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What Is Hamas Telling Its Own People About the Gaza War?

An Israeli soldier stands in a tank, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, June 4, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was quickly characterized by Hamas as fulfillment of a prophecy about the destruction of Israel. Hamas cast the invasion as a Palestinian version of the Battle of Badr, a battle in which a small force of Muslim believers under the command of the Prophet Muhammad succeeded in defeating a large force of Quraysh and Makkah who had opposed his prophecy.

Hamas labeled October 7 as a divine victory by believers over the enemies of Allah, and many verses in this spirit were broadcast over Hamas’ communication channels. However, more recent articles published on the Hamas website suggest that its view has undergone a transformation. Hamas has apparently shifted from extolling its “divine victory” on October 7 to admitting that it has been defeated in battle again and again. The great suffering Hamas has inflicted on the Gaza Strip has put it in the position where it must now explain to the Palestinian public why it started the war in the first place, why it did not expect a massive military response from Israel to its atrocities and attempt at genocide, and why the suffering of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip is not in vain.

To faithful Muslims, the Battle of Badr marks the victory of a small group of believers of the Prophet Muhammad over a far superior force. The battle was held in Ramadan in 624 AD between Muhammad’s group of warriors, numbering about 300 men, and an expeditionary force of Meccan men numbering about 1,000. The battle was held near the Badr Springs; hence the name.

In a preliminary battle, Hamza, Ali, and Ubaydah Ibn Harth fought three of Quraysh’s warriors. They lost, and Ubaydah suffered mortal wounds and died a martyr. At the Battle of Badr, the Muslim force was organized, determined, and acting under unified leadership. The Meccan force was larger, but fought in a decentralized manner and without a central command. Surat al-Anfal (The Spoils) in the Koran describes the battle. After the victory, Muhammad revealed that angels had participated alongside the Muslim army. In a famous hadith by al-Bukhari, it is claimed that the angel Gabriel himself fought on his horse against the people of Quraysh and killed many of them.

On October 7 and throughout the waiting period until the beginning of the ground operation in which the IDF forces entered Gaza, many comparisons were made between the success of Hamas on October 7 and the famous Battle of Badr. A small Palestinian military force of about 3,500 men was able to overcome deployed IDF formations along the border and breach a formidable barrier consisting of an elaborate fence, multiple firearms and tanks. The photos of the bulldozer destroying the fence and of destroyed IDF tanks became images of the victory Hamas had purportedly achieved by divine inspiration.

The website of the Al-Palestinian Center for Information gives us a glimpse into changes that seem to have taken place in the view of Hamas operatives. Where they once gushed words of praise for the rare victory over Israel, they are now admitting their military failure in the confrontation with Israel.

Consider, for example, the following article published by Dr. Muhsen Saleh, a senior researcher at the Zitouna Center in Lebanon. The article, entitled “Tofan Al-Aqsa – Coping with the day after the operation,” was an early response to the Hamas invasion:

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades on October 7, 2023 was a qualitative historical blow to the Zionist entity. It had not had such a [defeat] since [Israel’s] establishment 75 years ago. The operation combined the elements of military surprise, an incredible security and strategic move. [The resistance] invaded a significant area of ​​Palestine that was occupied in 1948, causing the largest number of dead, wounded and prisoners (that is, kidnapped) compared to all the battles the Palestinians have fought since the [1948] war, in which the entity [Israel] was established. This is the highest even in relation to most of the Arab-Israeli wars.

The Israeli occupation [at the time] looked confused and shocked and felt humiliated when it saw with its own eyes the shattering of [its] security theory and the collapse of the walls of physical and psychological deterrence. [The occupation] also saw with its own eyes how the men of al-Qassam broke into 20 settlement sites (towns and kibbutzim) and 11 military sites in a matter of hours. The occupation realized that it had failed to subdue the Palestinian people and crush their resistance.

