Today’s quote comes to us from ghazi hamad, a member of hamas’ political bureau.
Here, from the invaluable memri.org website, is what hamad has to say about the current, and historic, situation in the part of Palestine currently occupied by Israel and Gaza. Please pay special attention to the latter part of his statement, which I have put in bold print:
“I’ll say it very clearly and in a nutshell: The weapons constitute the Palestinian cause. Our weapons equal our cause. We have been raised since childhood… I’m not talking just about [Hamas], but about all Palestinians, and all members of the Palestinian factions, who bore arms, fought, waged Jihad, were martyred, and irrigated the soil with their blood. The [weapons] have always been our main force in confronting the occupation. Therefore, there has always been a Palestinian consensus about this. No Palestinian is saying now that the resistance must end, because surrendering our weapons means the end of the resistance, and the end of the Palestinian cause.
“We, as Palestinians, will not surrender our weapons. They need to understand this. Not even a blank round. Surrendering our weapons will only come as part of the political solution. Israel can only dream that we will ever surrender our weapons to it.
“The Palestinians are not doing anything illegal. We are fighting for our freedom. We are not terrorists and we are not using any terrorist methods. We have a right to fight. Even October 7… The world thinks that history has stopped on October 7. No! History started in 1948.
“October 7 was a response to all the Israeli crimes over 77 years.
“The powerful blow that was delivered to Israel on October 7 has yielded three very important historic achievements. First of all, it brought the Palestinian cause back [to center stage]. Why are all these countries recognizing Palestine now? Had any country dared to recognize the state of Palestine, prior to October 7? The overall outcome of October 7 forced the world to open its eyes to the Palestinian cause, and to act forcefully in this respect. [They recognize now] that the Palestinian people deserve freedom and their own state.
“The second thing is that the whole world believed that the occupation state is a beautiful democratic country and suffering from oppression and persecution. Today, I believe that the whole world has become convinced [otherwise], and that the mask has fallen from Israel’s face. The whole world is acting against Israel. The rallies and festivals in America, Britain, France, and Germany talk about the genocide. Who would have thought that the PM of the occupation state would become wanted by the ICC, and so would the [IDF] Chief of Staff. Israel is now accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing. All of those things were revealed about Israel.
“The third thing is that people who thought that defeating Israel is difficult [realized] today that it is very easy. Today, through October 7, we proved that defeating Israel is not as difficult as people had thought.”
There you have it. A hamas official’s takeaway from October 7 and its aftermath. Complete with a joyous belief that this has caused Israel’s defeat (which, given the imbecilic reactions of people like the UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron and Canada’s Carney, among others, has a modicum of logic.
I award ghazi hamad Quote Of The Day honors for giving us a full understanding of how hamas views history, how it views October 7, 2023 in particular, and what it evidently feels is the highly positive fallout from that event. With not a word of concern for the massive death toll hamas generated by massacring well over 1,000 people, taking hundreds of hostages and therefore causing Israel to fight back – which required hitting the military installations and tunnel systems hamas intentionally put in civilian areas, so it could use its own citizens as human shields.
This is what Israel deals with. Every day of every week of every year. One thing ghazi hamad had right: it is not going to end. At least not any time soon.
