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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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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.