(MEMRI.org) Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which are currently waging the terror campaign against Israel, are calling on the residents of the Gaza Strip to ignore messages sent to them by Israel instructing them to evacuate areas that are about to be targeted in Israeli military strikes.
Ahead of airstrikes against targets belonging to the terror groups, and out of a desire to minimize civilian casualties, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has been sending warning messages to the residents of the Gaza Strip urging them to evacuate areas that are about to be targeted in strikes. In response to these messages, media outlets operated by Hamas and PIJ have been instructing residents of the Gaza Strip not to heed these warnings and not to share them or forward them to others.
Several accounts affiliated with the terror groups have been sharing posts describing the Israeli messages as psychological warfare and claiming that the messages are being sent “randomly.”
Below are several examples of these posts published by Hamas and the PIJ.
Hamas: The Israeli Warnings Are “Psychological Warfare”
On October 10, 2023, the spokesperson department of Hamas’s interior ministry wrote on the ministry’s Telegram channel: “An important note: We repeat our call on the residents to ignore the voice messages being sent randomly by the occupation to their phones demanding that they leave their homes. Their goal is to arouse panic and fear as part of a psychological warfare [campaign] accompanying the occupation’s aggression against us.”[1]
The post published on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s interior ministry.
Similar messages were posted by the “Home Front” Telegram channel, which also belongs to Hamas’s interior ministry. One, on October 8, read: “An important note: The occupation has been randomly sending audio and recorded messages to the phones of Gaza residents demanding that they leave their homes. We call on civilians to ignore such messages, which are aimed at arousing panic and fear and in the framework of a psychological warfare [campaign] accompanying the occupation’s aggression against our people.”[2]