To Saleh and other writers on the site, the operation began and ended on October 7 with a decisive Palestinian victory for the Hamas organization. It was a divine victory, as described by Dr. Khaled Qaddoumi (Hamas’ representative in Iran) in an article entitled: “Hamas is making history” that he published the day after the war broke out:

… we must prepare ourselves for this campaign (against Israel) with all the means at our disposal, including sanctification and strengthening the truth and justice for the Palestinian people. We must support comprehensively and in all areas the battle for liberation until the true promise is fulfilled.

[We told the children of Israel in the scripture to say, Twice you shall conquer the land and be very proud]. When the first time took place, we sent among you our servants the heroes of the war and they raided into the colonies and thus the promise was fulfilled (Qur’an, 17 4-5).

These verses, from the Surat al-Isra’ (the Night Journey), appeared in postings by many Hamas supporters at the time. For them, the invasion symbolized the realization of a divine promise to destroy Israel, a promise written in the Qur’an.

Hamas activist Khamis al-Qatiti summarized the battles on October 7, 2023 in an article entitled “The Tears of the Spider’s Web“:

This great battle is the flood of al-Aqsa. It reminds the people of the entire [Islamic] nation of the battles of the Muslims, the great [battles] of Badr and Al-Khandaq [the battle of the trench in 627 AD in which Medina was attacked by the people of Mecca, other Arab tribes, and Jews who had joined them. The defenders, led by the Prophet Muhammad, dug trenches and from there repelled the attack] and Khaybar [a battle fought by Muhammad’s people against the Jews of al-Khaybar and Jewish refugees from Medina; the battle took place in 629 AD and ended in a Muslim victory] and [Horns of] Hattin [the battle in 1187 AD in which Saladin defeated the Crusaders and thereby brought an end to the Crusader Kingdom] and Ain Jalut [Battle of Ein Harod, which was fought in 1260 AD between the Mamluks and the Mongols, who were considered infidels at the time. The battle ended in a Mamluk victory]. It also reminds us of the last victory achieved by a united Arab will fifty years ago in the great battle for the crossing (the Battle of the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War in 1973).

But what happens when many begin to ask if Hamas was wrong when it went to war in Gaza? Has the “divine victory”, as Hamas spokesmen called the battles of October 7, not become a second “Nakba”?

Hamas predicted that Israel would not enter the Gaza Strip for ground maneuvers, and that the war that would break out as a result of its invasion of Israel would end swiftly. Surely, Hamas believed, the inevitable heavy international pressure on Israel would force it to stop fighting. Hamas also expected Israel to retreat to the October 6 lines while negotiating a wholesale release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hundreds of Israeli hostages due to Israel’s high sensitivity to human life. All these expectations were disappointed. The death toll in the Gaza Strip is rising, most Hamas battalions have been disbanded and stripped of their military and organizational capabilities, and the Gaza Strip, which until recently was considered a land liberated by jihad, is being purged of Hamas.

Against the background of growing criticism of Hamas among parts of Palestinian society, Israel’s losses are being trumpeted on the Hamas website.

Walid Abd al-Hay, in his article “Tufan Al-Aqsa to look only at their numbers only”, cites economic data such as the decrease in the value of Israeli currency, a decrease in tourism revenue, the number of abandoned settlements, high numbers of Israeli internal evacuees, and a drop in immigration to Israel by at least 50% compared to the situation before the war. The purpose of the article is clear: to raise the spirits of the Gaza population after a long, exhausting war and much suffering. Don’t just look at your own suffering and sacrifice, al-Hay is saying. Look at what we were able to do to the enemy.

Another article that tries to encourage the Palestinian population against the background of the loss of the “resistance” in Gaza is by Dr. Muhammad al-Hindi (a well-known activist and a leader of the Islamic Jihad) entitled “The dissolution of the Zionist entity in light of the change in the balance of power.” Al-Hindi recognizes that most of Gaza has seen Israeli forces come in, the stronghold of the resistance has fallen, and that Gaza has fallen into a humanitarian crisis (because, in his view, of an allegedly brutal occupation). But he encourages his readers with the following:

There are those who wonder about the future of the Palestinian cause and the future of the resistance in Palestine after the loss of the resistance stronghold in Gaza. It goes without saying that the future of the Palestinian resistance cannot be talked about in isolation from international and regional changes. The situation in the world is changing, America is busy with conflicts and rivalries with Russia and China, it is not at its best, and Russia is finding out every day the importance of building alliances with the countries of the Muslim South.

