunity to talk to the guerrillas he answered “Yeah sure they were real nice… they were alright, I talked to one of them there… they said that was their life what they were doing, you know, fighting”
The common experience seems to be that when children come face to face with the resistance, the struggle of the Palestinian people appears reasonable, even relatable. 54 years on and Israel is struggling to keep that idea buried.
Israel has one of the most powerful propaganda machines in the world. There is a term, “Hasbara”, that encompasses the strategic narrative building of Israeli propaganda and the delegitimization of opposing evidence. Couple that with a world class cyber intelligence system, the bias of mainstream Western media and social media platforms relentless censorship of Palestine activism and Israel is a formidable enemy on the war of information front.
Yet arguably, the popular consciousness is winning this battle.
The thousands of videos and images circulating of the unfolding genocide in Gaza have awakened a new wave of activists to the reality of Israel’s violent oppression of the Palestinian people. Influencers who had barely heard the word Palestine before are now speaking out and showing their solidarity. Thousands have been marching on the streets weekly since the beginning of the bombardment.
Israel has been bold in its lies since the Hamas operation on October 7th. Claims of beheaded babies, babies in ovens, raped women and the burning of civilians have all since been refuted. Studies have shown that the uptake of the lie far outweighs the uptake of the correction, and Israeli propaganda has thus far relied on this phenomenon.
However, with the accumulation of disinformation surrounding October 7th, culminating in Israel’s admission of having killed its own civilians, the exposure of Israel’s lies seems to be gaining more traction than usual.
Mainstream media in in the British colonial outpost of australia has historically favoured Israel’s narrative. Even ‘progressive’ news organisations such as The Guardian and Schwartz Media systematically remove Palestinian narratives from the agenda and take Israeli Occupation Forces information at face value. However, in the last week an open letter was circulated and signed by 337 Australian journalists, calling on their media organisations to report fairly on Palestine, including platforming Palestinian voices, humanising Palestinian experiences, and treating information from Israel and the IDF with as much scepticism as information from Hamas.
In his 1993 book ‘Culture and Imperialism’, Edward Said spoke of the power to block other narratives from forming as the most important tool of imperialism, “the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilised people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjections”. Edward Said has been dead for 20 years. This Tuesday Said’s own Columbia university, where his office has bullet proof glass, just cancelled and event about his legacy.
Almost two months into a genocide, it’s hard to see any hope in all of this. But in the comparative quiet of the temporary ceasefire, as hostages returned, we were able to see a glimpse of Israel’s panic about losing control of the narrative, and in that glimpse, we saw hope for Palestinian liberation.