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The True Motivation of Terror — Hamas Terrorists Don’t Want a State
Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City on April 14, 2023. Photo: Yousef Masoud / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
What really drives terror against Israel? To begin a proper answer, we must first understand the universal human need “to belong.” This primal need can be expressed harmlessly, as in sports fandom or rock concerts, or perniciously, as in jihadist terror-violence.
In matters of terrorism, widely alleged political motivations (e.g., sovereignty, “self-determination,” and statehood) are actually secondary or reflective. In the case of any proposed “two-state solution,” Palestinian sovereignty is never anything other than political manipulation or subterfuge. Not only would a Palestinian state fail to stop Palestinian terrorism, it would render such terrorism increasingly likely and even more injurious.
In ancient times, Aristotle already understood that “man is a social animal.” Typically, the seminal philosopher recognized, even a “normal” individual can feel empty and insignificant apart from any tangible membership in the “mass.” Inter alia, that mass is the State. Sometimes, however, it is the Tribe. Sometimes the Faith (always, of course, the “one true faith”). Sometimes it is “The Liberation” movement or simply “the Revolution.”
Details aside, whatever the mass claims of any particular moment, it is an unquenchable craving for belonging that threatens to produce catastrophic downfalls of individual responsibility and variously correlative triumphs of collective wrongdoing. Today, in jihadist-centered parts of the Middle East, unless millions can finally learn how to temper the overwhelming human desire to belong at all costs, all military, legal, and political schemes to control war and terrorism will fail.
It’s time for more serious explanations. To more genuinely understand what lies behind Palestinian terrorism against Israel, science-based analysts must first learn to look more deeply behind the news. In the final analysis, such “molecular” looks could helpfully explain jihadist fusions of susceptible individuals into murder-centered terror gangs. Prima facie, in the jihadist Middle East, war and terrorism would never take place in the absence of such inherently barbarous collective identifications.
Earlier, relevant core concepts were clarified by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Whenever individuals crowd together and form a mass, both recognized, the exterminatory dynamics of a mob can quickly be unleashed. More precisely, they discovered, these dynamics could lower each single person’s moral and intellectual level to a point where even anonymous mass killing would be widely welcomed and encouraged. This is precisely what happened with Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack upon vulnerable Israeli civilians.
In today’s jihad-oriented Middle East, Islamic faith has been placed in the witting service of war and terror. Hamas terror against Israel is fueled by effectively unchallengeable evocations of “divine will.” Ironically, the net result of any such perfidious summoning is to drown out any authentic hints of sacredness or godliness.
Doctrinally, once empathy and compassion are extended outside the terrorizing jihadist mass,they must go unrewarded. In the case of Jews, moreover, humane sentiments must also be actively punished. Here, as generalizable virtues, empathy and compassion become extraneous and presumptively self-destructive.
There are pertinent details. In the name of allegedly divine commandment, jihadist/Hamas terror-criminality offers the wider world neither salvation nor holiness, but only conspicuously lethal “groupthink.” Among other things, the dissembling rhythms of this annihilating ethos make it futile for Israel to advance even the most honest efforts at peaceful coexistence.
This fundamental dilemma can never be solved by pundits, political leaders or self-declared “experts.” True solutions will require the concentrated intellectual efforts of uncommonly gifted thinkers. For Israel, it would emerge, any purported two-state solution could be a “final solution.” Here, the ironies would be both insufferable and unconscionable.
To undertake increasingly urgent investigations of Hamas terror-criminality, capable scholars and policy makers should look much more closely at the complex determinants of human meaning. Before we can slow-down terror-violence against Israeli and various other noncombatants, Hamas and kindred groups will first have to be shorn of their inclination to bestow celebratory status upon murderers. To affect those mass-directed individuals who turn to terrorism (i.e., ritualistic murder) for affirmations of personal worth, capable thinkers should first identify more benign but still comparably attractive sources of belonging.
