So we are expected to believe that Hamas, which can somehow conjure up exact numbers of dead and injured within minutes to hours after incidents they immediately blame on Israel (like the blast at Al-Ahli Hospital, which turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket that hit the parking lot – not an Israeli airstrike that hit the hospital itself) and regularly publishes precise, updated totals of all dead and injured thus far (as of yesterday, Hamas is claiming 30,534 dead and 71,920 injured – with no distinction between combatants and civilians), is unable to produce a list of those Israeli hostages who are still alive, saying they don’t know which ones are alive and which ones are dead.
If that doesn’t make you suspicious of the Hamas narrative and any information they share, it should. How is it possible that they could be so comprehensively meticulous in determining such accurate numbers under unquestionably chaotic circumstances, yet somehow, are incapable of making the same determinations regarding the hostages?
And, if you weren’t already suspicious of the Hamas narrative, you might want to think about why you take the words of a known terror organization at face value – or at least some of them. If you believe their numbers and their versions of what’s happening, but you don’t believe them when they publicly claim that they’ll continue to carry out more attacks like October 7th in order to kill as many Israelis as possible, you’re granting legitimacy to a terror organization and their explicitly stated plans and desire to try to commit genocide. They aren’t trying to hide their agenda – quite the opposite. They’re proud of it. They’re flaunting it. It’s in their charter.
It’s awful that innocent Palestinians are dying and that the situation in Gaza is so dire. It’s tragic that Hamas, knowing what the Israeli response would be (especially under the current leaders), chose to act in such a way anyway, willingly sacrificing the lives of thousands of civilians. They don’t deserve to die this way (though Hamas operatives do), but war is ugly, and Hamas chose an ugly war.
Make no mistake. Hamas isn’t trying to gain independence for Palestinians. What they’re doing is not about resistance. If they cared about their people, they wouldn’t have spent years repeatedly taunting Israel with rockets until Israel responded, without building even a single bomb shelter for Palestinian civilians or doing anything at all to protect them. If they cared about their people, they would have taken the billions of dollars they’ve received and invested in the local society and its infrastructure. But they didn’t. They chose to invest in a terror infrastructure and hundreds of miles of underground tunnels – to which regular civilians have no access. Their leaders—all of whom live abroad—chose to keep much of the money for themselves. Hamas has invested more money in trying to kill Israelis and make its leadership richer than in trying to keep its own people alive, safe, and healthy.
Israel left Gaza in 2005. We didn’t do it smoothly or gracefully and there are certainly things we could have done better, but we left – completely. When Hamas came to power (and don’t forget their brutally violent, deadly takeover of Gaza when they seized power from Fatah), they could have made different choices, but they didn’t. They could have created a functioning, flourishing society and worked towards even greater independence – but they didn’t. Their entire raison d’etre is to kill Israelis and try to destroy Israel.
The question isn’t whether or not Hamas will ultimately succeed – we know they won’t and they know it too. The question is, why don’t you believe them when they say they’ll keep trying, especially if you believe anything they say that casts Israel in a bad light?
