Understanding the Atrocities of Hamas

by Joseph S. Spoerl

The horrendous nature of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians in their October 2023 assault has now been confirmed by Israeli and international forensic scientists working in the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv. In a recent press conference there, to choose just one example, scientists shared images from a CT scan of a “completely charred mass of flesh” revealing “two spinal cords – one belonging to an adult, one to someone young – a parent and child bound together by metal wires before being set alight.” The ages of the hundreds of victims range from three months to 90 years. The forensic scientists note about many of these victims: “We know they were burned alive because there is soot in their trachea, their throats – meaning they were still breathing when set on fire.” Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.

We must ask ourselves a serious, non-rhetorical question here: How is it possible for human beings to do such things? There is only one plausible answer. The terrorists who performed these sadistic acts had been trained from an early age to regard Jews as sub-human, as vermin to be exterminated, and also as sources of Satanic evil in our world. In fact, Hamas propaganda, like the Nazi propaganda that has been an important influence on it, has been poisoning the minds of young Palestinians with genocidal hatred of Jews since Hamas was founded.

The Hamas Covenant, issued in 1988, identifies the Jews as the root cause of every war and revolution in history. Noting that “our fight with the Jews is very extensive and very grave,” it accuses Zionists of spreading drugs and alcohol and proclaims, “their aim is to break societies, undermine values, destroy people’s honor, create moral degeneration, and annihilate Islam.” The Covenant quotes a famous saying of Muhammad that foretells an apocalyptic struggle between Muslims and Jews: “The Hour of Judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…’”

This message is broadcast in mosques across the Gaza Strip. For example, on July 25, 2014, Al Aqsa TV aired a mosque sermon from the Deir Al-Balah Mosque in the Gaza Strip, in which the preacher said: “Our doctrine in fighting you (the Jews) is that we will totally exterminate you. We will not leave a single one of you alive, because you are alien usurpers of the land and eternal mercenaries. … Wherever the Jews lived, they spread corruption.” Also on the official Hamas TV station, the Hamas official Abdallah Jarbu, part of the ministry that staffs mosques in the Gaza Strip, in 2010 denied the humanity of the Jews, described them as “foreign bacteria,” and called upon Allah to “annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience.”

Children’s programs on the Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa TV, convey the same genocidal message. For instance, a children’s program on the official Hamas TV station on May 2, 2014 featured the host interviewing a little girl who said she wished to be a police officer when she grows up, “so that I can shoot Jews.” The host responded “All the Jews? All of them?” to which the girl responded, “Yes,” and the host answered, “Good.”

Hamas political leaders repeat these messages. In 2010, in a public address broadcast on Hamas TV, top Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar asserted that the Jews have deserved and provoked all the persecutions and expulsions they have suffered down through the millennia, e.g., at the hands of the Egyptian pharaoh, European Christians, and Adolph Hitler. Al-Zahar has the following message for the Jews: “there is no place for you among us, and you have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed for annihilation.” In 2011, in an interview on Hamas TV, Hamas cleric and member of the Palestinian legislature Yunis Al-Astal said: “The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians…will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang. … All the predators, … and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews.”

Given such hate-filled indoctrination, Hamas atrocities should not surprise us. They are exactly what we should expect.