In the public relations war against Israel that is being waged alongside the war on the ground, the terrorists of Hamas have employed some of the same manipulative strategies that are commonly used by abusive individuals.
DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." This is a method used by perpetrators "to confuse and silence their victims," psychologists Sarah Harsey, Eileen Zurbriggen, and Jennifer Freyd explained in 2017. While DARVO is often associated with interpersonal violence, Hamas and its supporters have weaponized this tactic on a global scale. They have denied the atrocities that Hamas members themselves captured on video, denied that the October 7, 2023, attack targeted civilians, and sought to cast themselves as the victims of the war they started.
Disturbingly, some in the media have been willing participants in this reversal of reality. As with other similar ploys such as the Livingstone formulation or Holocaust inversion, it's important to be able to recognize and name this rhetorical device in order to be able to fight it effectively.
For example, a March 5 headline in the Forward read, "Israel's brutal assault on Gaza demands a new reading of the Purim story's final chapter," and, similarly, on March 9, Rolling Stone called the illegal encampments at Columbia University, "First Amendment-protected rallies against a brutal assault on Gaza." Israel, of course, is not "assaulting" Gaza. It was Hamas – that is, the government of Gaza – that assaulted Israel on October 7 and that continues to hold 59 hostages, including 24 that are believed to be alive and in extremely inhumane conditions. Hamas has refused to end the war it started, which it could do immediately by surrendering and releasing the hostages unconditionally, and it pledges to repeat its violent actions if allowed to survive. The claim that Israel is the aggressor is a distortion of reality – a reversal of victim and offender.
Some news outlets have at times used language that carelessly implied that Israel started the war or even omitted the way that the war started. It was especially shocking, even in a pseudo-news publication like Hollywood Reporter, to read explicitly on March 26 that Israel started the war: "Israel's response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks sparked the ongoing Israeli-Gaza conflict." Obviously, as the entertainment magazine's correction a week later made clear, the war began when Hamas attacked Israel. The claim that Israel's response to an act of war is what started the war is illogical on its face – another example of a reversal of victim and offender.
Throughout the war, we have heard from Hamas partisans such as Al Jazeera that Israel is responsible for the deaths of its own citizens on October 7 through an alleged "Hannibal Directive." This is a brazen attempt to shift the blame for deaths that occurred during an attack from the attackers onto those who defended against the attack. And on February 22, the day after the return of the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, Ryan Grim of Drop Site News posted on X, "it was announced 15 months ago they were killed in an Israeli air strike." When the bodies were returned, forensic evidence showed the two children were murdered by their captors, and there was never any evidence beyond Hamas's say-so that they were killed by an Israeli airstrike.
Ironically, though, Grim continued, "this attempt to just keep repeating a claim as fact and turn it into truth without evidence is quite striking." Again, any deaths that occurred on October 7, as well as any deaths of hostages that occurred in captivity, are the fault of the party that initiated the attack and no one else. This is a cynical and manipulative tactic, worthy of the worst abusers, by which Hamas attempts to absolve itself of guilt.
The most pervasive form of this victim-offender reversal is the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. When Hamas broke through the border fence on October 7, 2023, it was acting on the genocidal sentiment expressed in its charter, "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."
On the other hand, military experts like Retired Major John Spencer and Colonel Richard Kemp have attested that Israel is taking all possible precautions to avoid civilian deaths. A report by the Henry Jackson Society demonstrated that Hamas' casualty figures are inflated. Seven former prosecutors of Nazis called the accusation against Israel "outrageous." Hamas started a war, and all wars involve some civilian casualties. But Hamas – which, again, is the government of Gaza – can end the war at any time by releasing the remaining hostages unconditionally and surrendering. If this were actually a genocide, it would be the first genocide in history in which the government of the people being genocided had the power to stop it and somehow chose not to.
And yet, on December 17, 2024, in a review of Michael Moore's film "From Ground Zero," Variety called the pseudo-documentary "a defiant act of creativity in the face of genocide." On January 15, reporting on the ceasefire negotiations, Rolling Stone wrote, "the brutality of the war has spurred accusations of engineered famine, war crimes, and genocide against Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip." Even CNN broadcast this libel: "What happened to Gaza will have to be recorded in human conscience as the first ever live-streamed genocide," Palestinian Authority diplomat Husam Zomlot falsely claimed on the Amanpour Hour on January 22.
In truth, Hamas, not Israel, has acted with genocidal intent. But in a massive reversal of victim and perpetrator, NGOs like Amnesty and governments such as that of South Africa assert that it is Israel, the party that fought off an attempt at genocide, that is committing genocide, and misguided allies in the media give credence to the claim.
Hamas named the October 7 attack "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood," and it's been accompanied by a flood of false narratives in the media, including those that rely on this manipulative reversal of victim and offender. The authors of the 2017 paper cited above documented "evidence for the existence of DARVO as a perpetrator strategy." And the terrorists of Hamas have used it effectively. The goal is to deflect blame off of the perpetrator, Hamas, and onto its target, Israel. Responsible journalists must not allow themselves to be exploited towards this end, and we must call out this tactic when we see it.
