Soft War: Why the Resistance is labeled as ‘Terrorism’ in western media?

SANAA, Nov. 04 (YPA) – In tandem with the ongoing military confrontation between the Axis of Resistance and Israeli occupation forces backed by the West, another equally fierce battle of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation is being waged.

Western media outlets are leading an orchestrated campaign aimed at distorting the image of the resistance, dismantling its symbols, and paving the way for a new aggression through a comprehensive psychological and media war. This war relies on sophisticated mechanisms that begin with linguistic and terminological manipulation as the primary gateway to manufacturing false consciousness.

Carefully chosen terms are deployed to legitimize acts of aggression and criminalize acts of resistance. In Gaza, for example, the historic “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation is described as a “terrorist attack,” while Israel’s devastating response is framed as the “right to self-defense” — an inversion of the basic truths of the conflict. The BBC, for instance, refers to Hamas fighters as “gunmen” while describing Israeli forces as “troops,” an attempt to strip the resistance of its legitimacy and formal status.

Criminalizing Resistance

Linguistic manipulation has become the cornerstone of this strategy. Major Western media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian have replaced the term “martyr,” which carries deep religious and national resonance, with neutral or demeaning words like “killed” or “dead.” This deliberate substitution seeks to deprive such sacrifices of their symbolic and spiritual dimensions, thereby weakening their psychological impact on Palestinian society.

The distortion extends further, shaping entire narratives that redefine events: Israeli assaults on Palestinian cities are softened into “escalations” or “clashes,” while Israeli casualties are covered in harrowing detail, focusing on stories of civilians in shelters — all while the images of Palestinian child victims are deliberately omitted. The result is a misleading impression among Western audiences that Palestinians are the cause of the violence, and Israelis are the victims — creating tacit acceptance of aggression as “legitimate defense.”

This linguistic distortion goes beyond individual words; it shapes the entire framework of storytelling. Western media systematically link the concept of martyrdom with terrorism, so that every act of sacrifice by a Palestinian is portrayed as terrorism, while Israeli killings are justified as acts of self-defense.

CNN, for example, devoted nearly 80% of its airtime during the first week of the war to covering what it called “Israeli suffering,” while completely ignoring consecutive UN reports documenting a six-month-long famine in Gaza —a deliberate disregard to the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the occupying entity.

Narratives Serving Western Agendas

This campaign of distortion is not limited to traditional media such as the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, and The New York Times. It extends across social media platforms, where networks of fake accounts — often backed by pro-Israeli agendas — flood Gaza-related hashtags with tens of thousands of posts depicting young Palestinian fighters as “desperate,” “hopeless,” or “suicidal,” rather than as people fighting for dignity and liberation.

In Lebanon, Western media routinely label Hezbollah’s legitimate operations against occupation sites as “cross-border attacks,” while describing Israeli airstrikes on Lebanese villages as “defensive strikes.” The martyrdom of senior Hezbollah leaders is called “killing,” while the deaths of Israelis are referred to as “casualties” — a clear attempt to strip the resistance of its sanctity and symbolism.

Western outlets deliberately exclude essential facts, amplifying narratives that serve Western agendas while marginalizing those that expose acts of aggression. For instance, they highlight what they call “Houthi attacks” (by Yemen’s Armed Forces in Sana’a) while ignoring the decade-long blockade and ongoing war on Yemen. The attacks on Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea is branded “piracy,” disregarding Yemen’s legitimate right to defend its coasts and to support besieged Gaza.

Western and pro-Israeli media portray these actions as “threats to global navigation,” concealing the fact that they target only vessels bound for Israeli ports — an effort to rally international military support against Yemen’s resistance. They also ignore Yemen’s precise targeting policy, which includes advance warnings and has resulted in zero attacks on non-Israeli-bound ships. Meanwhile, the illegal naval blockade imposed on Yemen since 2017 — which has prevented the entry of food and medicine and triggered what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — is overlooked, even though 95% of global shipping continues to pass safely through the Red Sea.

Official statements from Yemen’s armed forces are disregarded or labeled “incendiary rhetoric,” ensuring the resistance’s perspective never reaches Western audiences.

Demonizing the Resistance

This strategy extends to the deliberate creation of negative stereotypes to demonize the resistance and strip it of its popular legitimacy. Iran, for instance, is routinely described as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” portraying it as a rogue actor. The Washington Post labels Iran’s Quds Force a “terrorist organization,” while referring to Mossad agents merely as “intelligence operatives” — a stark example of double standards.

In Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Forces are depicted as “sectarian militias,” with deliberate omission of their crucial national role in defeating ISIS. Legitimate Iraqi resistance operations against US.bases are framed as “attacks on international forces,” obscuring the fact that those forces are, by definition, occupying troops.

Deceptive Agendas

The mechanisms of misinformation often exaggerate existential threats to justify Western political or military intervention against the “Axis of Resistance.” In Lebanon, Western reports claim that Hezbollah stores chemical weapons in residential areas, while some analysts claim that Iran has deployed ballistic missiles there “threatening Europe” — narratives designed to justify potential future attacks on Lebanon.

Western media also systematically exclude dissenting voices to ensure the dominance of the Israeli-Western narrative. Pro-Palestinian guests are barred from TV programs in Gaza and Lebanon; interviews with Gazan doctors describing Israeli atrocities are canceled; and media outlets aligned with the resistance — such as Al Mayadeen, Al Manar, and Almasirah— are labeled “terrorist channels.”

The digital battlefield has become a powerful tool of psychological warfare, driven by algorithmic bias and “narrative bots.” Investigations by Graphika have uncovered 300 fake accounts on X (formerly Twitter) promoting Israeli narratives.

