PSCRP-BESA Reports No 12 (October 29, 2023)
In the Russian media, the objective coverage of the efforts of the Israeli authorities and military to counter the aggression of Hamas is growing thin. At the same time, stories full of sympathy for the terrorists and condemnation of Israel are becoming increasingly common. Many Armenian media outlets, social media and NGOs are joining in.
Putin and the mainstream media
A number of publications still try to offer assessments that are devoid of judgments; some even provide different points of view on the issue. These include, for example, RBC or Interfax. Already in the first hours after the invasion on October 7, some articles condemning the atrocities of the attackers were published. Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his show, “My sympathies cannot be on the side of Palestine right now, you can’t do such things.” And also, “if not for the SMO (“Special Military Operation,”, the term used by the Kremlin for its war in Ukraine), I would go to Israel, because Jews from all over the world go there to defend their people after this horrifying tragedy…”
But on October 13, at the CIS Council of Heads of State in Kyrgyzstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded “the implementation of the formula that envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” From that moment on, the substance and tone of the Russian media changed. Moreover, it seems that a number of them had prepared the ground for Putin’s speech in advance.
Thus, on October 11, the RIA Novosti news agency published a column by Irina Alksnis, “Forty Decapitated Babies Will Destroy the West”. It says that the news about the murdered Israeli children is a “lie”. The author admits that “a massacre did take place” in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. But then she says that Israel’s methods are “no better than those of Hamas, and the statements of officials are close to outright Nazi”.
The same day “Komsomolskaya Pravda” publishes the article “Israeli Bucha: The Monstrous Lie about 40 Beheaded Babies Became a Weapon of War”, in which Andrei Baranov calls the information about the murder of Jewish children by Hamas a “fake”. This “fabrication” is allegedly “used by the West” to “disable the average person’s ability to evaluate soberly what is happening.” He calls Nicole Zedek’s words about the bodies discovered “nonsense”, and accuses the Israeli media of “acting in exact accordance with Goebbels’ precepts”. It should be noted that these publications and authors have not strayed far from the media of the Brezhnev era and the shameful clichés about “Zionism as a form of Nazism.”
The intensity of the anti-Israel campaign increased after October 18. TASS, RIA Novosti, and a number of other news agencies report that while visiting China, Putin reiterated that the Kremlin “has always favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, independent, sovereign, with East Jerusalem as its capital”. TV channels, most publications and bloggers broadcast this. The next day Gazeta.ru published a text “On Refugees and Gas in Gaza”, where the author accuses Israel of what he describes as “millions of people have left the lands of Palestine. The population of Gaza has densified by half… And now it is being asked to squeeze in twice as much.” Echoing Putin, the author writes that “the state of Palestine is independent, recognized by 138 other countries within the borders of territories partially occupied by Israel”. It allegedly wants to create a buffer zone to guarantee its security. And how can this be demanded from a sovereign country?
The author also discusses the hypothesis that Israel wants to expel the inhabitants of Gaza because of the gas deposits discovered there. But Jerusalem forbade the Arabs to extract it. “Forbade a foreign country,” the author is indignant, “Under the threat of missile attacks. <…> That is to say, it may be a war for the gas in Gaza.”
Thus, in the author’s opinion, Israel is not fighting terrorists, but a “sovereign country.” And it urges the people of Gaza to leave the zone of the future military operation not because it seeks to avoid casualties and to protect them from new attacks, but because it wants to appropriate “Palestinian gas.” That is, for selfish purposes. Thus, in the course of the anti-Israeli campaign, the Russian media essentially side with Hamas and accuse Israel of denying the Arabs of Palestine the right to their own state (which they rejected in 1947); of intending to occupy the resource-rich territory of Gaza (which is not true); and of spreading disinformation.
These are just some of the pieces blaming Israel for the conflict. As a reminder: TASS, RIA Novosti, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” and Gazeta.ru are mainstream media outlets that show comparative restraint. The “second-tier” media behave much more aggressively.
The “second tier”
In the years of post-Soviet “cordial communication” between Jerusalem and Moscow, anti-Semites in the Russian Federation have changed their vocabulary and tone. Now, instead of threatening their audience with “the rabid Israeli military,” they encourage terrorists, ridicule murdered Jews, and claim that “the people who call themselves Palestinians have suffered injustice” — while glossing over their role in the attack on Israel on the day of its founding. The conclusion is that the Jews themselves are to blame for the brutal attack.
