Deny, attack, reverse: Hamas’s abusive arsenal

Some light is finally beginning to emerge out of the darkness of denial and lies told the world over about the Hamas attack on 7 October. In a startling departure from its traditionally held anti-Israel views, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has in the past few days published a 236-page report titled “I can’t erase all the blood from my mind: Palestinian armed groups October 7th assault on Israel”.

Ida Sawyer, crisis and conflict director at HRW, says, “HRW research found that the Hamas-led assault on 7 October was designed to kill civilians and take as many people as possible hostage.”

The report documents several dozen cases of serious violations of international humanitarian law by Palestinian armed groups at nearly all the civilian attack sites on that fateful day. According to the report, the crimes include “deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects; wilful killing of persons in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; sexual and gender-based violence; hostage taking; mutilation and despoiling [robbing] of bodies; use of human shields; and pillaging and looting.”

Hamas responded to this damning report using behaviour typical of narcissistic abusers. Its lies and denials strike a familiar chord for those of us working in the field of abuse. Instead of taking responsibility for their behaviour, a narcissistic abuser commonly projects their bad behaviour onto the victim. Avigail Lev, a clinical psychologist and the founder of the Bay Area CBT Center in California, has coined the acronym “DARVO”, which stands for “deny, attack, reverse victim and offender”. It describes a manipulative tactic often used by abusers to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and shift the blame onto their victims.

In a stunning distortion of the facts, Hamas uses the DARVO tactic of attack, whereby it accuses Israel of embedding the military within the kibbutzim. It states that “the Israeli army bears great responsibility for the killing of many settlers, as noted in Israel’s own reports, either during the targeting of the spring festival with planes and artillery shells, or the bombing of homes where there were Israeli civilians”. The tactic of reversing victim and offender is obvious in its assertion that “some sites that were attacked were located inside Israeli kibbutzim and settlements that contain civilian facilities, which indicates Israel’s use of these civilian objects as human shields”.

These lies, attacks, and reversals of offender and victim are particularly galling in light of the HRW’s finding that “the widespread attack was directed against a civilian population. Killing civilians and taking hostages were central aims of the planned attack, not an afterthought, plan gone awry, or isolated acts”.

We see Hamas’s strategy of shifting responsibility and blame onto Israel, where it blames Israel for the deaths of its own civilians which it attributes to the “ongoing Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip”, as well as the “famine and lack of services that our people are experiencing”. It also accuses Israel of being responsible for the hostages’ ongoing captivity, stating that in the first days of Israeli aggression, Hamas was ready to hand over civilian detainees freely, but Israel refused. It claims that subsequently, it handed over a number of them on its own initiative despite Israel’s refusal and procrastination.

The reversal from offender to victim is again seen in its response to the hostage crisis, in which it paints itself as the preserver of the lives of the hostages whom it needs “to move from place to place in fear of their life from the savage Israeli bombardment”.

The final manipulative tactic used by a narcissistic abuser is “gaslighting”. When criticised, they deny their cruel behaviour, and accuse the victim of lying or not understanding the way things “really happened”. In the Hamas response to the HRW report, it asserts that the civilians who came across the border to rape and pillage were totally separate from its own militants, and that it bears no responsibility for their crimes. Anyone in their right mind understands very well that the thousands of Gazans who poured across the border on the heels of the Hamas terrorists came with the same set intention as that of Hamas – to rape, murder, and take as many hostages as possible.

Furthermore, it claims that “the 7 October attack was carried out at specific sites with light military equipment, meaning that much of the violence and destruction were caused by weaponry not owned by Palestinian resistance fighters but by the Israeli military. Many photographs have been published showing destroyed homes, roads torn up by tracked vehicles, holes in walls, and lines of burnt out and destroyed cars. None of these things relate in any way to the specific action of resistance fighters.”

As I sit here and write this article, I feel completely discombobulated at the insane reversal of facts and truths. I can only imagine that this feeling is consistent with the hurt and frustration that abuse victims feel when they aren’t believed and their version of reality is turned on its head.

Just as an abusive partner leaves behind a traumatised victim, filled with shame, fear, and often little support, so Hamas has left behind a traumatised nation alone in the world. Its lies, distortion of facts, denial, and justification are its playbook for discrediting the victims and laying fault at the doorstep of the very nation which was mercilessly attacked on 7 October.

Our dignity may be assaulted, demolished, and cruelly undermined, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered. We must never surrender. Am Yisrael Chai!

• Rozanne Sack is a co-founder of Koleinu SA, a helpline and advocacy organisation for victims of gender-based violence and child abuse in the Jewish and wider community.