How Hamas Defines Cease-Fire A terrorist leader says: Oct. 7 today, Oct. 7 tomorrow, Oct. 7 forever.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-ghazi-hamad-interview-israel-oct-7-0731bd48?mod=opinion_lead_pos4
Hamas has two messages for two different audiences. To the international community, it pleads for a cease-fire on humanitarian grounds. To the Arab world, it pledges to repeat its Oct. 7 attacks and sacrifice as many Palestinians as it takes to destroy Israel.
That was the message of Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas Politburo, in an Oct. 24 interview on Lebanese television. “We must teach Israel a lesson,” he says, “and we will do this again and again. The Al Aqsa Flood”—the name Hamas gave its Oct. 7 operation to slaughter defenseless Israelis—“is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth,” he says, as translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
That’s what a cease-fire means to Hamas: a chance to repeat Oct. 7 another day. The similar idea of a “humanitarian pause,” gaining steam on the Western left, is to Hamas merely an opportunity to reload. There is nothing humane about pressuring Israel to leave a genocidal enemy in power on its border.
“Will we have to pay a price?” Mr. Hamad continues, referencing Hamas’s plan for endless invasions of Israel. “Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”
Hamas isn’t ashamed to announce its intent to sacrifice Gazans to kill Jews—at least to receptive audiences. A poll published Monday in Beirut’s Al Akhbar newspaper reported that 80% of Lebanese respondents supported Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. In another Arabic-language interview, on Oct. 19, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal argued that “nations are not easily liberated,” noting that it sometimes has required the deaths of millions of people. He figures he’s the man for the job.
Given how cheap Hamas holds Palestinian lives, it is no surprise that the terrorist group is shameless about murdering Israelis. Mr. Hamad, on Lebanese TV, says, “We are the victims of the occupation, period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On Oct. 7, on Oct. 10, on October one-millionth, everything we do is justified.”
That’s also the radical-chic view on U.S. campuses: “Resistance by any means necessary”—don’t think, parrot Hamas propaganda.
Hamas promises more massacres in Arabic while asking for a humanitarian reprieve in English. It knows from experience that some Westerners are gullible enough to fall for it.
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