Nearly 40% of tweets under the hashtag #Gaza were posted by automated accounts to manipulate public opinion. Algorithms are heavily biased: TikTok removes 90% of videos showing Israeli war crimes under the pretext of “violent content,” while Instagram reduces the reach of pro-resistance accounts by 70% — a clear case of algorithmic censorship.

Fear and Psychological Warfare

Western media outlets also promote narratives of inevitable defeat to sow despair among supporters of the resistance. For years, reports have claimed that “the Houthis are on the verge of collapse” in Yemen or that “Sanaa will soon fall” — but these expectations never materialized. Similarly,  claims about Gaza have asserted that “Hamas will be destroyed within days,” despite its endurance for years. Western sources repeatedly announce the destruction of 80% of Hamas tunnels without evidence, and warn that Hezbollah “will lose everything” in any future confrontation with Israel.

These tactics are part of a psychological deterrence strategy. Western governments issue inflated threats to dissuade states from supporting the resistance: Iraq is warned of “grave consequences” if it expels U.S. troops; Iraqi resistance movements are labeled “Iranian proxies”; Iran’s nuclear program is exaggerated as an “existential threat” to Israel to justify sanctions and potential military strikes.

Double Standards

Western hypocrisy is laid bare in its selective application of moral and legal standards. The United States imposes crippling sanctions on entire nations regardless of humanitarian consequences. Israel maintains a full blockade on Gaza for 17 years, while the West enforces embargoes that block medicine and food from reaching entire populations. The US and UK carried out 287 airstrikes on Yemen in just two months under the pretext of “protecting navigation,” destroying vital port infrastructure, while simultaneously vetoing UN resolutions condemning the aggression.

International law clearly affirms Yemen’s right to defend its territorial sovereignty, and classifies the blockade as a war crime.

A Coordinated Psychological War

Since the launch of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Western media behavior has clearly reflected a coordinated alignment with Israeli occupation narratives. The media have become an integrated tool of psychological warfare, using descriptions and classifications that reinforce Israel’s agenda.

A source within the US Democratic Party’s left wing noted that American media followed a “unified instruction manual” in covering Palestine — a form of indirect support for Israeli policy. This media apparatus is therefore a central component of psychological warfare, as dangerous as physical warfare, serving to legitimize Israel’s position and actions.

At the same time, social media has become a platform for free peoples and resistance movements. Analysts urge the development of smart strategies for digital engagement — especially on servers hosted in countries such as China, which are harder to censor — rather than relying solely on platforms like X that can easily suppress pro-resistance voices.

Politically Funded Campaigns

Western media campaigns often cite vague sources — “reports said” or “activists claimed” — which are typically aligned with Western political interests or directly funded by the US government.

According to writer Fouad Al-Kilani, Western media function as colonial instruments against liberation movements. Since World War II, the West — led by the United States — has systematically vilified its opponents and any forces seeking independence from Western capitalist hegemony. Through media campaigns, it prepares Western public opinion for sanctions, assassinations, and wars, fabricating charges of “crimes against humanity” through biased reports, false imagery, and cinematic propaganda — as was done with Cuba, or with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser during the “Omega” campaign after the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

These campaigns, Al-Kilani argues, are part of a modern colonial policy employed against nations the West has sought to dominate and exploit — from Vietnam to Iraq to Venezuela. Many of the so-called “independent sources” behind such reports are directly funded by US agencies such as the US Agency for Global Media, which owns “Radio Free Asia,” or rely on hostile sources that have previously fabricated evidence, such as alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Arab States in Service of the West

Certain Arab states have long played a role in promoting Western agendas since the Cold War, often vilifying the Soviet Union for Washington’s benefit. They employed religious rhetoric, portraying the USSR as an enemy of Islam — even when the “enemy” was Arab or Muslim, such as Egypt’s Nasser. The main objective of these media campaigns was to incite hostility against nationalist or anti-Western leaders such as Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The broader goal was to recruit Arabs and Muslims to fight Washington’s wars under the pretext of defending Islam — wars that were, in reality, fought against the West’s own adversaries. This began with the arming of Islamist groups in Afghanistan, later repeated in Chechnya, and most recently in Syria and Iraq, where hostility toward Iran and its allies was promoted, fueling the war on Syria and the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS and al-Nusra.

Yet, these same states and groups never mobilized fighters to defend Palestine or call for “jihad” against Israel — only against the resistance front. Today, they even direct propaganda against China under the banner of “supporting Uyghur Muslims,” while ignoring far worse atrocities committed by the West’s allies against Palestinians and Yemenis.

A Deliberate and Systematic Strategy

All evidence indicates that Western media deception is not random but part of a deliberate, state-backed strategy employing advanced technology to manufacture hostility toward the resistance and prepare public opinion for economic and military aggression.

Yet, the failure of these campaigns is evident in the growing global support for Palestine, the resilience of Yemen despite a decade of blockade, and the increasing deterrent power of the resistance forces. This proves that truth-based narratives rooted in sacrifice can withstand even the most sophisticated propaganda machinery. Victory in the battle for awareness is, therefore, inseparable from victory on the battlefield.

In the midst of this complex battle, it becomes clear that confronting Western media misinformation requires a comprehensive strategy. This strategy should include producing professional multilingual content, employing international law terminology such as “war crimes” and “genocide” in media discourse, leveraging artificial intelligence tools to monitor propaganda campaigns and detect fake accounts, and strengthening both on-the-ground and digital resistance media.

All of these measures are essential to ensure that the resistance awareness remains strong worldwide and that the sacrifices of the martyrs retain their symbolic and ethical value in the face of attempts to distort and misrepresent.

 

@E.Y.M