Tsargrad (the website of the TV channel of the same name) follows this pattern, referring to the October 7 attack as a “dashing guerrilla attack” and “symmetrical actions of the Palestinians”. In Russian discourse, both statements sound positive. And the newspaper Vzglyad calls the massacre “the drama of the villagers of southern Israel.” If it is a drama, then what is a catastrophe, a mass murder?
Meanwhile, the “experts” of Tsargrad [1] shift the accents so as to give the impression that Hamas’s extermination of Jews is merely a response to the pogroms of mosques by Jews, to the bully settlers who throw stones at Arabs and allegedly “consider themselves a people of a higher order…” Meanwhile, the rest of the world is accustomed to TV images of “people calling themselves Palestinians” pelting Israelis with a hail of stones.
Social networks: “Not an ounce of pity and sympathy”
On social media, the anti-Israel campaign looks even more cynical. Telegram channels of Z-activists — supporters of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine — are at the forefront here. By the way, Telegram is also used by employees of the so-called “quality press”. For example, Olga Skabeeva, host of the talk show “60 Minutes” on the Rossiya-1 channel, communicates in social networks, does not believe in Hamas atrocities and declares the reports about the deaths of Israelis a fabrication.
Dmitri Steshin, a colleague of the aforementioned columnist Baranov at Komsomolskaya Pravda and author of the “Russian Tarantass” channel, writes that he has “not an ounce of pity or sympathy” for the Israelis. The author of the Z-channel “Govorit Topaz”, in turn, advises: “Grab more prisoners and tie them to poles all over the city.” The “Rybar” channel assures that by describing the shelling of Israel and the killing of Jews, the Western media justify “atrocities against Palestinians.” The channel Voenkors of the Russian Spring glorifies the rallies of Hamas supporters: “Thousands of people oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza! In Rome, protesters clash with police! In Istanbul, Erdogan’s son and son-in-law, the ex-speaker of parliament and the ex-head of the Interior Ministry, are protesting.” And the content of these Telegram channels is by no means limited to such statements.
Solovyov’s flip-flop
Vladimir Solovyov — the one who publicly sympathized with Israel at the beginning of the aggression — also uses Telegram. Through his channel, it is easy to trace the author’s defection to the side of Hamas.
Soon after his condemnation, in his channel he already calls the terrorists “Palestinian resistance forces”, shows their air defence system — the Mubar-1 SAM system, publishes footage of tunnel and headquarters explosions in Gaza, sympathetically calling it “hell on earth”, and asks the question: “If the Russian Air Force were to level Kiev in the same way, would the world also remain silent?” The point of the question: why is it that when the good Kremlin hits Kiev, the world is outraged, but when bad Israel attacks Gaza, the world is calm?
Solovyov also emphasizes the words of Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s leader, who “accused the United States of supporting the Zionist regime” and held the White House responsible for “crimes against” the Palestinians. The White House, America, and Biden are Solovyov’s main enemies. But he remembers his words of sympathy for Israel spoken at the beginning of the war, and therefore, he tries to separate it from the US, and link Hamas with Ukraine. But he is thwarted by President Biden: in his speech on October 20, Biden did not link Hamas and Zelensky, but Hamas and Putin, who “share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” This angers the Kremlin and Solovyov. In his Telegram channel he dresses Zelensky in a turban, but the civilized world has already heard not him but Biden.
Russia, though, has heard Solovyov (his audience, according to the Levada Centre public opinion service, accounts for 17% of the country’s TV viewers). But he is still in a difficult position. It has to be fixed. And this is possible only by flip-flopping from supporting “his people” to attacking them. Solovyov starts the stunt by saying that in fact “the Hamas attack on October 7 was a response to an impending Israeli operation, which, according to intelligence reports, was preparing to eliminate the movement’s leaders.” He continues by quoting the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which called the strikes on the Gaza Strip “a genocide in the most heinous forms.” Next, he writes about “a rally in Toronto with Russian and Palestinian flags.” Then he explains that the Palestinian people “have the right to defend their territory, to oppose the occupation and aggressive policies of Israel.” That “women and children have suffered the most from Israeli bombing. They account for about 60 per cent of the dead.” That is, he completes his flip-flop by declaring Israel the aggressor and Hamas — the “Palestinian people”, including women and children.
