Pretty much. It implies that there's military symmetry by calling it a war, and that Hamas are Israel's main target

Since Hamas are presented as thoughtless terrorists who just hate freedom and love cruelty, this focus frames Israel's role in the 'war' as counter-terrorism. Plenty of groundwork was already laid to justify Western countries in committing endless massacres in the name of counter-terrorism, which Israel gets to use and expand. Meanwhile whenever it's pointed out that Hamas is the legitimate government of Gaza, instead of calling their 'terrorist' label into question, it extends the label to all Gazans

It's just one of the many ways they try to distract impressionable people from the fact that they are bombing Palestinian civilians.

Its something that has bothered me from the start. Even setting aside the religious implication, it makes it seem like Israel is only aiming to destroy Hamas, much in the same way the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were billed the "War on Terror" and ended up killing hundreds of thousands of civilians while accomplishing nothing other than giving American interests a foothold, in Iraq in particular.

Easier to use a boogieman to scare people with. Also makes it easy to obfuscate what's happening, especially when people don't think critically and just get spoonfed whatever the press tells them.

it also hides the fact the israelis are attacking the west bank

hamas sounds scary bc they've already put so much effort into demonizing it for decades

It's just genocide and apartheid denial

Think of the average western media consumer brain as a computer with extremely limited RAM. Asking them to remember more than 1 bad guy is a difficult task. Kinda like how 9/11 happened and within 13 seconds people started assuming it was Saddam.

Front groups for hamas

The PLF and PFLP are part of the PLO which controls the west bank. Hamas controls Gaza

They’re not major players in the current conflict. They’re pretty much auxiliary