- When Hamas launched the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, its immediate goals were to murder as many Jews as possible and to take as many hostages as possible to use as bargaining chips to secure the release of other genocidal terrorists sentenced by Israel to prison.
- Hamas’s additional goals were to provoke Israel into a massive military response that would take the lives of thousands of Gazans, who would then be used to vilify and castigate Israel in the international arena.
- Finally, Hamas sought to survive the war, maintain its position of governance and dominance in Palestinian society, and enjoy the fruits of the inevitable international effort to rebuild Gaza.
- Following Oct. 7, Israel’s government set the goal of dismantling Hamas’s military and governance capabilities. Only by destroying Hamas – through the elimination or capture of its members in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and the complete dismantling of its governing infrastructure – can Israel prevent a Hamas victory.
- Until January 2025, external forces compelled Israel to undermine its goals and allow Hamas to continue fulfilling its governance roles in the guise of humanitarian aid distribution.
- While Israel has secured the release of 197 hostages, Hamas continues to hold 58 people in captivity. Of these, there have been signs of life from 20 and another three may be alive. While some try to promote the false narrative that the terrorists would release all the hostages if Israel agreed to end the war before destroying Hamas, the truth is that the hostages are Hamas’s ultimate insurance policy. Hamas will never release all of the hostages simply through negotiation.
- Accordingly, the Israeli military has no alternative other than to systematically comb through Gaza, inch by inch, in search of the hostages.
Hamas’s Goals for the October 7 Massacre
When Hamas launched the October 7, 2023, massacre, it had several goals, all of which have almost been achieved. Hamas’s immediate goals, which it realized on the day of the massacre, were to murder as many Jews as possible and to take as many hostages as possible. The hostages taken were to be used by the terrorists as bargaining chips to secure the release of other genocidal terrorists arrested, convicted, and sentenced by Israel to extended prison sentences. Hamas’s additional goals were to provoke Israel into a massive military response that would take the lives of thousands of Gazans. The dead Gazans, and the military response, would then be used to vilify and castigate Israel in the international arena and to reignite the discussion and bring the international community to impose on Israel the recognition of the terror “State of Palestine.” Finally, Hamas sought to survive the war, maintain its position of governance and dominance in Palestinian society, and be able to enjoy the fruits of the inevitable international effort to rebuild Gaza.
Hamas Relies on Its Allies to Assist in Achieving Its Goals
From the outset, Hamas knew that it was no match for the military prowess of Israel. The terrorists fully understood that Israel’s response would be crushing, and rightfully so. Having intentionally positioned its terror infrastructure in the heart of the Gazan population and sensitive sites like hospitals, Hamas knew that thousands of Gazans would be killed and that the destruction in the Gaza Strip would be extensive. While never caring about the dead Gazans, the suffering of those who remain alive, or the destruction, Hamas knew that it had trusty allies on which it could rely, who would turn the justified Israeli response into a strategic asset to be used against the Jewish state.
The UN Disgrace
Heading the list of the trusted allies was the United Nations. Israel enjoyed momentary sympathy for the victims in the towns, villages, and kibbutzim around Gaza and at the site of the Nova music festival. However, within hours, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was spouting the Hamas narrative justifying the massacre. Soon thereafter, every one of the UN organizations operating in Israel joined the Hamas effort.
Terrorism-infested UNRWA, many of whose employees participated in the massacre, was quick to side with Hamas and bemoan the “dire” humanitarian situation, always stressing the effect of the Israeli response on the so-called “refugees.” UNRWA, the UN agency dedicated solely to perpetuating the lie that the “Palestine refugees” would one day demographically and democratically destroy Israel, shrugged off the fact that its facilities in Gaza, including its headquarters, had been turned into Hamas terror bases. It then launched a global campaign applauding itself for its services to the Gazans and even declared its indispensability.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA) immediately assumed the position of Hamas bullhorn, UN-washing, and spreading the false Hamas death toll statistics across the globe.
UNICEF, the UN’s children’s organization, ignored the murder, beheading, and kidnapping of Jewish children and, using the Hamas-OCHA-washed statistics, immediately bemoaned the death of the Gazan children.
While the anti-Israel-biased UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed resolution after resolution condemning Israel, the UN Security Council (UNSC) was not even capable of mustering an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas, let alone designate it as a terrorist organization.
