In Hamas’ Own Words
Top Hamas official Ghazi Hamad couldn’t be more clear: If the terror group isn’t completely wiped out, it’ll repeat its horrific Oct. 7 savagery against innocent Israelis “again and again” — until the Jewish state is utterly destroyed. That plainly leaves Israel no choice but to ensure that doesn’t happen — by eliminating Hamas completely.
Hamad made the threat explicit last week in an interview republished Wednesday: Hamas’ Oct. 7 bloodletting “is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight,” he vowed. “We will do this again and again.”
Why? Because “Israel has no place on our land; we must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nations, and must be finished.”
By “our land,” he means all of Israel; that’s what the chant “from the river to the sea” means, what Hamas pledges in its charter.
And Mousa Abu Marzouk, one of Hamas’ topmost leaders, declares that the terrorists are happy to bleed Gaza dry to that end.
In an interview translated and posted Monday by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Marzouk explains why Hamas built 300 miles of tunnels, yet zero bomb shelters for civilians. Hamas terrorists “have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed,” he explained. The tunnels are “to protect us from airplanes.”
Ordinary Gazans? Not Hamas’ problem, says Marzouk: “It is the responsibility of the
United Nations to protect” them.
Right. Let UN agencies handle Gazans’ welfare, as Hamas steals any supplies it wants.
Hence Hamas’ moves to block civilians (at gunpoint!) from fleeing in the north, and to locate its HQ beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, with bases and weapons caches at mosques and other key civilian sites.
When IDF strikes on those bases produce civilian casualties, Hamas screams “war crime!” — when it’s the war criminal, for intentionally using the innocent as shields.
Meanwhile, as Gazans suffer and Hamas’ gunmen shelter in tunnels, Marzouk and other top Hamas poohbas enjoy luxurious lives in Qatar — 1,100 miles from Gaza.
The group’s top brass have gotten filthy rich off the whole deal: As The Times of Israel reports, Hamas leaders control Gaza’s economy, shipping and taxes, including a 20% “tax” on all trade through the tunnels — smuggling that’s turned 1,700 senior Hamas officials into millionaires.
Hamas, in short, is an organized crime syndicate; Gazans are its cattle — valued only for their use against Israel.
Bottom line: Any Israeli response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 horror show that leaves the group alive won’t stop it from unleashing new rounds of terror, or from looting Gaza and maximizing Gazan death and suffering.
So there can be no cease-fire until Hamas is gone. Completely. It’s a fight to the death: Either Hamas is destroyed. Or Israel is — even it requires the death not just of every Israeli, but every Palestinian too.
POST OPINION
en-us
2023-11-02T07:00:00.0000000Z
2023-11-02T07:00:00.0000000Z
https://nypost.pressreader.com/article/282050511766563
New York Post
![](https://r.prcdn.co/res/en-us/g22563/t460683408/2/images/toolbar-logo.png)