According to al-Hindi, the next decisive battle will take place in Judea and Samaria, which, according to him, has become the second state of Israel. The article concludes that the Palestinian resistance will ultimately defeat Israel.

Many pro-Hamas articles deal with Israel’s legal battles with international courts. They claim that the crimes of Hamas, especially the sex crimes committed on October 7, are false accusations. Many articles encourage the public to take note of how many supporters they have in the world, and highlight the events at universities in the United States and support for the Palestinian cause in many other countries.

Algerian politician Dr. Abd al-Razaq Makri spoke out strongly against insiders who attack Hamas’ logic in starting a war with Israel. In the article “Tufan al-Aqsa is a solution that is a way of life”, he writes:

The survival of the residents of Gaza on their land is their glory. A dignified life in tents on the ruins [of the buildings] contributes more to the continuation of the resistance and is better than life in luxury cities that were built as a bribe to the Palestinians in order for them to give up their cause and the places sacred to them. This is [a contrary position] to those Palestinians who deal with plans of surrender [a clear reference to the Palestinian Authority].

As for the statement [by sources criticizing Hamas] that the al-Aqsa Flood gave the Israelis an excuse to reoccupy Gaza, the campaign is not over yet. Gaza was in a situation where there was no difference between it and the occupation except that the entity state [Israel] eased its obligations towards the population as an occupying power in accordance with international law. [Israel] made the world and the Arab countries pay for the needs of the Gazans in its place.

As for the statement [by sources criticizing Hamas] that the al-Aqsa Flood will put an end to Hamas control in Gaza, the war is not over yet and the “day after” has not yet arrived. Even if this does happen, it may be better for Hamas to ease its life obligations towards the population and dedicate itself entirely to the resistance within the logic of an all-out guerrilla war in all of Palestine. This war will be conducted while learning the lessons of war, the acts of heroism in it, and the achievements and losses of the resistance. This learning of lessons will also take into account those who supported the resistance and those who betrayed it and did not stand by it.

The large number of Palestinian casualties in the war does not move Dr. Makri. According to him, in Algeria, French colonialism killed 1.5 million Algerians over seven years. The only way to guarantee political independence, he claims, is through blood and sacrifice.

The Hamas organization understands and has reconciled itself to the fact that it has been defeated militarily, and the citadel of “resistance” in the Gaza Strip (Kala’at al-Muqawama) has fallen. After the euphoric days of October, articles appeared that tried to encourage the population and explain that their sacrifice is not in vain. Hamas is aware that the October 7 war is seen by some of the Palestinian public as a dangerous gamble that harmed the Palestinian cause — a bet that has caused the death and injury to thousands.

Will Hamas remain the ruling party in the Gaza Strip? That depends mainly on Israeli determination, as President Biden’s latest proposal is seen by Hamas as an admission that it will indeed survive as the Strip’s governing body. Therefore, any Israeli outline for the end of the war after the IDF’s impressive military victory must include the replacement of Hamas rule by another governing body. Only that way will the Israeli military victory be translated into a political achievement.

Dr. (Lt. Col.) Shaul Bartal is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Lisbon. During his military service, he served in various roles in the West Bank. He has also taught in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post What Is Hamas Telling Its Own People About the Gaza War? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Doorstep Postings: The unbearable lightness of Justin Trudeau’s final Hanukkah as prime minister

This is a special year-end edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

You all know the story that we tell this time of year: a group of Jews decided they were done with Jewish particularism and said, “Let us go an make a covenant with the nations around us” (1 Maccabees 1:11) and decided to gaslight the rest of the community into seeing things their way—and it ended very, very badly for them.

