In the digital age, information warfare exploits the vulnerabilities of liberal democracies by turning freedom of expression into a vehicle for disinformation, polarization, and radicalization. The handling of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict offers a particularly revealing illustration of this phenomenon.
Summary
Information warfare has emerged as a central arena of confrontation within—and against—democratic societies. While propaganda is not a new phenomenon, it was historically associated with wartime contexts. It has now become a permanent feature in peacetime and, in the digital era, has taken on unprecedented forms: cognitive warfare, opinion manipulation, disinformation, targeted messaging, and the instrumentalization of fundamental freedoms.
This transformation directly affects social cohesion and the resilience of open societies. The virality of social media, information overload, and the gradual erosion of the boundary between facts and opinions facilitate the spread of emotional narratives, often at the expense of analysis. In this context, freedom of expression—a cornerstone of liberal democracies—becomes a contested space where influence strategies unfold, both foreign and domestic.
The treatment of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict since October 7 provides a textbook case of these dynamics. The intensity of media coverage, the repetition of reductive narratives, and the inflationary use of extreme categories contribute to shaping a perception largely disconnected from the complexity on the ground. This asymmetrical focus is not merely the result of media bias; it is embedded in an information ecosystem where state-led influence strategies, ideological dynamics, and structural transformations of the media system converge.
Iran, as well as Russia and China, exploit this conflict as a lever to destabilize Western democracies, while transnational networks relay and amplify these narratives. These dynamics fuel increasing polarization and contribute to the normalization of hostile discourse, and even to the legitimization of violence.
The Israeli case thus serves as a revealing lens on a deeper transformation: that of an information space in which freedom of expression, far from being solely a safeguard, can be diverted into an instrument for weakening democratic societies.
Introduction
Information warfare has become a defining feature of contemporary conflict. It is no longer limited to the dissemination of propaganda in wartime but has become a persistent phenomenon embedded within democratic societies themselves. In the digital age, it takes multiple forms—disinformation, cognitive manipulation, influence campaigns, and the exploitation of social media—that significantly amplify its reach.
This evolution profoundly alters the conditions of public debate. The distinction between facts and opinions becomes increasingly blurred, while the speed at which information circulates encourages the spread of simplified and emotionally charged narratives. In this environment, freedom of expression—conceived as a cornerstone of liberal democracies—can be instrumentalized and diverted from its original purpose.
It is within this context that the treatment of Israel in the information space must be understood, particularly since the attacks of October 7, but also as part of a longer-standing dynamic. The intensity, tone, and structure of this coverage raise important questions. Beyond the legitimate attention given to a deadly conflict, they reveal deeper transformations within the information ecosystem.
This treatment is characterized by an exceptional level of focus, a strong emotional charge, and the dissemination of often reductive narratives. It stands in contrast to the relatively limited attention devoted to other contemporary conflicts that are no less tragic. This asymmetry is not solely the result of media bias; it reflects an environment shaped by the convergence of foreign influence strategies, internal ideological dynamics, and structural transformations of the media system.
In this context, a central question emerges: how can freedom of expression, a foundation of democratic societies, become a vehicle for discourse that contributes to polarization, disinformation, and, in some cases, the legitimization of violence?
Addressing this question requires an analysis of the mechanisms of information warfare, the actors that structure it, and its tangible effects on democratic societies. The case of Israel, far from being isolated, offers a particularly illuminating vantage point from which to observe these ongoing transformations.
I. Information Warfare: A New Strategic Domain
Information warfare is not a new phenomenon. It has always accompanied armed conflict. However, it has undergone a profound transformation in both scale and nature. Long confined to periods of war, it has now become a permanent feature of peacetime and operates at the very heart of democratic societies. In the digital age, it takes unprecedented forms—cognitive warfare, perception management, disinformation, and targeted messaging—that make it a fully fledged strategic instrument.
This evolution is reshaping the conditions of contemporary conflict. The objective is no longer merely to influence opinions at the margins, but to act upon collective representations, distort perceptions of reality, and ultimately weaken the ability of targeted societies to respond. As numerous studies have shown, these strategies are less aimed at the adversary’s material capabilities than at its internal cohesion and resilience.
Open societies provide particularly fertile ground in this regard. Their commitment to freedom of expression, pluralism, and the free flow of information constitutes both a strength and a vulnerability. In an environment characterized by content virality, information overload, and growing distrust of institutions, the distinction between facts and opinions becomes increasingly uncertain. The so-called “post-truth” era encourages the spread of emotional narratives, often at the expense of analysis.
Freedom of expression does not disappear in this context; it is redirected. It becomes a space in which multiple influence strategies unfold, driven by both state and non-state actors, as well as by internal dynamics within democratic societies. Forms of ideological indoctrination can thus emerge in activist, academic, media, or political environments, helping to structure sometimes rigid interpretive frameworks.
