What is Hamas?

Well, for those who aren’t familiar with the intricate and twisted interplay of animosity in the Middle East, Hamas is an Iranian-backed jihadist terror group based in the Gaza Strip. This is important to understand because Iran is the primary instigator of unrest in the Middle East. Iran also explicitly backs the anti-Semitic stance that Israel and the Jews who inhabit it should be wiped off the map.

Hamas is made up of some Palestinians, the Arab people who also claim Israel as their ancestral land. It is important to note here that Jews have inhabited the land of Israel for millennia, well before Islamic Arabs like the Palestinians even existed in the region. It is also important to distinguish that Hamas does not represent all Palestinians. Hamas treats its people like human shields, and non-Hamas Palestinians live in squalid conditions. Hamas has occupied the Gaza Strip and “governed” over its people since 2007 and apparently had ample funds and resources to improve the lives of its people. Instead, it has committed to funding terrorism and the mass murder of the Israeli people.

IDF Spokesperson MAJ (Res.) Libby Weiss sets the record straight. pic.twitter.com/lmaBy8Zf7J

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 11, 2023

Israel has a high-tech border wall, including fencing, radar and sensors, and the famed Iron Dome that protects it from missile strikes. Israel had relied heavily on these as the first line of defense against any enemy action. However, on Saturday, October 7, the wall was breached with the help of a massive cyberattack on the wall’s systems. The Israeli military was entirely unprepared to spring into action, and the bases closest to the invasion were short-staffed due to some of the troops being moved to the West Bank to help protect Israel from violence that had been happening there in recent days. Hamas also jammed Israel’s communications. It was a sophisticated attack.

Israel did not see this attack coming. It was a massive intelligence failure. How could this invasion happen?

It starts with the West, Israel included, underestimating its enemies. Hamas is made up of jihadists, Islamofascist fanatics who are highly motivated to eradicate all who oppose them and their holy war goals. As Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor involved in the case against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, explains:

The Quran and hadiths (collections of the sayings and doings of Mohammed, Islam’s prophet), command jihadists to strike “terror” into the hearts of their enemies — to wage war ferociously and mercilessly. This includes regarding as their enemies all non-Muslims who decline to submit to the dominion of sharia. The distinction between combatants and noncombatants, so central to Western laws of warfare and human rights, is eviscerated in sharia. Those we regard as “civilians” the jihadist sees as loyalists of their non-Muslim enemies who pay taxes that stand up the armed forces arrayed against them. They are fair game for forcible attacks.

They don’t play by the West’s rules and see this battle against Israel (and the West more broadly) as a holy war that they must win. Negotiation is out of the question.

The specific attack on Saturday was chosen particularly because it was the Sabbath, and because it marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Yom Kippur War. The Hamas jihadists want to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies.

Hamas has also been planning this attack for over a year. The jihadists have been biding their time using all their cunning to deceive Israel into believing that they were uninterested in a fight. Arguably, Israel had been lulled into a false sense of security. In the meantime, Hamas terrorists built mock Israeli villages to practice raids on. They didn’t tell certain of their leadership the attack plans for fear that Israeli intelligence might get wind. They also didn’t tell the soldiers what they were training for. It was a masterstroke, and the results were horrors and atrocities carried out on civilian targets, all of which is dictated by the jihadists’ religious beliefs. The Religion of Peace™, indeed.

Hamas’s actions are horrific and the organization should be broken and made powerless. Otherwise, it will do whatever it takes to win.

Unfortunately, Hamas is not the only threat in the region. Israel’s northern border shared with Lebanon is infested with another Iranian-backed terror group called Hezbollah. This group has targeted the U.S. in the past and has the same goals as Hamas. As numerous and vicious as Hamas is, Hezbollah is worse, and bigger. The hope and prayer is that it doesn’t also enter the fray.

Each day that passes is a day that Israel is strengthening its defenses. More than 300,000 reservists have answered the call to war and are preparing to defend their homeland. Hopefully Hezbollah has missed its opportunity and Israel can focus its justified wrath on the monstrous terrorists of Hamas who murdered, raped, and kidnapped elderly, men, women, and children.