As such, Hannukah is a time for the revealing of secrets, the banishing of shadows, and the airing of grievances. Having recently reached a milestone age associated with acquiring Jewish wisdom, my own personal miracle is that after enduring 40 years of threats/promises of the imminent collapse of society and sweeping revolution, 40 years of lectures about the moral and physical decay of the West, 40 years of the most obnoxiously self-righteous folks walking the planet breathlessly informing us all of the latest irreconcilable contradiction within capitalism, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can’t muster anything more than an eye roll anymore. 

This is because, just like every year before it, 2024 was a year of unmitigated disaster for our self-appointed reformers. I’m not just talking about Trump’s resurgence, Ukraine’s persistence, the overthrow in Syria, Hamas’s withering away, proclamations that we have reached ‘peak wokeness’, the rise of artificial intelligence and the tech bros, and the failure of centrist electoral projects everywhere but here in Canada. This was the year where the left willingly and gleefully discarded the one thing they had going for them: their tenuously held moral authority.

The success of any left-wing project hinges on successfully convincing a critical mass of undecideds that they are not like the amoral and callous right who wants you to die for their profit motive. They’ve got your best interests at heart. They’re going to sit down and hear you out and govern with joy and hope and kindness, which are alien concepts to those weird, cruel, genocidal and greedy conservatives. 

Now those of us who have been on this merry-go-round for a few turns know that it’s not that simple. Plenty of left-folks want to actively harm the rich and those they deem to be colonizers, bigots, and other associated ruling class bootlickers. The violence perpetrated by those in power justifies violence in return. This is a somewhat difficult platform to get elected on, however, because people have a bad habit of hardening their hearts in response to being threatened. And so we need suitable empty vessels to try and convince the voters that the radicals are just that: loud angry voices on the margins. The political operatives charged with laundering the baser left-wing impulses must carefully use language to make it seem that there is some daylight between them and the ends-justify-the-means crowd. 

This is a difficult task to perform because it involves not only fooling a plurality of people, if not all of the time, then for as long as the particular political project lasts. First, the operatives must trick themselves into believing in their own unimpeachable moral authority. Only once they have convinced themselves that they are the most empathic and equity-minded folks to ever draw breath can they engineer the rise of someone like Justin Trudeau. Anyone who was paying attention a decade ago could see the parallel rise of two movements: lifelong Liberals working on earned media pieces announcing the return of the Trudeau dynasty, and mostly anonymous lunatics on Tumblr who were still licking their wounds from the failure of the Occupy Movement, claiming that it was literally impossible to be racist against white people because ‘racism’ against white people wasn’t systematic. 

And as it happened, a lot of the self-proclaimed radicals bought the hype, because they saw in Trudeau something they know all too well in themselves. The desire to be loved and celebrated and told they are good, kind and moral despite, and in many cases because of, their own desire to commit and justify violence in the name of creating a better and more equal world. The Trudeau of 2015 was no less authoritarian than the figure clinging to power at the end of 2024. All that’s changed is that the radicals can no longer excuse Trudeau’s narcissism while holding out for him to bring about a world that is more equal—which is to say, a world where they have the power to do harm to their enemies. These days, Mr. Grow the Economy From the Heart Outward seems more interested in trying and failing to implement GST holidays while forcing Canada Post workers back to actual work. 

Still even as the Liberals try to envision a future without Trudeau, they remain engaged in other muddled projects, such as trying to sell the idea that Canada is engaged in an ongoing genocide but must somehow endure lest we be absorbed into the sucking Trumpist hellhole directly below us. Clearly, the Liberal Party is no longer a place for voters who are into sexy CEO-murderers, or who think Oct. 7 was an act of righteous resistance to oppression, or take China’s claims of imminent world domination seriously while denouncing Elon Musk’s similarly ridiculous pronouncements. 

But even though both the more and less radical wings of the progressive movement have had an off year and are barely speaking to one another again, we can rest assured that so long as they have to convince themselves of their own goodness they will continue to try and split this atom. Attempts to reject binaries will lead to more black and white thinking. Progressive governments will fall back into the status quo. Tumblrs will give way to Blueskys. Trudeau will fall out of favour for a few years only to be asked back after a few years of Poilievre—or some other Liberal saviour will rescue the brand. They will cast about for a new podcast hero or a leftist version of the Hawk Tuah Girl. They will insist that senile politicians are fit as fiddles, anoint barely literate fan-fiction writers as cultural arbiters, and cast lawbreakers as secular saints while vilifying anyone who’s afraid of being attacked on the street or public transit.