Several factors help explain this evolution. Information overload makes it difficult to prioritize and fosters confusion. The questioning of institutional narratives—fueled by past crises, whether the Iraq War or the management of the pandemic—has eroded trust in public authorities. Finally, the spread of conspiracy theories offers simplified yet powerful interpretive frameworks that compete with analyses grounded in verified facts.
Digital technologies amplify these dynamics. Social media platforms and smartphones turn each individual into a potential vector of influence, often without their awareness. Fake news, deepfakes, manipulated images, and edited videos circulate at great speed, blurring reference points and contributing to the construction of alternative realities. In this environment, information is no longer merely transmitted: it is produced, transformed, and amplified by a multiplicity of actors.
Recent operations illustrate the scale of these practices. The so-called “Doppelgänger” campaign, identified in France, involved replicating news websites to disseminate politically oriented content. Other networks have impersonated established media outlets to relay narratives favorable to certain states. Disinformation mechanisms have even simulated official platforms, further eroding informational trust.
These strategies are embedded within a broader strategic competition. Several powers—notably Russia, China, and Iran—deploy these tools to shape perceptions and steer public debate in Western societies. Their objective is not limited to promoting their own positions; it also includes exacerbating internal divisions within democracies, undermining trust in institutions, and delegitimizing the norms that structure them.
In response to these dynamics, states have begun to adapt their frameworks. Dedicated structures to counter digital interference have been established, analytical and monitoring capacities have been strengthened, and mechanisms for international coordination have emerged. Yet these responses continue to face a persistent asymmetry: open societies remain particularly vulnerable to strategies that exploit precisely their founding principles.
Information warfare is thus no longer a peripheral phenomenon. It has become a central strategic domain, where an increasing share of competition between powers unfolds and where the resilience of contemporary democracies is decisively tested.
II. The Battle of Narratives and the Construction of Perceptions
The realm of perceptions has become a strategic domain in its own right. It no longer merely reflects reality; it has become a central stake in shaping it. In contemporary conflicts, the ability to impose a narrative can matter as much as control of the physical battlefield. Competing narratives, the dissemination of doubt, the polarization of opinion, the diversion of attention, and the concealment of intentions all combine in a genuine battle for minds.
This dynamic exploits the internal vulnerabilities of Western democracies. Political polarization, the rise of populism, and growing distrust toward elites and institutions weaken societies’ ability to produce even a minimal consensus on facts. In this context, freedom of expression—the foundation of democratic regimes—can become a privileged lever for influence strategies, particularly when they are embedded in long-term approaches.
Several structural factors contribute to this situation. Information overload prevents any clear prioritization of content and encourages the coexistence of contradictory narratives. The questioning of institutional discourse, fueled by precedents such as the Iraq War or the management of the public health crisis, has durably affected the credibility of public authorities. This is compounded by the spread of conspiracy theories, which offer simplified and emotionally compelling explanations.
Digital technologies amplify these phenomena. Social media platforms and smartphones have profoundly transformed the production and dissemination of information. Each individual can now become a vector of influence, whether knowingly or not. This transformation reflects a broader “technopolitical” logic in which the boundaries between producers and consumers of information are increasingly blurred.
In this environment, fake news, deepfakes, manipulated images, and edited videos circulate at high speed. Emotional narratives, reinforced by platform algorithms, tend to prevail over more nuanced analyses. Information no longer simply describes reality; it reshapes it by selecting, amplifying, or distorting certain elements.
Recent disinformation operations illustrate these mechanisms. Some campaigns have replicated the appearance of credible news websites in order to disseminate biased content. Others have impersonated established media outlets to relay specific narratives. In some cases, initiatives have gone as far as simulating official platforms, further blurring reference points and deepening confusion.
These practices are embedded within a broader strategic competition. Powers such as Russia, China, and Iran use digital tools to shape perceptions and influence public debate in Western societies. Their objective is not only to promote their own positions, but also to weaken their adversaries by exacerbating internal divisions, fueling distrust, and delegitimizing institutions.
Faced with these dynamics, democratic responses remain partial. Monitoring and detection capabilities have been strengthened, dedicated structures to counter interference have been established, and international cooperation has expanded. Yet these efforts continue to encounter a persistent asymmetry: open societies, by their very nature, provide fertile ground for such strategies.
The battle of narratives is therefore no longer a peripheral phenomenon. It has become a structuring dimension of democratic life, where not only issues of international influence are at stake, but also the capacity of societies to preserve a shared relationship to reality.
