The conflict between Israel and Hamas that escalated dramatically in October 2023 was not only fought on the ground — it was fought just as fiercely across television screens, social media platforms, and international news cycles. Both sides deployed various information warfare strategies to shape global opinion. This paper examines how those strategic narratives were constructed and propagated, and also how they created specific foreign policy challenges for India. As a country that maintains strong diplomatic and economic ties with both Israel and Arab/Muslim-majority nations, India found itself navigating a uniquely complex informational landscape. Drawing on frameworks of strategic narrative theory and constructivist foreign policy analysis, this paper argues that India’s carefully calibrated public silence on certain issues, while deliberate, was itself shaped and constrained by the competing narratives of the conflict. The paper concludes with reflections on what this episode reveals about information warfare as a tool of modern conflict and the pressures it places on non-Western middle powers.
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