Caroline Glick, an Israeli-American and author-journalist, is also an Israeli Defense Force veteran and expert on Middle East policy. In an interview this week on American Family Radio, she said the Hamas attack is an example of Jihad or “holy war.”
“It shows just how annihilationist the Jew hatred is among jihadists and how important it is for them to kill Jews," she said. "And the abuse that they've been meting out on the children that they've [kidnapped] to Gaza are also openly hateful because the children are Jewish."
That fear of radical Islamists is what many Israelis live with along the border with Gaza. This is not a relationship of mutual respect or friendship, or a relationship where leaders visit for important meetings and business is conducted across borders.
The Council on Foreign Relations says Hamas is a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s, an Islamist militant group. Hamas defeated its rival political party, Fatah, in elections for control of the Gaza Strip in 2006.
Hamas has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and by the European Union because of continued armed resistance against Israel, which has included suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
The Hamas Covenant of 1988 – its organizational charter – states that while its leaders may at times consent to peace talks mediated by a third party for strategic reasons necessary for the moment, true Hamas leaders participate without sincerity.
“These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters,” Article 13 of the charter states. “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”
Republicans and Democrats bicker over whether any of the actual $6 billion in Iranian assets freed by President Joe Biden and returned to the Iran was used in the attack on Israel, but that may be a distinction without a difference. Hamas, which is supported by Iran, has been linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps for funding and training since the 1990s. After the weekend attack, news reports say the Revolutionary Guard gave Hamas the green light after training and planning for it since August.
So that $6 billion, in reality, could have simply reimbursed Iran for arming and training Hamas for the surprise attack.
Nothing 'political' just hatred of Jews
“I think it's important to understand both that this is not motivated by anything political," Glick told show host Sandy Rios. "Obviously, it serves the strategic ends of (both) Hamas' bosses and state sponsor in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but I think the program here is straight jihad. And it is motivated not only by the jihadist belief system of Hamas but also by their intense genocidal Nazi-like anti-Semitism, their hatred of Jews."
The Times of Israel has reported that Qatar is attempting to mediate an exchange of Israeli-held Hamas prisoners for Israeli hostages taken by Hamas in the weekend attacks.
Glick said Israeli intelligence has learned of likely talks between Egypt and Hamas leadership. She says it’s noteworthy that Egypt is talking to Hamas but not talking to Israel. Such stories may be planted for the purpose of instilling hope in the families of hostages and the Israeli public only to steal that hope later, Glick said.
“Hamas may have gotten some flack from the Arab world, and it’s possible that we'll see some movement on that, but I think it's also very possible that this is just a form of psychological warfare," Glick observed. "I mean, everything is. This really is the nature of jihad."
Updated reports say Israeli deaths have surpassed 1,000. More than 2,000 are wounded, many of them in critical condition from gunshots and stabbings.
Israel’s military on Tuesday morning announced it had regained control over areas near the Gaza Strip border that were breached in Saturday’s surprise attack.
AFN has reported Hamas soldiers massacred unarmed civilians in their cars and in bomb shelters, and even beheaded babies at a kibbutz located near the Gaza border.
Eli Cohen, Israel's foreign minister, told reporters Monday that video footage showing kidnapped toddlers in animal cages is authentic.
“They’re monsters, inhuman terrorists,” Cohen said of the Hamas terrorists who can be heard laughing in the background.
Glick believes Gaza residents with work permits, who were allowed to move around within Israel, contributed to the Hamas attack on unarmed Israelis at a music festival. Since the terrorist group intentionally sought “soft targets” to inflict death and collect hostages, she reasons, the Palestinians working in the area knew about that soft target and alerted Hamas.
“We were warned that they shouldn’t be allowed in because they gather up intelligence, and they live in a terror state that is waging war against us," Glick said of those permit holders. "The timing of the assault was based on 2,000 young people who had been partying all night and were probably sluggish at 6 in the morning. This shows the nature of Hamas,” she said.
Peaceful co-existence 'gone out the window'
Even worse, the Israeli government believed it was creating peace and goodwill in the Gaza Strip by allowing Palestinians to work and earn paychecks outside Gaza's border walls.
Overnight, Israel bombs continued to pound Gaza in advance of an imminent ground invasion.
In a televised address, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country, “We have only started striking Hamas. What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
Citing the weekend massacre and barbaric acts, Glick attempted to explain what happens next. Any concept of a Palestinian statehood, or even a peaceful co-existence, she said, are "gone out the window" after the attacks. Israelis are now united, she said, after witnessing the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. They are also determined to obliterate Hamas.
"Gaza and Hamas are going to be very, very different both topographically and population-wise at the end of this war,” she predicted.