III. Israel as a Case Study
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict constitutes a textbook case of the dynamics described above. The situation in Gaza is tragic, caught between Hamas’s strategy—which instrumentalizes the civilian population, notably as human shields—and Israeli military operations conducted in a dense urban environment. Yet beyond the reality on the ground, it is the informational treatment of this conflict that warrants attention: few contemporary crises have generated such an intensity of media coverage and emotional reactions within Western societies.
This focus appears all the more striking when compared to other recent conflicts. The exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, the millions of deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the massive displacement and tens of thousands of casualties in Sudan, or the war in Yemen have not prompted comparable levels of mobilization. These crises, despite their extreme levels of violence, have neither generated sustained mass protests nor continuously occupied the Western media space. This asymmetry raises a fundamental question: do all civilian lives carry the same weight in the informational and political sphere?
The war in Gaza has gradually become a focal point within certain media, intellectual, and activist circles. The Palestinian issue tends to function as a cross-cutting mobilizing reference, even in contexts with no direct connection to the conflict. During local electoral campaigns, slogans originating from Hamas or from the Iranian regime have been echoed without critical distance, illustrating the diffusion of these narratives far beyond their original context.
Several factors contribute to this situation. Restrictions on access imposed on foreign journalists complicate the independent verification of facts. This lack of direct information creates an environment in which each actor promotes its own version of events. Yet within this constrained space, certain narratives gain traction more easily, particularly when they align with preexisting interpretive frameworks or respond to ideological expectations.
The repetition of simplified and highly emotional narratives plays a central role. It helps structure a binary perception of the conflict, opposing an aggressor and a victim in absolute terms, to the detriment of factual complexity. The nature of Hamas, its political and military role in Gaza, and its responsibility for the situation of civilians are often relegated to the background.
In this context, freedom of expression paradoxically becomes a vehicle for the radicalization of discourse. Legitimate criticism of a state—an inherent feature of democratic systems—can slide into essentialization, and even into systematic hostility. Israel, whose size is comparable to that of two French départements, thus finds itself at the center of disproportionate attention, the intensity of which cannot be explained solely by factual considerations.
This treatment is not merely the result of occasional media imbalance. It is embedded in an information ecosystem shaped by the convergence of ideological dynamics, audience-driven logics, structural constraints of contemporary journalism, and broader influence strategies. In this sense, the Israeli case appears less as an exception than as a revealing indicator of the deeper transformations of information warfare within democratic societies.
IV. Interference, Media Bias, and the Construction of Narratives
The intensity and structuring of narratives surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict cannot be understood without analyzing the convergence between external influence strategies and internal dynamics within media systems. This interaction contributes to the formation of an information environment in which certain narratives prevail—not because of their accuracy, but because of their capacity for dissemination and their alignment with preexisting ideological frameworks.
Several powers have turned the conflict into a lever of influence. Iran, in particular, deploys a structured strategy combining media outlets, digital platforms, cyber-activism, and networks operating through associative, cultural, or religious channels. Within this framework, Israel is systematically portrayed as an illegitimate and oppressive entity, through a rhetoric of “resistance” that erases the distinction between civilians and combatants and legitimizes violence as a mode of political action. This strategy is not confined to the Middle East; it relies on networks within European societies themselves, including activist, academic, and media environments.
Transnational movements, particularly those linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, contribute to this diffusion by promoting a binary and victim-centered interpretation of the conflict. Relayed through educational, associative, and media networks, this interpretive framework helps polarize Western societies and positions the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a global explanatory matrix of power relations.
At the same time, Russia and China exploit the conflict within a different but converging logic. Their objective is less to defend a particular cause than to deepen internal fractures within Western democracies. By amplifying anti-Zionist, anti-Western, and at times antisemitic content on high-virality platforms, they contribute to shaping hostile perceptions and to delegitimizing liberal norms.
These strategies find a particular resonance in the operating logic of contemporary media. Without necessarily involving intentional disinformation, the treatment of the conflict reveals recurring biases. Dependence on certain sources, the pressure of immediacy, and the search for emotional impact favor the dissemination of partial or insufficiently contextualized narratives.
The rapid relay of information originating from actors directly involved in the conflict provides a clear illustration. The explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital in October 2023 gave rise to immediate accusations against Israel, widely reported before being contradicted by subsequent analyses. The corrections, which came later, failed to offset the impact of the initial narrative, already embedded in public perceptions.
This mechanism is part of a broader circuit of legitimization in which data originating from partisan sources feed into international organizations and are then relayed by the media. Once disseminated, such information acquires an appearance of credibility that makes it more difficult to challenge. Corrections are often issued discreetly, without reaching the original audience.
