Social Media Terrorism: Hamas and Hostage Videos

Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of violence.

In a disturbing 20-second clip, a Hamas militant slings a young woman over his shoulder. She pleads for her life as she is dragged away on a motorcycle, fruitlessly reaching out for her boyfriend. He is restrained by other masked Jihadists, helplessly watching as she drifts further and further away. Another video details a visibly injured, naked woman. A pickup truck is driving her slowly through a crowded street. Her captors are spitting on her lifeless body and cheering boisterously. The women’s names are Noa Argamani and Shani Louk, respectively. Shani has since been confirmed dead.

Following Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7th, the group’s militants have worked feverishly to spread kidnapping footage through loosely regulated communication channels. The militants exploit their victims through virulent videos to inflict further psychological damage upon the hostages’ loved ones. With the popularization of video streaming, Hamas now possesses the tools to wreak the full scope of terror among its targets. The jihadist group manipulates social media into modern torture for civilians from afar while simultaneously marking the families’ pain as a prize. As of November 24th, an extended ceasefire agreement saw Hamas release 105 Israeli hostages in exchange for over 200 detained Palestinians, most of whom were not convicted of a crime. There were brief  moments of respite as families reunified in videos across social media.

Invoking Mental Distress

Hostage videos inflict mental distress on families who see their missing loved ones abused or dead in a public forum. With the Israeli hostage count raised to 242 people, discovering their fate while scrolling the internet is traumatic. Friends of Noa Argamani learned of her abduction, as well as the death of another friend, Amit Man, through Instagram. Noa’s father fainted upon seeing the footage. Her friends described how social media proliferates these videos, rendering them inescapable. In Kibbutz, Nir Oz, an older woman was killed in her home. The perpetrators stole her phone and uploaded footage of the homicide to her Facebook account. Doing so was a personal attack on the family, making the video both unexpected and impossible to avoid. In a New York Times Op-ed, Rachel Goldberg describes her anguish after seeing images of her son in a bomb shelter before being taken hostage.  

Beyond inflicting physical harm, Hamas expands its victim pool by using these horrifying glimpses to capitalize on grief and incite psychological terror. Creating and sharing captive videos is akin to a warped trophy shelf. Hamas’s perceived victories promote clout amongst their ranks. The real prize for Hamas is knowing that Israelis watch the same videos again and again, constantly reliving their trauma without a way out. The victims’ communities hold vigils for resilience, displaying somber signs that read, “We are waiting for you at home.”   

Content Style 

Hamas follows the precedent that ISIS set for hostage video campaigns, whose 2014 execution footage posted online achieved its intended goals. ISIS aimed to modernize extrajudicial campaigns via the internet to maximize damage abroad, trigger knee-jerk responses from Western countries, and generate enthusiasm from their supporters. Similar to ISIS’s digital following, Hamas militants celebrated their killings in the streets and with social media fanfare. However, Hamas’s videos are different in style: they are neither choreographed or edited nor demand ransom. Instead, their clips are live-action, capturing their excitement at the moment to share with followers and potential recruits. Despite differences in the two group’s video styles, Hamas takes inspiration from ISIS’s blueprints for success.      

The Media Pipeline and the Way Forward

Poorly moderated social media platforms create opportunities for Hamas to rapidly disseminate their videos, allowing them to reach a larger audience. Telegram, a messaging app with lax regulation, is a breeding ground for dangerous content. Hamas first published videos on its specialized channels, with one experiencing a threefold increase in viewership since the war’s onset. After global pressure, Telegram removed four channels associated with Hamas, but three remain. Hamas’s videos on Telegram then reached an even larger audience on X, formerly known as Twitter. Last year, X abolished its entire trust and safety council, which moderated dangerous content. As a result,  no official department is tasked with reviewing and removing Hamas’s videos. Consequently, Hamas’s radical ideology has ample opportunities to snowball, luring potential recruits while simultaneously tormenting Israelis.  

Minimizing exposure to Hamas’s hostage videos is crucial to safeguarding the mental well-being of the families who lost relatives. Additionally, removing these videos takes power away from Hamas by limiting its ability to initiate digital terror crusades. There is no cohesive policy yet to tackle the issue. An Israeli parent association suggested that social media apps be removed from children’s phones to prevent accidental exposure to Hamas videos. It is not feasible to strong-arm leaders of private media conglomerates, like X and Telegram, to moderate themselves for the betterment of their users. For example,  the lines between censorship, security, and the First Amendment cannot be untangled in the United States. The difficulty arises from balancing freedom of expression with the need to restrict content for public safety, national security, or the prevention of harm. This paradox played out between the Supreme Court and the state of Texas in 2022. Then, the Supreme Court paused a Texas law that would have banned social media companies from censoring content, arguing these companies have the First Amendment right to moderate what information is on their platform. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the law, claiming instead that censorship violates the First Amendment rights of the platform’s users. 

Moreover, the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which moderates providers for illicit activity, does not come into force until February 2024. In this case,  the onus of responsibility may fall on the Israeli courts. A law passed in the Israeli parliament in 2017 allows the district court to partially restrict access to a website if used to further terrorist activity. It is crucial to highlight the need to avoid a complete ban on Twitter or Telegram because they still serve as essential methods of communication. However, the court can limit certain aspects of the websites, such as banning content with specific inflammatory keywords. Censoring flagged content would not eliminate the problem, but at the very least, it reduces the likelihood of family members seeing their loved ones unexpectedly murdered over the internet. 

Author: Talya Ackerman

Managing Editor: Sebastian Reyes

Web Editor: Matthew MacKenzie