If the past 40 years are anything to go by, they will be as confused as ever as to why capitalism persists, why people don’t accept carbon taxes, why the world fails to condemn Israel to their liking, why poor and rural folks don’t “vote their interests”, why voters fall for Poilievre’s slogans, and why there are attempts to draw an equivalence between CEOs who condemn people to death and the people who kill those CEOs. The answer to all these questions are the same, and it’s that impure oil just burns differently—and trying to pass it off as holy can only come off as gaslighting. 

Josh Lieblein can be reached at joshualieblein@gmail.com for your response to Doorstep Postings.

The post Doorstep Postings: The unbearable lightness of Justin Trudeau’s final Hanukkah as prime minister appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Doorstep Postings: The unbearable lightness of Justin Trudeau’s final Hanukkah as prime minister

This is a special year-end edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

You all know the story that we tell this time of year: a group of Jews decided they were done with Jewish particularism and said, “Let us go an make a covenant with the nations around us” (1 Maccabees 1:11) and decided to gaslight the rest of the community into seeing things their way—and it ended very, very badly for them.

As such, Hannukah is a time for the revealing of secrets, the banishing of shadows, and the airing of grievances. Having recently reached a milestone age associated with acquiring Jewish wisdom, my own personal miracle is that after enduring 40 years of threats/promises of the imminent collapse of society and sweeping revolution, 40 years of lectures about the moral and physical decay of the West, 40 years of the most obnoxiously self-righteous folks walking the planet breathlessly informing us all of the latest irreconcilable contradiction within capitalism, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can’t muster anything more than an eye roll anymore. 

This is because, just like every year before it, 2024 was a year of unmitigated disaster for our self-appointed reformers. I’m not just talking about Trump’s resurgence, Ukraine’s persistence, the overthrow in Syria, Hamas’s withering away, proclamations that we have reached ‘peak wokeness’, the rise of artificial intelligence and the tech bros, and the failure of centrist electoral projects everywhere but here in Canada. This was the year where the left willingly and gleefully discarded the one thing they had going for them: their tenuously held moral authority.

The success of any left-wing project hinges on successfully convincing a critical mass of undecideds that they are not like the amoral and callous right who wants you to die for their profit motive. They’ve got your best interests at heart. They’re going to sit down and hear you out and govern with joy and hope and kindness, which are alien concepts to those weird, cruel, genocidal and greedy conservatives. 

Now those of us who have been on this merry-go-round for a few turns know that it’s not that simple. Plenty of left-folks want to actively harm the rich and those they deem to be colonizers, bigots, and other associated ruling class bootlickers. The violence perpetrated by those in power justifies violence in return. This is a somewhat difficult platform to get elected on, however, because people have a bad habit of hardening their hearts in response to being threatened. And so we need suitable empty vessels to try and convince the voters that the radicals are just that: loud angry voices on the margins. The political operatives charged with laundering the baser left-wing impulses must carefully use language to make it seem that there is some daylight between them and the ends-justify-the-means crowd. 

This is a difficult task to perform because it involves not only fooling a plurality of people, if not all of the time, then for as long as the particular political project lasts. First, the operatives must trick themselves into believing in their own unimpeachable moral authority. Only once they have convinced themselves that they are the most empathic and equity-minded folks to ever draw breath can they engineer the rise of someone like Justin Trudeau. Anyone who was paying attention a decade ago could see the parallel rise of two movements: lifelong Liberals working on earned media pieces announcing the return of the Trudeau dynasty, and mostly anonymous lunatics on Tumblr who were still licking their wounds from the failure of the Occupy Movement, claiming that it was literally impossible to be racist against white people because ‘racism’ against white people wasn’t systematic. 