Then he posts an excerpt of the Solovyov Live [2] broadcast on his channel on October 20 at 21:16: “Israel has responded… with US-funded weapons, a US PR campaign, and psychological warfare to deconstruct Palestine and the Gaza Strip with rockets, weapons, and air strikes with the stated goal of destroying Hamas. But, in fact, the real goal is to destroy all of Gaza and make it uninhabitable. <…> Which obviously confirms their true intentions, which are to expand Israel into the Gaza Strip and take over the entire territory through the expulsion and genocide of the Palestinian people...”
So, before our eyes, Mr Solovyov is quickly changing his “I would go to war for my people” stance to “Israel’s true intentions are the seizure of territory, expulsion and genocide.” And there is nothing special or new in his behavior.
1) It’s his job to serve the Russian government, which determines both information policy in general and his personal repertoire.
2) He has already threatened “his people.” Here are his words on “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov” on Rossiya-1: “Israel wants to permanently ruin relations with Russia? <…> Well, we can retort terribly. We can reconsider our attitude toward providing military-technical assistance to a number of countries in the region” [3].
“Whose ally is Israel? The US. Whose ally is Iran? Ours”
Perhaps such military-technical assistance was indeed provided. It is not by chance that Ukrainian media [4] and even Al-Arabiya [5] write about the Kremlin’s secret transfer of weapons seized in Ukraine — to Hamas. Politicians also use Telegram. For example, on October 9, the president of Chehen Republic, well-known Russian media personality Ramzan Kadyrov wrote in his Telegram channel, “We support Palestine.” What does this mean? The “strong man of Chechnya” loves Hamas. And he is against the liquidation of its fighters.
Lieutenant General Andrei Gurulev, a State Duma deputy from the United Russia party and a member of the Defence Committee, explaining Russia’s attitude to Israel’s war with Hamas, posted a message on Telegram: “Simply put, whose ally is Israel? The United States of America. Whose ally is Iran and the surrounding Muslim world? Ours. We have goals and objectives that we are fulfilling, our president has defined them impeccably...” Here he repeats his speech in the program “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov”, where the presenter, answering him, says that, although he is a Jew, he is always on the side of Russia. And its allies. That is, Iran.
In the early days of the Internet, its romantically inclined enthusiasts spoke of the coveted cross-border nature of the Web. And, apparently, they were right. But only in part. After all, hosting services are under the jurisdiction of different countries. And the hardware that allows them to function is also in different countries.
For example, Hamas hosts its official website on a Russian hosting service. It is a company called VDSina with an office in Moscow. And the Russian company Selectel helps them maintain the domain. This has been reported by a number of Internet resources from October 20 to the present day. General Gurulev — whether he wanted to or not — clearly drew the line between Israel and the civilised world on the one side, and the hostile “red-and-green coalition” on the other. This coalition includes Moscow, Beijing, Tehran; neo-Marxist regimes in Africa and South America; Hamas fighters, Hezbollah and others. This border runs through both political and information space.
Here, of course, self-determination is essential. And the Russian media did not take long to deliver: on October 24–25 Gazeta.ru, Vzglyad, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Vedomosti do not simply report on Recep Erdogan’s scathing speech to Israel. They are genuinely cheering his words, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a liberation group that is fighting for its land”[6] and his statement that those planning an operation in Gaza are showing signs of “mental illness” [7]. The quote “Ankara will not allow the killing of children” seems particularly cynical after the brutal murder of Israeli children.
The Armenian paradox
Against the background of the Turkish leader’s aggressive speeches, the statements of a number of Armenian groups and journalists who remember the Armenian genocide of 1915, which, according to a number of historians, lasted several years, look strange. Meanwhile, on October 9, in the Lebanese Armenian newspaper Azdak, Arut Chekijan calls the Hamas invasion “a just Palestinian attack” and “a natural outburst of anger”, and Israel “an accomplice to the evil against Artsakh and Lebanon.” It is followed by the classic narrative of “Israel’s erasure of Palestine and Gaza from the map,” of “Palestinians as the indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East,” of “the siege of Gaza, the daily bombing and killing of civilians…”
Chekijan writes of Hamas as “the resistance and self-defense of Palestine.” And he is almost echoed by Erdogan in talking about “a liberation group defending its land”. Does this give reason to talk about a common front between Armenian media figures and Turkish politicians?
