By Al-Fassel and AFP | 2023-11-17

In the wake of Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, the US government has increased actions to cut off the group's revenue streams through sanctions and additional scrutiny of social media and cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

The moves against Hamas come as the terrorist group attempts to boost its finances and garner support via a coordinated propaganda campaign.

The United States and Britain on November 14 announced another round of sanctions on Hamas over last month's terrorist attack, again targeting the group's Iranian backers.

These target "key Hamas officials and the mechanisms by which Iran provides support to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)," the US Treasury said.

"Iran's support, primarily through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), enables Hamas and PIJ's terrorist activities," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

This support is primarily supplied "through the transfer of funds and the provision of both weapons and operational training," he said.

PIJ's representative to Iran, Nasser Abu Sharif, is facing censure, as is as a Lebanon-based money exchange, Nabil Chouman & Co., that allegedly handles transfers between Hamas and Tehran.

The British sanctions, coordinated with Washington, targeted four senior Hamas leaders and two financiers.

Last month, the United States announced it was aiming to build an international coalition to target the financing of Hamas.

And on October 18, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on 10 key Hamas terrorist group members, operatives and financial facilitators.

These target asset managers in a secret Hamas investment portfolio, a Qatar-based financial facilitator with close ties to the Iranian regime, a key Hamas commander and a Gaza-based virtual currency exchange and its operator.

"In addition to the funds Hamas receives from Iran, its global portfolio of investments generates vast sums of revenue through its assets, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars," the Treasury said.

"This investment network is directed by the highest levels of Hamas leadership and has allowed Hamas senior officials to live in luxury while ordinary Palestinians in Gaza struggle in harsh living and economic conditions," it said.

Responsible for governing the coastal enclave since its violent takeover in 2007, Hamas had come under pressure from the Palestinian public for the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, said George Giacaman, a professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

"The people's anger towards Israel had become anger towards the government and therefore towards Hamas," Giacaman told AFP.

The powerlessness of Hamas when confronted with the deteriorating living conditions in Gaza is one reason why it launched its October 7 terrorist attack, Giacaman said.

"Life in Gaza had become unbearable. Water and electricity are lacking, and unemployment is very high," Giacaman said.

Since October 7, an estimated over 10,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli retaliatory attacks, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes.

Tehran funnels roughly $100 million a year to Hamas, PIJ, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other US-designated terrorist groups, per a 2020 US State Department report.

In 2014, Forbes magazine ranked Hamas as "one of the richest terrorist groups in the world" with an annual budget of almost $1 billion.

Crackdown on cryptocurrency

In early October, Israeli police revealed they had located and frozen accounts linked to Hamas that sought "to solicit donations on social networks" via Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange.

Crypto addresses linked to Hamas received about $41 million between August 2020 and July 2023, according to Israeli analytics and software firm BitOK.

Other crypto addresses linked to PIJ received in excess of $154 million between October 2022 and September, it said.

In June 2021, Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terrorist Financing seized a number of virtual currency wallets in connection to a Hamas fundraising campaign, some of which were linked to the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

One of the wallets belonged to Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company (Buy Cash), a Gaza-based business that provides money transfer and virtual currency exchange services, including Bitcoin, the US Treasury said.

In addition to fundraising for Hamas, Buy Cash has been used to transfer funds by affiliates of al-Qaeda and the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS), it said.

Last April, Hamas decided it would no longer accept cash via Bitcoin because of increased global surveillance of the world's biggest digital unit.

Now crypto fundraising is operated via a network of Hamas-linked support groups, which crypto tracking specialist TRM Labs has been closely monitoring since the start of the war.

Much smaller amounts of cash than usual are being moved, per TRM Labs.

Propaganda on social media

In conjunction with its efforts to raise money, Hamas has flooded social media with propaganda and false claims and has misrepresented video footage as a way to garner public support and raise funds, observers said.

The terrorist group live-streamed a grandmother's death, showed humiliating hostage videos and announced to Israelis their relatives had been killed, showing its determination to use social media propaganda alongside violence.

Images that have gone viral include footage of a woman's partially naked body in the bed of a pick-up truck cheered by armed men.

"This is on purpose: the goal is to trigger a sense of helplessness, paralysis and humiliation," said Michael Horowitz, a security analyst at consultancy Le Beck International.

Although such propaganda is not a new addition to Hamas's arsenal, "Today we see much more sophisticated methods of manipulation and propaganda from Hamas," said Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Hamas narratives have enjoyed amplification online, as they are "systematically spread by Iranian and Russian trolls, and boosted by state media," said David Colon, a professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

Even China has an "ambiguous attitude," he said pointing out that video platform TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, "is letting huge amounts of shocking content slide."

'Public relations disaster'

"Disinformation and propaganda factored significantly into Hamas's strategy for its October 7 attack," the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported October 22.

"The terrorist group used images of its successes to terrorize Israelis and show that it had punched a hole in Israel's armor," it added.

"But Hamas's tactical success in its attack on Israel has become a public relations disaster for the terrorist group's brand."

"Videos and pictures of the slaughter have belied Hamas's once-preferred image as a moderate force fighting for justice," the foundation said.

By posting such videos, however, Hamas also is providing the clearest evidence that can be traced back to the group.

In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack, researchers from Alethea, which analyzes social media, uncovered a coordinated network of 67 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) spreading disinformation and inflammatory content favoring Hamas.

Most of the accounts also posted misleading videos, which used footage of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials speaking in Russian, overlaid with inaccurate English subtitles.

The English subtitles implied the Russian officials were threatening the United States with overt military support for the Palestinian territories.