Forget “Let’s go fly a kite” from Mary Poppins. The song from Disney’s movie sends spirits soaring, but in Israel, post-October 7, 2023, kites are not symbols of innocent childhood fun. They have transformed from symbols of freedom into weapons of physical and psychological warfare. It’s evil, but brilliant.
Over roughly the last two weeks, more than 10 kites from the Gaza Strip have landed in southern Israel. Each one carries a message. It’s not a message of peace. They carry a haunting reminder of the 2018 Hamas kite campaign that preceded the October 7, 2023, invasion and mega-atrocity.
In 2018, first kites, then helium balloons, and later even condoms were attached to incendiary devices and explosives and left to float across the border into Israel. In a couple of particularly twisted cases, falcons were attached to burning devices and let loose to die on Israeli territory. It was eco-terrorism and scorched earth policy at its worst, destroying thousands of dunams of agricultural land, woods, and nature reserves, along with much of the wildlife that lived there. But only Israel was blamed, because it retaliated.
As I noted in 2018, when regular Friday Palestinian protests in Gaza along the border with Israel were portrayed as innocuous, non-violent rallies, their stated aim was clear from their slogan: The March of Return.
Why Hamas's kite ploy is stunningly simple
As a PR ploy, it’s stunningly simple. When you place the image of kite-flying kids next to an image of a soldier, Hamas wins, and Israel loses. If Israel takes action, it is a brutal army; if it refrains from action, it will be portrayed as weak. Either way, it provides more fuel for future violence that serves Hamas and Islamist terrorism so well.
And it didn’t stop there, as we now know. The March of Return was a declaration of intent, not a mere slogan. On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdering, mutilating, raping, and carrying off captives. Communities were set on fire, homes were burned with families tied up inside, partygoers at the Supernova music festival and elsewhere were hunted down and killed wherever they sought shelter. Some 1,200 were murdered, and 251 were abducted to Gaza, of whom only 168 survived.
The terrorists were so proud of their deeds that they boasted about them in real-time, recording rapes and murders on GoPro cameras and sharing images of death and destruction on social media, in some cases streaming it directly to the victims’ own friends and family to intensify the terror and pain.
If you want to understand why, for Israelis, kites symbolize innocence lost, consider what happened to the annual “Kites for Freedom” festive event at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. For 15 years, local residents would send a message of peace and hope over the border to their neighbors in Gaza. In 2023, that year’s Kites for Freedom event was scheduled for October 7, the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah, but terrorists invaded the kibbutz in the early hours of the morning.
Among the 60 members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza killed that day was Aviv Kutz, the founder of Kites for Freedom, who was murdered in his home with his wife and three children. Their bodies were found embracing each other on a bed in the safe room of their home. An entire family wiped out.
In a statement this week, Hamas reportedly claimed the kites were just “children’s toys” from Gaza refugee camps and warned Israel against taking threatened actions. But these “toys” were attached to strings – in some cases 4 km.-long – and decorated with threatening slogans in Arabic. Mary Poppins it ain’t. It’s child abuse. Follow the thread, and it will lead you back to a Hamas terrorist, yet again shielding behind children.
The world media, fed by reports from Gaza, is full of sob stories of poor refugee children just trying to have fun and are now being threatened by Israeli might. That Israeli children are learning to be wary of kites and balloons, which might be attached to explosive devices, does not seem to bother even those who profess to care for human rights. The trauma of Israeli children doesn’t count.
PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG, visiting the South this week, met with residents to discuss their fears, and stressed that maintaining peace and security was the responsibility of not just the State of Israel but also of the international community.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz both declared that a return to the pre-October 7 days of the Gaza kite campaign would not be tolerated. On Monday, Israel reportedly gave a three-day ultimatum via the US-led international Board of Peace in Gaza that the kite launches be halted or that Gaza would face expanded targeted strikes.
Katz declared that “a balloon is treated like a kite, and a kite is treated like a drone.”
Disturbingly, however, there are still drones carrying drugs and weapons that manage to cross the border from Egypt and Jordan into Israel. It does not take many steps to go from kite-running to arms-running and full-blown attacks.
It’s been suggested that the kites might be employed without explosives or incendiary devices at this stage to gauge their range and where they land. One thing is clear: The kites are not toys; they’re a test, trying to ascertain at what point, and how, Israel will respond.
The Foreign Ministry posted a message on X in different languages, including Farsi, saying: “Even a child’s toy can be turned into a weapon by Hamas… We will not tolerate attacks on civilians.”
On Tuesday, the Board of Peace ordered that the kites be stopped but reportedly also warned Israel against taking action.
Gaza kites 'an offensive strategy that operates in small steps'
DR. RON SCHLEIFER, an international expert on psychological warfare, says the use of the kites is an example, par excellence, of “an offensive strategy that operates in small steps.”
“Psychological warfare is a part of revolutionary warfare,” he says. “The revolutionary warfare technique is to take very small steps, so if you inspect every step separately, it seems that nothing is happening. But when you look at the greater picture from above, you see there’s been a tremendous advancement.
“It’s called conditioning. The whole idea is that you don’t create havoc for a small step because you’ll look ridiculous… This is what Hamas is trying to achieve.
“According to the doctrine of revolutionary warfare, every asset is dedicated toward victory, and that includes human lives – all human lives. The end justifies the means. It’s for the cause, and the cause is always ideological.”
Schleifer acknowledges the intense inherent difficulties in explaining the situation to the world, which sees the Israeli army threatening Gazan children “playing” with kites.
“It’s a very sophisticated trap. Their [Hamas] photographers are in the field and sharing the images with the international media, Reuters, AFP, etc. to see Israel’s response. Whatever the IDF does, it will not be good.
“If it doesn’t respond, it will be stupid, and in the Middle East it will be well understood as a sign of weakness. If it acts against the children, it will be even worse. They are managing to put the IDF – their enemy – on the horns of the dilemma.”
He supports the view of Netanyahu and Katz to treat every kite as a serious threat, and he is encouraged that Israel is “at last learning to understand the language of the Middle East.”
“We saw what happened in 2018 with the March of Return when the kites became balloons and gradually turned into grenades and RPGs,” he says. “It’s genius.”
There is no easy answer to the kites blowing in the wind, but there are certain actions that can be taken, according to Schleifer. Primarily, “Israel needs to turn to UNICEF [the United Nations children’s fund] and other children’s rights and human rights organizations in the West and show how Hamas shamelessly is exploiting children, not for the first time. You can also show the photos of the [Palestinian] children wearing [mock] explosive belts.”
Israel can’t afford to turn a blind eye, and neither can the rest of the world. October 7 didn’t come out of the blue. It started with kites – a campaign that takes Hamas’s cynical child abuse to new heights. Israel must find a way to cut the strings before more damage is done.