This dynamic is also evident in other aspects of the conflict’s coverage. Certain claims—for example, the notion of an “organized” famine—are relayed without sufficient acknowledgment of the constraints inherent to a war zone or the role of local actors in aid distribution. Similarly, Israeli military operations are frequently presented in a decontextualized manner, without systematically accounting for adversary strategies or the specific characteristics of urban warfare, particularly the unprecedented scale of tunnel warfare unfamiliar to Western armies.
These biases result from a combination of factors: the transformation of journalistic practices in the digital age, the economic constraints facing media organizations, preexisting ideological frameworks, and the difficulty of accessing independent sources. They do not necessarily reflect a deliberate intent to misinform, but they produce comparable effects by structuring skewed narratives.
The phenomenon is not new. The case of Mohammed al-Dura in 2000 illustrates the power of these mechanisms. The images broadcast at the time had a profound impact on global public opinion and contributed to establishing a lasting narrative, despite subsequent challenges. Once entrenched, such representations become extremely difficult to correct.
Thus, the convergence between external influence strategies and internal media biases contributes to the construction of an information environment in which the perception of the conflict is largely mediated by simplified and emotional narratives. This narrative construction, in turn, has a lasting influence on public opinion and on political dynamics within democratic societies.
V. Delegitimization, Sociopolitical Drift, and the Move from Rhetoric to Action
Beyond the construction of narratives, information warfare produces tangible political and social effects. In the case of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it is accompanied by a process of delegitimization that goes beyond criticism of public policy to target the very existence of the State of Israel and, by extension, those associated with it.
This process relies in particular on the inflationary use of legally and historically charged categories—“genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonial state”—employed independently of their precise definitions and of observable facts. Their repetition contributes to imposing a binary reading of the conflict and to generating a form of moral shock that makes nuanced analysis more difficult. The accusation becomes a verdict, and complexity gives way to a Manichean representation.
This mechanism reflects a historical continuity. The construction of accusatory narratives aimed at designating a group as inherently guilty has long served to legitimize its exclusion from civic space. In renewed forms, this logic reappears today through political and legal frameworks diverted from their original meaning.
The consequences of this dynamic are visible across several spheres. In academic and cultural environments, forms of radicalization are emerging. The publication of lists targeting individuals identified as Israeli or Jewish, the organization of events based on unchallenged ideological premises, and calls for boycotts all point to a shift from intellectual debate toward exclusionary logics. Under the guise of political or moral engagement, these practices tend to essentialize identities and to substitute disqualification for discussion.
Boycott campaigns, in particular, illustrate this evolution. Initially conceived as instruments of political pressure, they increasingly target individuals or institutions regardless of their positions, on the basis of nationality or presumed affiliation. Boycott thus ceases to be a political tool and becomes a mechanism of discrimination.
Concrete incidents testify to the shift from discourse to action. Cultural events have been disrupted, artists targeted because of their real or perceived connection to Israel, and academic spaces occupied by exclusionary mobilizations. In such situations, the boundary between political criticism, intimidation, and symbolic violence becomes increasingly blurred.
This evolution unfolds within a broader context marked by a rise in antisemitic acts. In several Western countries, these have increased sharply since October 7. In France, they represent a disproportionate share of hate crimes, despite the Jewish population being a small minority. In the United States, figures have reached record levels. A significant portion of these acts is directly or indirectly linked to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and to the narratives surrounding it.
These acts of violence do not emerge in an ideological vacuum. They are embedded in an environment in which the normalization of certain forms of discourse contributes to legitimizing hostility. The circulation of slogans or calls to action—often poorly understood in their political and historical meaning, yet carrying strong symbolic weight—feeds into this dynamic.
Information warfare, therefore, is not limited to a clash of narratives. It produces concrete effects on democratic societies by fueling polarization, weakening the norms of public debate, and, in some cases, contributing to the passage to action. Freedom of expression, when instrumentalized, can become a vector of these excesses—not because it is inherently problematic, but because it is exploited within logics of ideological confrontation.
Conclusion
Information warfare has established itself as a central dimension of contemporary conflict. It no longer unfolds solely on military or diplomatic terrain, but within the realm of perceptions, where collective representations and interpretive frameworks are shaped.
The Israeli case highlights how these dynamics can converge: state-led influence strategies, transformations of the media system, the dissemination of simplified narratives, and the instrumentalization of freedom of expression. It also shows how these processes can produce lasting effects on public opinion and political behavior.
In this context, the defense of democracies cannot be limited to security or technological responses alone. It also requires preserving the conditions for a public debate grounded in facts, a capacity for contextualization, and a rejection of excessive simplification. The objective is not to restrict freedom of expression, but to ensure its exercise within a framework that allows for the confrontation of ideas without descending into disinformation or stigmatization.
What is at stake extends beyond any single conflict. The way democratic societies respond to information warfare will determine their ability to preserve their cohesion, their resilience, and ultimately the very principles upon which they are founded.