In the very deepest analytic sense, Hamas terror-violence represents the result of cumulative individual failures to draw personal meaning “from within.” In Gaza and other mass-directed Palestinian areas, “redemption” requires “the faithful” to present tangible and perpetual proof of belonging. In any such presentation, evidence of participation in violence against Israeli men, women, and children is self-evidently gainful.
At its heart, Palestinian terror-violence against Israel is a problem of displaced human centeredness. Ever anxious about drawing meaning from their own “inwardness,” Hamas adherents draw ever closer to mass-based defilements. In all too many cases, a blood-soaked voice of anti-reason makes even the most gratuitous forms of terror-killing seem glorious.
There is more. When it is correctly understood as a form of religious sacrifice, Hamas terrorism confers the greatest possible form of power. This is the power of “martyrdom,” or power over death. At that stage, it is not merely belief or belonging that is being offered to jihadist murderers. It is also immortality. Lest anyone forget, the heroic death that the Palestinian “martyr” expects to endure is nothing more than a transient inconvenience on the path to a life everlasting. In essence, therefore, the Palestinian shahid “kills himself” (or herself) in order not to die.
At birth, each person contains the possibility of becoming fully human, an opportunity that could reduce potentially destructive loyalties to any murderous mass. Indeed, it is only by nurturing this indispensable possibility that we humans can seek serious remedies to war and terrorism. In principle, at least, Israel’s long-term struggle against Hamas and other jihadists should be to encourage potential terror-killers to discover the way back to themselves as empathetic human beings. But that’s hardly a realistic suggestion.
It’s a time for a summation. Israel should never misunderstand or misrepresent the core causes of Palestinian terror. To wit, Hamas killers are not most genuinely interested in sovereignty, “self-determination,” or statehood, but rather in evidence of belonging, pretended heroism, and a faith-reinforcing immortality.
For the immediate future, Israel will need to continue its life-saving military response to jihadist terrorism, especially when Hamas leaders remain determined to sacrifice Palestinian civilian populations for narrowly cynical and self-serving reasons. If Hamas leaders really believe in their own “sacred” promises of life everlasting to Palestinian “martyrs,” why are they unwilling to “sacrifice” themselves or their families? Only when this core question is raised and candidly answered could Israelis finally understand why well-intentioned concessions to Palestinian statehood would be misconceived and self-destructive.
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by Jewish Business News.
The post The True Motivation of Terror — Hamas Terrorists Don’t Want a State first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Anti-Israel Rioters Attack Israeli Cruise Ship, Prevent Tourists From Disembarking in Greece
Greek riot police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters near the port of Rhodes during a demonstration targeting an Israeli cruise ship. Photo: Screenshot
Anti-Israel rioters on the Greek island of Crete have attacked an Israeli cruise ship, preventing tourists from disembarking in the latest incident targeting Israeli visitors in Greece.
The MS Crown Iris — operated by Israeli cruise line Mano Maritime — was targeted once again by pro-Palestinian activists this week.
On Thursday, Israeli tourists were physically assaulted and temporarily blocked from disembarking in Crete by about 25 protesters gathered at the island’s main port to demonstrate against the war in Gaza.
The rioters, waving Palestinian flags and holding banners falsely accusing Israel of genocide, clashed violently with police who were trying to secure a safe passage for the Israeli tourists.
As Israeli tourists tried to disembark, they were attacked by the demonstrators, who threw rocks and metal bars, forcing many to retreat back onto the ship.
After those who first tried to leave the ship were physically assaulted, police advised everyone to return onboard, as protesters appeared to be blocking all exits from the port.
The port then closed its gates, and all passengers returned to the ship while authorities worked to regain control of the situation.
Greek riot police intervened, using pepper spray to disperse the crowd and detaining four protesters, but some passengers were still injured during the incident.
This latest attack marks the third incident in a month in which anti-Israel protesters have targeted Israeli tourists and attempted to boycott the Mano Maritime cruise line.
Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, condemned these targeted attacks, vowing that anyone who tries to prevent a foreign national from legally entering the country will “face prosecution, arrest, and then criminal proceedings under the anti-racism law.”