Assistance from the Iranian Axis of Terror
The second sphere of Hamas allies came from the Iranian terror axis. With the backing of their Iranian patrons, Lebanese Hizbullah and the Yemenite Houthis quickly joined the assault on Israel. Hizbullah launched over ten thousand rockets, missiles, and UAVs at Israel, causing both extensive damage and the evacuation of over 140,000 Israelis. The Houthis combined direct attacks on Israel with attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea. Even though the Houthi attacks caused direct damage to many countries, including, predominantly, Egypt, the international community showed no great determination to contain, let alone neutralize, the threat.
While Iran preferred, initially, to use its proxies to do its dirty work, eventually, but inevitably, the mullahs in Tehran also joined the assault on Israel, firing hundreds of ballistic missiles and UAVs.
Assistance from the Demonstrators
The third sphere of Hamas allies came from predominantly Muslim and anti-Israel groups. Around the world, Hamas mobilized grassroots support, sending millions of people to demonstrate against Israel, attack Jews, and pressure their governments to sanction Israel.
What about Egypt and the Palestinian Authority?
The world watched impotently as Egypt continued the cross-border supply train to Hamas and, simultaneously, refused to allow any of the Gazans to leave Gaza and seek refuge.
The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, watched with glee. Israelis were being murdered, Israel was being delegitimized, its political enemy, Hamas, was being decimated and, slowly but surely, even Western leaders were buying into the Hamas goals, pushing for the recognition of the “State of Palestine.”
Israel’s Calculated Response
In the meantime, Israel executed a decisive response. Tens of thousands of Gazan terrorists were killed. Hamas’s extensive terror infrastructure was decimated, resulting in the destruction of much of Gaza. The Shi’ite towns in southern Lebanon, which served as forward terror bases, and scores of other Hizbullah sites were destroyed. The now widely acclaimed “Beeper Operation” and the elimination of long-time Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as many other senior figures, finally brought Hizbullah to its knees. In response to the Houthi aggression, Israeli planes flew 2,000 km. and struck their strategic assets in Yemen. In one round of the Israeli response to the mullahs, Iran lost one of the sites that produced a critical component for its nuclear weapon program and had its air defenses stripped bare.
However, despite the cautious Israeli response, Hamas also started realizing its additional goals.
Hamas Achieves Its Goal of Vilifying Israel
The UN mechanisms, including but not limited to the UNGA, the UN Human Rights Council and its host of antisemitic “Special rapporteurs,” and the International Court of Justice, all joined the Hamas goal of vilifying and castigating Israel. Report after warped report accused Israel of everything from inventing false claims of rape during the October 7 massacre, to sexual violence by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested that the court issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Minister of Defense Yoav Galant. While ignoring substantial and substantive claims against the court’s jurisdiction, the three court judges accepted the request and issued the warrants, thereby equating the leaders of law-abiding Israel with the worst war criminals.
Governments around the world, including but not limited to former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and others, all imposed full or partial bans on their export to Israel of weapons or components for military use.
Nine Countries Recognize “Palestine”
Nine countries – Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Barbados – gave the genocidal terrorists the supreme gift for massacring Jews and recognized the non-existent “State of Palestine.” In addition, recent reports indicate that France, and potentially the United Kingdom, are also going to reward Hamas and recognize “Palestine.”
Freeing the Terrorists
Alongside the realization of its diplomatic goals, using and abusing the hostages seized during the massacre, Hamas coerced Israel into releasing 2,144 terrorists in return for the release of some of the hostages.
What Needs to Be Done to Prevent Hamas’s Victory?
If events continue to develop along their present trajectory, there is no doubt that Hamas will have won the war and realized all but one of the goals it set for the October 7 massacre – destroying Israel.
Since handing victory to a genocidal terrorist group would be a disaster for Israel, it is imperative that Israel adopt the following measures to negate the achievements that Hamas has made since October 7.
Total Victory over Hamas
The surest way to prevent some of the victories is to destroy Hamas and the other terrorist groups in their entirety. In the past, the war-like events between Israel and Hamas (and the other terrorists) in Gaza, inter alia, in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, always ended in some temporary ceasefire or “Hudna.”
Implementing what they see as Islamic tradition, the terrorists breached every ceasefire to provoke Israel. As each ceasefire took hold, the terrorists were emboldened and celebrated, having attacked Israel, survived another “cycle,” and laid another building block upon which to vilify Israel.
Following the October 7 massacre, Israel’s government set the goal of dismantling Hamas’s military and governance capabilities. While it’s true that Islamic fundamentalism, as embodied by Hamas, is a challenging adversary to eliminate, Hamas’s ideology and actions are fundamentally no different from those of Nazism. Although traces of Nazism persist, the defeat of the Third Reich and the systematic de-Nazification of Germany have rendered it largely dormant, with no significant daily influence. Similarly, only by destroying Hamas – through the elimination or capture of its members in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and the complete dismantling of its governing infrastructure – can Israel prevent a Hamas victory.
