Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Lebanon’s LBC TV on Oct. 24 that the terror group would continue to carry out massacres like the one it carried out in southern Israel on Oct. 7 until the Jewish state is destroyed.
“Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished,” said Hamad, according to a translation of the interview provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“We are not ashamed to say this, with full force,” he added.
Israel’s existence was “illogical,” he said, adding, “The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood and tears.”
Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated; We Are Victims – Everything We Do Is Justified #Hamas #Gaza #Palestinians pic.twitter.com/kXu3U0BtAP
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) November 1, 2023
“The Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 mass terror attack] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight,” said Hamad.
He reiterated Hamas’s false claim that the terror group had not intended to harm civilians, stating that the Oct. 7 assault had been “complicated.”
With regard to Israel’s response to the massacre, which has caused the deaths of many civilians in Gaza, Hamad said, “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”
Hamad’s remarks echoed those of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who said in an address broadcast by Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen on Oct. 26 that “the blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens with us resolve.”
Hamas, according to Hamad, are “victims of the occupation. Period.” Therefore, he said, “Nobody should blame us for the things we do. On Oct. 7, Oct. 10, Oct. 1,000,000—everything we do is justified.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas forces invaded southern Israel under the cover of massive rocket barrages, killing at least 1,400 people, the majority of them civilians, including women, children, the infants and the elderly, and wounding more than 5,000. More than 240 people were taken back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.