Hamas is Fighting a War for Our Brains, As We’ll See This Week in a Senate Hearing

This Wednesday at 10:15 a.m., Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley will pound his gavel in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226 to convene the Senate Judiciary Committee for a pivotal hearing, “Never To Be Silent: Stemming the Tide of Antisemitism in America.” 

During the previous Congress, Democratic leadership didn’t hold a single dedicated hearing on the surge of antisemitism following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Instead, Democratic senators of the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a broader hearing this past September on religious-based “hate crimes,” with anti-semitism overshadowed. 

This week’s hearing signifies a renewed commitment to confronting anti-semitism with moral clarity. Yet, we can expect agitators parroting Hamas propaganda to disrupt the hearing, as they did this past September, when one anti-Jew protester yelled “F*** Israelis” and proclaimed that he did not care about “f***ing Jews.” 

Already, Monday morning at 9:28 a.m., the the “MIT Faculty & Staff For Palestine” forwarded an email with the subject line, “Time-Sensitive Alert–Please Circulate to Members” to literally flip the script and cast the perpetrators of anti-semitism as victims, claiming that efforts to curb antisemitism is resulting in a “chilling effect” in an alleged “climate of fear” against “free speech and academic freedom.” 

According to a copy of the email we obtained, fully published below, anti-semitic activists provided the talking points for members to call Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking minority member of the committee. 

It said, “…here is a script you might use that would nonetheless be effective: ‘Hello, I am a professor of [discipline] and I am based in [name of state.] I am calling to report the chilling effect on my campus of the measures taken by the Trump administration threatening criminal action or other sanctions against individuals who express criticism of Israeli policies or support for Palestinian rights. I am not willing to share my name and identifying information because the climate of fear is so intense that I fear reprisal simply for placing this call and reporting the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s actions on free speech and academic freedom on my campus.’ [add details about the chilling effect on curricula, events, conference planning, student organizations, research and scholarship on your campus].” 

They complained about important and critical work being done to combat antisemitism, saying, “Lobbying senators in advance of the hearing would be very valuable.” 

They continued: “We have heard that members of Durbin’s staff want to hear stories concerning the chilling effects on campuses of: (1) application of the IHRA definition, (2) the January 29th Executive Order (‘Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism’) that threatens action against ‘alien students and staff’ based on post-October 7th protests, and (3) the actions taken to date by the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which has announced investigations of 10 universities to date, and is led by Leo Terrell who has threatened to file federal hate crimes indictments against campus activists and “put these people in jail…for years.”

As everyone’s legal rights are upheld, these are critical initiatives that must be continued to hold accountable the people in the beachheads of terror created on U.S. campuses.

Over the past two decades, however, Hamas and its proxies have perfected the art of moral inversion and digital propaganda, pioneered in 2002 when three al-Qaeda operatives walked into a compound in Karachi, Pakistan, with two weapons—a knife and a video camera—to behead kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and then post a propaganda film of his murder with Pearl as the alleged culprit as the Jewish grandson of Israel. A dangerous network of activists now echoes hate in America from our streets to our campuses and committee hearings.

For us, it’s deeply personal that we use our expertise to understand the propaganda and help inoculate others. Orli, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a neuropsychologist, and Asra, a journalist and Pearl’s friend, have spent hours analyzing propaganda videos, from Pearl’s murder to today’s spectacles. Asra will testify at the hearing about how the propaganda by activists in the U.S. follows a strategy to hijack the brain of commonsense—just as it had done with the minds of Democratic lawmakers.

Just study the Hamas strategy to see how it works. 

First, their cruelty knows no limits. Militants forced emaciated hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal to watch fellow captives being freed. A Hamas cameraman forced hostage Omer Shem Tov to kiss his captors before release—one final act of humiliation.

Next, their deliberate psychological torment metastasizes into grotesque public spectacles, where horror is met with celebration. Last week, cheering crowds and upbeat music greeted black coffins in the gloved hands of militants—carrying the bodies of babies murdered in captivity by the “bare hands” of militants, their mother’s remains swapped for another and an 83-year-old Israeli peace activist—reduced to props in Hamas’ theater of terror.

The alchemy of suffering and revelry—tormentors exulting in the grief of the tormented—is not just brutality, but psychological warfare designed to break its victims and the world watching.

Today, Hamas is compensating for its weaker military by deploying its mastery of psychological warfare. Their battlefield is the human mind. Lacking conventional military strength, they wield a more insidious arsenal—fear, unshackled by law or conscience. Their first objective? Seizing our attention.

Our brains are wired to focus on threats, and Hamas exploits our neurocircuitry by flooding our senses with horror—gruesome images of torture, humiliation and despair. The more emotional empathy we feel, the deeper the terror infiltrates our minds like a Trojan Horse. Each calculated shocking display—a hostage begging, a captive forced to kiss his tormentor, babies in black coffins—hijacks the attention networks of our brains, holding our brains’ captive for Hamas’ next psychological manipulation.

Hamas shifts the battle to the attributional search, or the search for causality—the brain’s automatic need to find the cause of negative events. Bernard Weiner, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, describes this process as asking, “Why did this happen?” to prevent its recurrence.