While the goal was clear, until January 2025, external forces compelled Israel to undermine its goals and allow Hamas to continue fulfilling its governance roles in the guise of humanitarian aid distribution.
While committed to achieving the goals set by the Israeli government, and after the initial intensive fighting, Israel’s security establishment adopted a policy of carrying out sporadic raids against the terrorists, rather than seizing territory and systematically clearing it of enemy forces and infrastructure.
The approach appears to have changed since March 2025, when Hamas refused to extend the latest ceasefire and continue releasing hostages.
Potentially, the best graphic explanation of the policy change came in the form of a map showing the widening Israeli control in Gaza. Bemoaning the change in Israeli policy, most prominently the refusal to allow Hamas to continue distributing humanitarian aid, on May 10, 2025, UN OCHA claimed that “70% [of the Gaza Strip] is now within Israeli-militarized zones, under displacement orders, or both.” While the aim of its post and map was to criticize Israel, effectively, it graphically demonstrated the tightening noose.
As a prerequisite to any ability to deny Hamas victory, Israeli military operations in Gaza must continue with full force and must intensify. Israel must saturate Gaza with soldiers and eliminate, either by killing or arresting, the remaining terror forces.
Freeing the Hostages
While Israel has secured the release of 197 of the hostages, as of May 12, 2025, Hamas continues to hold 58 people in captivity. Of these hostages, there have been signs of life from 20; another three are considered to be alive, in the absence of proof of their deaths, and another 36 are known to have been murdered by the terrorists.
While some people are trying to promote the false narrative that the terrorists would release all the hostages if Israel agreed to end the war before destroying Hamas, the truth is that the hostages are Hamas’s only leverage against Israel and are its ultimate insurance policy. Despite the cheap slogans, Hamas will never release all of the hostages simply through negotiation.
Accordingly, the Israeli military has no alternative other than to systematically comb through Gaza, inch by inch, in search of the hostages, carrying out focused operations when intelligence information indicates their whereabouts. These operations should be carried out even at the potential risk to the living hostages.
Prevent the Recognition of “Palestine”
While Israel indeed cannot dictate foreign policy to other sovereign countries, the ability to recognize the “State of Palestine” is dependent on the existence of an effective Palestinian body of governance.
Thus, to prevent the growing recognition of the “State of Palestine,” Israel must recognize that the Oslo Accords have failed, and colossally. That recognition should then be the basis for declaring the demise of the Oslo Accords and the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. Simultaneously, Israel should end the 58-year-long policy of ambiguity and apply Israeli law to most of Judea and Samaria.
This move should not come, as some have suggested, in response to recognition by additional countries of “Palestine.” Instead, the move should be adopted as a clear manifestation of Israel’s commitment to take indefinite control of the Jewish ancestral homeland, and to prevent the creation of a Palestinian terror state to the west of the Jordan River.
Implement without Delay the “Trump Vision for Gaza”
Considering the extensive destruction of the Gaza Strip, President Trump has suggested allowing Gazans who did not participate in terror to leave the area. Once emptied, Gaza would be placed under international guardianship, its terror infrastructure destroyed, and it would be rebuilt, maximizing its potential.
Those who object to the Trump vision are not honestly expressing humanitarian concern for the Gazans, but rather are insistent on weaponizing their suffering to the detriment of, and against, Israel.
The non-terrorist Gazan population needs to undergo extensive de-Hamasification, similar to the efforts to de-Nazify Germany after WWII. This process would best be achieved if the Gazans were, albeit temporarily, allowed to find refuge outside of the Gaza Strip.
The implementation of the Trump vision does not necessarily need to include forcible eviction of the Gazans. However, those who chose to remain would have to do so without any facilities, including, potentially, water and electricity, and without any governance body that would be responsible for providing those services.
Conclusion
After nineteen months of fighting, despite planning and carrying out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas is close to realizing almost all of the goals it set before the massacre. If Hamas is allowed to realize its objectives, the success would not usher in a new dawn of Israeli-Palestinian peace, but rather ensure many more decades of death and bloodshed.
To prevent Hamas from winning the war, Israel has the opportunity to implement tactical military steps and strategic diplomatic steps. Implementation of these steps would both destroy Hamas and ensure Israel’s long-term security. Since time is of the essence, Israel must push forward simultaneously on all fronts and without further delay.