And as it happened, a lot of the self-proclaimed radicals bought the hype, because they saw in Trudeau something they know all too well in themselves. The desire to be loved and celebrated and told they are good, kind and moral despite, and in many cases because of, their own desire to commit and justify violence in the name of creating a better and more equal world. The Trudeau of 2015 was no less authoritarian than the figure clinging to power at the end of 2024. All that’s changed is that the radicals can no longer excuse Trudeau’s narcissism while holding out for him to bring about a world that is more equal—which is to say, a world where they have the power to do harm to their enemies. These days, Mr. Grow the Economy From the Heart Outward seems more interested in trying and failing to implement GST holidays while forcing Canada Post workers back to actual work. 

Still even as the Liberals try to envision a future without Trudeau, they remain engaged in other muddled projects, such as trying to sell the idea that Canada is engaged in an ongoing genocide but must somehow endure lest we be absorbed into the sucking Trumpist hellhole directly below us. Clearly, the Liberal Party is no longer a place for voters who are into sexy CEO-murderers, or who think Oct. 7 was an act of righteous resistance to oppression, or take China’s claims of imminent world domination seriously while denouncing Elon Musk’s similarly ridiculous pronouncements. 

But even though both the more and less radical wings of the progressive movement have had an off year and are barely speaking to one another again, we can rest assured that so long as they have to convince themselves of their own goodness they will continue to try and split this atom. Attempts to reject binaries will lead to more black and white thinking. Progressive governments will fall back into the status quo. Tumblrs will give way to Blueskys. Trudeau will fall out of favour for a few years only to be asked back after a few years of Poilievre—or some other Liberal saviour will rescue the brand. They will cast about for a new podcast hero or a leftist version of the Hawk Tuah Girl. They will insist that senile politicians are fit as fiddles, anoint barely literate fan-fiction writers as cultural arbiters, and cast lawbreakers as secular saints while vilifying anyone who’s afraid of being attacked on the street or public transit.

If the past 40 years are anything to go by, they will be as confused as ever as to why capitalism persists, why people don’t accept carbon taxes, why the world fails to condemn Israel to their liking, why poor and rural folks don’t “vote their interests”, why voters fall for Poilievre’s slogans, and why there are attempts to draw an equivalence between CEOs who condemn people to death and the people who kill those CEOs. The answer to all these questions are the same, and it’s that impure oil just burns differently—and trying to pass it off as holy can only come off as gaslighting. 

Josh Lieblein can be reached at joshualieblein@gmail.com for your response to Doorstep Postings.

The post Doorstep Postings: The unbearable lightness of Justin Trudeau’s final Hanukkah as prime minister appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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IDF Releases Investigation into Discovery of 6 Hostages’ Bodies

i24 News – The IDF released on Tuesday the investigation into the murder of six abductees at the end of August: Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi,

Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lubnov, Almog Sarusi, and Sergeant Ori Danino.

According to the findings of the investigation, when the IDF operation began in the area of the tunnel, Major General Nitzan Alon did not believe abductees would be in the area. As the operation continued, the military assessment said the probability was even lower.

The abductee who was extricated, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, was found alone, as neither he nor additional terrorists taken from the area provided indications to the additional abductees.

In the absence of new information, the operation continued in the area, the investigation said. Only then did the forces locate the bodies of the six abductees. In addition, forensic findings were found indicating that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had been there. It remains unclear whether he gave the order to murder the abductees himself. No signs of struggle during the murder were found in autopsies.

IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagri visited the tunnel and described the harsh conditions in which the six abductees endured. “They were heroes who were cold-bloodedly murdered by terrorists who build tunnels under children’s rooms,” he said. “We will hunt them down and know exactly who they are, we will find the one who murdered them. The teams here collect all the evidence from the scene.”

“We didn’t know the exact location of the hostages in the tunnel. They were killed before we could reach them. We are investigating the incident of their names being leaked prior to their rescue. This is a very serious event that is harmful to the families and the security of the forces on the ground.”

The post IDF Releases Investigation into Discovery of 6 Hostages’ Bodies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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