Las month, approximately 1,600 Israeli passengers expecting a peaceful stop on their cruise were unable to disembark from a ship docked on the island of Syros after a pro-Palestinian protest erupted at the port, raising safety concerns.
Around 300 demonstrators had gathered at the dock to protest against the war in Gaza, while Syros Port Authority police guarded the area and intervened to prevent violence until the ship departed.
Amid the large anti-Israel protest, the cruise company chose to divert the ship to Limassol, Cyprus.
In videos circulating on social media, protesters were seen waving Palestinian flags and holding banners with slogans such as “Stop the Genocide” and “No AC [Air Conditioning] in Hell,” while chanting antisemitic slogans.
In a similar incident, pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Greek riot police on the island of Rhodes as they attempted to block a Mano Maritime cruise ship from docking at the island’s main port.
More than 600 passengers were set to disembark when tensions escalated and brief clashes broke out as authorities worked to control the protest.
According to videos circulating on social media, riot police can be seen confronting a group of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered near the dock, who shouted slogans such as “Freedom for Palestine.”
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents have surged to alarming levels across Europe.
These incidents appear to be the latest in an increasing wave of anti-Jewish hate crimes that Greece and other countries have experienced in recent months.
On Friday, a group of Israeli tourists from London were thrown out of a Greek taverna and called “baby killers” after a dispute with the pro-Palestinian restaurant owner.
Last month in Athens, a group of pro-Palestinian activists vandalized an Israeli restaurant, shouting antisemitic slurs and spray-painting graffiti with slogans such as “No Zionist is safe here.”
The attackers also posted a sign on one of the restaurant’s windows that read, “All IDF soldiers are war criminals — we don’t want you here,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
In June, an Israeli tourist was attacked by a group of anti-Israel activists after they overheard him using Google Maps in Hebrew while navigating through Athens.
When the attackers realized the victim was speaking Hebrew, they began physically assaulting him while shouting antisemitic slurs.
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‘Nothing Less’: Trump Presses for $500 Million Settlement With Harvard University
US President Donald Trump gestures during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Aug. 26, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Ernst via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump has said that Harvard University must pay a minimum $500 million penalty as part of a settlement to restore $3 billion in federal contracts and research grants his administration impounded from the school’s coffers earlier this year.
Trump insisted on “nothing less” in remarks to Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a cabinet meeting held on Tuesday. “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate,” he added.
The comments came just two and a half months after McMahon, representing the Trump administration, hinted at the possibility of reaching a deal with Harvard and unfreezing the federal funds. Speaking to Bloomberg, the education secretary said that Harvard was “making progress” and “already put in place some of the things that we have talked about in our negotiations with Columbia” University, which included some wish-list reforms for which conservatives have spent decades advocating.
At the time, Harvard had filed suit against the administration, seeking a summary judgement which ruled that the funds confiscation was arbitrary and skipped key steps the government must take before taking such an action. The New York Times reported that Harvard expressed interest in paying $500 million to settle the matter, and university officials had begun dismantling initiatives and making other changes to reverse an impression that the institution is doctrinally far left and anti-Zionist.
In July, it announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions and shuttered its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, transferring their staff to other sections of the university. These moves came after it “paused” a partnership in March with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. Some reports, according to the Harvard Crimson, even suggested that Harvard is willing to found a “new conservative research institute.”
However, Harvard university’s president, Alan Garber, deluged by inquiries from Harvard faculty outraged at the prospect of settling with the Trump administration, later proclaimed that the Times had reported fake news and that he intended to continue on fighting the government in court.
“In a conversation with one faculty member, [he] said that the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’ and claimed that the figure was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials,” the Harvard Crimson reported, noting that the Times had defended the veracity of its report. “In any discussions, Garber reportedly said, the university is treating academic freedom as nonnegotiable.”
