A short video posted by Hezbollah captures an Israeli flag falling from a post in al-Bayada, southern Lebanon. One drone approaches the flagpole while another hovers above; the final frame shows a torn digital Israeli flag and the message ‘Al-Bayada does not welcome you.’ The clip is three minutes long, labelled a ‘flag lowering ceremony’ — a small moment that points to a much larger contest over narrative and meaning.
Hezbollah has long treated media as a battlefield. In the years before Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, Al-Manar TV did more than report; it helped produce a perception. Repeated images of retreating positions, anguished soldiers, and flags being taken down suggested a withdrawal in progress. That imagery helped shape public feeling across the Arab world, bolstered popular support for Hezbollah, and amplified political pressure inside Israel. When Israel left in May 2000, many felt the outcome was the culmination of that wider media campaign as much as of military pressures.
For two decades afterward the organisation relied heavily on a different tool: the voice of Hassan Nasrallah. His stature, the losses he bore personally, and the record of actions his leadership could claim gave him rare credibility. Nasrallah lived the narrative he told, and that capacity to frame events — to absorb setbacks into a longer story and to keep supporters oriented — substituted for elaborate media tricks.
But the image-management apparatus that leaned on Nasrallah was weakened by recent events. Hezbollah’s reputation took a hit from its role in Syria, where many in the Arab world saw its fighters as participants in a sectarian conflict. Nasrallah could rebrand that involvement for his followers as part of a broader struggle against Israel, preserving the organisation’s coherence. Without his voice, that reframing becomes harder.
The shocks of 2024 were devastating. The killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander, was followed by a catastrophic intelligence breach that detonated hundreds of devices across Hezbollah’s ranks and then a string of assassinations of senior figures. The biggest blow came when Nasrallah himself was killed in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27. His deputy of thirty years, Naim Qassem, has organisational skill and experience but lacks Nasrallah’s unique communicative authority. The centre that had long shaped Hezbollah’s narrative no longer exists in the same form.
Israel, by contrast, has been deliberate in building its own communications advantage along two tracks. Operationally, it developed a fast, well-resourced media apparatus — military spokespeople, controlled press access, and ready-made briefings designed to place the Israeli line into newsfeeds before alternatives can gain traction. Investigations have shown the Israeli military prepared polished 3D animations before operations began, ready to justify strikes on hospitals or residential areas; many broadcasters ran these visuals without interrogating their provenance.
Culturally, Israeli storytelling has shifted perceptions too. Shows like Fauda, created by veterans of Israeli undercover units, exported a specific image of Israel’s enemies: brutal but ultimately inept and outmatched. Similarly, productions such as Tehran presented Mossad as efficient and adversaries as dysfunctional. These series were not crude propaganda; their strength came from entering living rooms across the world and quietly organizing how audiences viewed complex conflicts.
Iran and its allies answered in kind. After escalations in 2025 and 2026, Tehran-backed groups and creators produced viral animated shorts — including Lego-style films — that reframed the campaign as one of victimhood and revenge. A Tehran-based collective called Explosive Media released short animations in English at the pace of the news cycle, mixing satire and historical grievances into a package that spread rapidly across social platforms. Analysts tracked tens of millions of views in the earliest weeks; diplomatic channels and embassies amplified the material in multiple languages. The result was a fast-moving counter-narrative that many Western and Israeli outlets struggled to counter, especially after the US shut down a State Department office dedicated to countering foreign information manipulation in 2025.
Yet Hezbollah has pushed something different and, in some ways, more immediate: first-person-view (FPV) drone footage. These are not animated reconstructions but raw, camera-mounted flights that descend on a target and, in the final seconds, sometimes catch the face of a soldier looking up. For viewers, that intimacy is chilling. In private messaging groups, some Lebanese describe the strikes not as technological strikes but as encounters with Ezrael, the angel of death: silent, inevitable, personal.
The Lego-style animations aim outward, at global audiences, using satire and symbolism to shape opinion. The FPV clips aim inward and across the front line — at Hezbollah’s supporters, at the soldiers targeted, and at those who command them. They are visceral demonstrations of reach and precision, designed to unsettle in a way that cartoonish satire cannot.
There is historical precedent for the power of imagery. The media campaign of the late 1990s contributed to a perception of Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Today’s mix of high-production narratives and immediate, violent visuals is reshaping the battlefield of perception again. The losses of 2024 — including the death of Nasrallah — are profound and cannot be undone by any video campaign. But the resurgence of potent images and new formats matters: wars are increasingly contested not just where bullets fall but where screens display them. How audiences interpret those images can be decisive in shaping political outcomes, morale, and the possibilities of future escalation or concession.