5 observations from the ground in Gaza by a former British Army officer

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Friday, August 01, 2025

4. 'There are 2 wars going on,' actual fighting and an 'information campaign'

Fox proclaimed that in the international discussion around the war, the cruelties of Hamas and their actions in sparking the war have been "deleted from the conversation."

"This has been presented in the media as simply Israel bombing Gaza randomly," he said. "That's nonsense: 20,000-plus Hamas operatives have died, 3,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded or killed on the battlefield in Gaza. This is very much a two-way war."

He acknowledged that the Gaza War has all the human suffering and civilian death that is found in any war zone, "but not on any greater scale than any other war," especially considering Hamas' strategy of "sacrificing Gaza civilians" by embedding within civilian locations. 

"There is nowhere for those civilians to flee to other than temporary humanitarian zones because Egypt has shut the border," he said, adding that if Egypt opened its border, civilian deaths wouldn't be as high.  

He stressed that there are "two wars going on in Gaza."

"There's what's actually happening in Gaza and then there is this entire bubble of media and information maneuver that's going on around it," Fox stated.

He identified the purposes of the "information campaign" as to "enable Hamas' survival" and "force the Israelis through international pressure to a ceasefire."

"It's working to an extent," he lamented. "We saw that letter just this week from 28 countries telling Israel to ceasefire and curiously omitting the fact that it was Hamas who turned down the last ceasefire deal."

Fox stresed that the "information campaign supporting what Hamas is doing in Gaza" dates back more than 50 years to a "reframing" by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to "take the issue of Palestinianism, to turn it against Israel and reframe it as oppressor versus oppressed." He said the "framing of oppressor versus oppressed" has "been heavily pushed" in Western media and academic circles. 

"It gives the Palestinians a free pass to do whatever they want," he added. "It means that Israel is always the bad guy."