The conflicting headlines highlighted the competing objectives Garber is being forced to choose between — rescuing Harvard from a perilous fiscal situation or placating its left-leaning faculty, 94 percent of whom donated to Democratic candidates in 2024, as reported by the Crimson.
In July, a Crimson poll of over 1,400 Harvard faculty revealed that 71 percent of arts and sciences faculty oppose negotiating a settlement with the administration and 64 percent “strongly disagree” with shuttering DEI programs. Additionally, 73 percent oppose rejecting foreign applicants who hold anti-American beliefs which are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” and 70 percent strongly disagree with revoking institutional recognition from pro-Hamas groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
“More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the university’s decision to sue the White House,” The Crimson reported. “The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.”
At the same time, Harvard will see annual budget shortfalls of $1 billion if the if the Trump confiscations remain in effect, according to the Wall Street Journal, a loss the university is offsetting by enacting “contingency preparations” predicated on amassing $1 billion in debt with help from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Analysts have told The Algemeiner that Harvard’s immense wealth, powered by a $53 billion endowment valued higher than the gross domestic product of countries such the Kingdom of Bahrain and Bolivia, can sustain its borrowing in the short term but not in perpetuity.
“If Harvard is willing to mortgage its real estate or use it as collateral, it can borrow money for a very long time,” National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner in April. “But it could destroy itself that way.”
On Friday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said Harvard should make a deal, arguing that would be in the interest of both the school and the country.
“Universities have begun to rapidly adapt to the new realities. One change being made by universities is increased hiring of Title VI coordinators to handle civil rights complaints,” he said. “Beyond the cosmetic, the US desperately needs to reevaluate what a university is and what it is for. Five decades of universities striving for relevance has had the effect of politicizing the humanities and social sciences.”
He continued, “As faculties have become politically monolithic, students interested in exploring traditions and themselves have been alienated, causing a feedback loop of shrinking disciplines and intensifying politics.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, and Others Join Gaza Film as Executive Producers Before Venice Premiere
Brad Pitt attends the “F1: The Movie” European premiere in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Maja Smiejkowska
Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, and other high-profile figures in the Hollywood film industry have joined the Gaza-based drama “The Voice of Hind Rajab” as executive producers ahead of its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, Deadline reported.
“The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer is also joining the film as an executive producer as well as “Roma” director Alfonso Cuaron. Meanwhile, Dede Garner and Jeremy Kleiner from Pitt’s production company Plan B. Britain’s Film4 and the Saudi Arabian state-owned MBC Studio are also supporting the film, according to Deadline.
Written and directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” focuses on the real-life death of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car that had allegedly come under fire by Israeli military forces in the Gaza Strip in January 2024 and later found dead. Israel claimed its military troops were not in the area at the time. The movie is based on real audio recordings of Rajab’s calls to Red Cresent volunteers, who tried to keep her on the line and get an ambulance to help her. Her death sparked global outrage including at Columbia University, where anti-Israel students broke into the academic building Hamilton Hall and symbolically renamed it as Hind’s Hall in April 2024.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” will premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3 before making its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes,” Ben Hania said in a released statement. “That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us. This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief. And I believe that fiction (especially when it draws from verified, painful, real events) is cinema’s most powerful tool. More powerful than the noise of breaking news or the forgetfulness of scrolling. Cinema can preserve a memory … May Hind Rajab’s voice be heard.”
Ben Hania’s film “Four Daughters” was nominated for an Oscar last year and her previous project, “The Man Who Sold His Skin,” was selected as the Tunisian entry for best international feature film at the Academy Awards in 2021.
The 82nd Venice Film Festival opened on Wednesday, almost six weeks to the second anniversary of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 2023, that resulted in the murder of 1,200 people while 251 were taken as hostages back to Gaza. The festival ends Sept. 6.
Hundreds of Italian and international artists signed an open letter calling on the Venice Film Festival to condemn what they claim is Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Israel has adamantly denied the charge, noting it’s targeting a terrorist group in Gaza that tries to embed itself among the civilian population to create more casualties.