In Media.am (Armenia), we read that the media in Israel are “currently making concerted efforts to portray Palestinian fighters as inhumane, often resorting to demeaning terms like “man-eaters” and “head-eaters.” At the highest echelons, they go so far as to dehumanize Palestinians. These videos and photos tend to spread rapidly, especially on social media, further fueling the Israeli propaganda machine” [8]. Meanwhile, the authors “recommend consulting Arabic media sources such as Al-Arabia, Al-Mayadi, and Al-Jazeera to gain a relatively objective understanding of the situation.”
“Our Armenian users frequently share videos on social networks depicting Palestinians destroying Israeli weapons or capturing Israeli soldiers; this is closely tied to the Israel-Azerbaijan relationship. People are guided by the principle that ‘the friend of our enemy is our enemy,’ and openly express a sense of satisfaction when they perceive the Israeli army as vulnerable.” Yes, negative sentiments towards Israel are noticeable in Armenian public opinion. Many see the supply of Israeli equipment to Azerbaijan as the reason for the failure during the war with Baku. And at the same time, they rely on Iran — the patron of Hamas and the enemy of Israel. This is how the principle “the enemy of my enemy is our friend” works.
On October 3, the Jewish religious center “Mordechai Navi” was attacked in Yerevan. News services quote [9] a statement by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), which claimed responsibility for the attack. Founded in Lebanon in 1975, ASALA claims[10]: “The Jews are the enemies of the Armenian nation… If Jewish rabbis in the United States and Europe continue to support Aliyev’s regime, we will continue to burn their synagogues in other countries. Every rabbi will be a target for us. No Israeli Jew will feel safe in these countries.”
In Armenian-language Telegram channels there is massive openly anti-Semitic propaganda[11] using all the anti-Semitic tropes there are. Both the very existence of victims of the Hamas invasion and the facts of atrocities, rapes, and burning alive are denied. At the same time, the details of the invasion are discussed, and Israelis’ grief for the dead is ridiculed. References to “alliance with the Palestinian people” and “friendship with Iran”, which will allegedly avenge Israel for the suffering of Armenians in Artsakh, are also constantly repeated.
Conclusion
Articles, slogans, symbols (flags, emblems, bands), posters, cartoons, photographs, audio and video materials broadcast on radio, TV and the Internet, posts and comments on social networks, as well as the gestures and intonations of the subjects in photos and videos, and their tone — all of these can serve to instill in audiences a certain attitude towards the conflict and its parties. Their task is to control the choices and actions of the target audiences of mass media and specific materials, speeches and programs. These objects fix the position of the media, their owners and management, as well as the authors, in relation to the situation in question.
Examples show the massive use of Russian mass media in the anti-Israeli campaign, with rare attempts to observe objectivity and an almost total absence of support for Israel and its people. Since the Russian authorities have consistently and deliberately curtailed freedom of the press since 2006 and fully controlled the media by 2022, it is obvious that the current campaign is one of the Kremlin’s political weapons targeting Israel and its allies. Given that there are still many Jews in Russia, this campaign could become anti-Semitic and threaten Jews in the Russian Federation.
It is important to remember that several generations of Russians grew up in the USSR, where the media always called the Israelis the aggressors and their Arab neighbors the victims. Although Perestroika changed quite a lot, anti-Semitism, hostility toward Israel and sympathy for its enemies are still alive in Russia. This creates an environment for the Russian media to be included in the global anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic campaign. Many Armenian media outlets, social media and NGOs[12] have been dragged into it. And their anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric resonates with the statements made by the leadership of Turkey, as well as Iranian and Arab media. This suggests the possibility of including another actor in the information battle.
Dmitry Petrov is a fellow at The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies and Karlov University in Prague Institute of International Studies. He is the author of eight books and several articles in periodicals.