Years of exaggerating their losses, and deliberately trying to get their own civilians killed (for propaganda purposes) has caught up with the Palestinians, who are now being accused of war crimes (for using those tactics. This was because Israel was able to provide enough video evidence of Palestinians in Gaza firing rockets from residential neighborhoods, as well as Arab language media stories discussing the use of this tactic to persuade Western media and war crimes researchers that they were being played by the Palestinians. This scam has been going on for more than a decade, but in the West it was not fashionable to question the Palestinian claims, even though details of the deception were openly discussed in Arab language media. But with the spread of the Internet, more and more photographic and video evidence of the deceptions was seen by more people. The anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda was particularly noxious, as some of it was almost identical to the stuff the Nazis used in the 1930s and World War II to justify genocide of the Jews. Many Arabs do not hide their admiration for the Nazis and Nazi goals. Arab media is smart enough to realize that presenting any of this in the non-Arabic versions of the websites or other outlets is not prudent. But more and more of this nasty stuff is getting out to the non-Arab world.
The Palestinians were also forced to be more accurate in reporting their combat losses. In the eight day war last November between Hamas (in Gaza) and Israel it was eventually agreed by all that 170 Palestinians and eight Israelis were killed. In the past the Palestinians would claim many more dead confident that they could control the message. The Internet and the constant presence of Israeli UAVs overhead make this impossible. Moreover the Palestinians were accused of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel with the express purpose of killing civilians and the use of firing positions near homes, schools and hospitals in the hope that Israeli return fire would create something that could be claimed as an Israeli war crime. This time it didn’t work and the Hamas was labeled as war criminals for trying to get their own civilians killed by Israeli return fire.