For its enemies, Hamas magnifies horror to paralyze with fear. But for its supporters, they erase the horror to prevent moral reckoning. They dilute the emotional response by widening the focus—reframing atrocities as part of a broader “context” of alleged Israeli “occupation,” “colonization” and “genocide” to weaken the raw emotional impact. “It didn’t start on October 7,” they insist, redirecting attention to historical grievances. Dehumanization shields their followers from empathy. Even baby Kfir Bibas’ kidnapping is rationalized—his humanity stripped, reduced to “an occupier.”

The goal is clear: to provoke rage, ensuring the war continues as Arab nations develop an alternative to President Donald Trump’s Gaza “Riviera” redevelopment plan without Hamas. As retired British Army Major Andrew Fox explains, “Hamas knows their chances of survival lessen under a White House that gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu full rein. But with a resumption of war, their chances increase. The inevitable international condemnation will further harm Israel’s global standing. This is a win/win for Hamas and a lose/lose for the people of Gaza and any hope for peace.”

Many in the West still project their own values onto Hamas. They assume Hamas’ barbarity is a miscalculation, that the collective grief and horror will backfire. But Hamas’ atrocities are not errors—they are intentional. Each act of terror, each public humiliation, each grotesque display of suffering is a strategic weapon designed to hijack the brain’s attention, embed their reasons for the atrocities into the brain and provoke predictable reactions to escalate the war.

This is why understanding their psychological warfare is critical. When faced with such deliberate cruelty, the instinctive response is rage. But reacting solely from emotion plays directly into Hamas’ hands. Their objective is not just to kill Israelis—it is to provoke Israel into actions that isolate them on the world stage.

So how should individuals and nations respond and inoculate themselves so that they can recognize and metabolize the emotional impact without becoming captive to it?

Psychologically, “metabolizing” horror trauma involves processing the emotional shock, contextualizing the experience, and searching for a cause—one that accounts for both the immediate event and the historical actions and declarations of the jihadist group. 

As Judea Pearl, the father of the slain journalist, says in his book, The Book of Why, true understanding requires moving beyond surface correlations to causal reasoning—recognizing not just what happened, but why it happened within a broader framework of intent and ideology. It does not mean becoming numb, indifferent or paralyzed. It means locking focus on Hamas’ long-term strategy while resisting emotional impulses that serve its goals.

Ultimately, Hamas’ cruelty is not a sign of desperation—it is a deliberate strategy to manipulate the Western world’s collective consciousness. Its entire playbook relies on hijacking our emotions while immunizing its followers from moral reckoning.

Hamas is fighting a war for our brains, and we do not have to let it win. Understanding this psychological warfare is the only way to break free from its grip, from our campuses to our committee hearings.

Orli Peter is a clinical and neuropsychologist and the CEO of Israel Healing Initiative, a nonprofit that brings cutting-edge treatments to survivors of trauma. Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and propaganda expert at the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative named for Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Full email designed to derail Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on anti-semitism by the “MIT Faculty & Staff For Palestine,” obtained by the Pearl Project: 

From: MIT Faculty & Staff For Palestine <mitstaffforpalestine@gmail.com>

Date: Mon, Mar 3, 2025 at 9:28 AM

Subject: Fwd: Time-Sensitive Alert–Please Circulate to Members

Hello- Passing this along from the NFSJP Steering Committee. Please share with concerned colleagues who may not be on the email list.

Dear Colleagues,

The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting on Wednesday, March 5th 2025 at 10:15am for a full committee hearing titled “Never to be Silent: Stemming the Tide of Antisemitism in America.” The presiding chairman is Chuck Grassley and the ranking member from among the Democrats is Dick Durbin. We understand that the focus of the hearing will be on higher education.

 Lobbying senators in advance of the hearing would be very valuable. We have heard that members of Durbin’s staff want to hear stories concerning the chilling effects on campuses of: (1) application of the IHRA definition, (2) the January 29th Executive Order (“Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”) that threatens action against “alien students and staff” based on post-October 7th protests, and (3) the actions taken to date by the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which has announced investigations of 10 universities to date, and is led by Leo Terrell who has threatened to file federal hate crimes indictments against campus activists and “put these people in jail…for years.” 

If you would be willing to call the offices of senators on the committee to describe the chilling effect on your campus, please do so. While such calls are generally more effective if you are willing to self-identify, you may also insist on protecting your identity and place the call anonymously. If you elect to withhold your identity, here is a script you might use that would nonetheless be effective:

“Hello, I am a professor of [discipline] and I am based in [name of state.] I am calling to report the chilling effect on my campus of the measures taken by the Trump administration threatening criminal action or other sanctions against individuals who express criticism of Israeli policies or support for Palestinian rights. I am not willing to share my name and identifying information because the climate of fear is so intense that I fear reprisal simply for placing this call and reporting the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s actions on free speech and academic freedom on my campus.” [add details about the chilling effect on curricula, events, conference planning, student organizations, research and scholarship on your campus]

Here is a list of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members

Here are numbers for Dick Durbin’s offices:

Washington, DC: 202.224.2152

Chicago, IL: 312.353.4952

Springfield, IL: 217.492.4062