On Oct 7, 2023, thousands of Muslim Jihadis swept from Gaza into Israel, killing, torturing, raping and kidnapping anyone in their path. The victims included not only Israelis or Jews, but Americans and Europeans, Christians and Buddhists, as well as those Bedouins whom the Hamas, PLO and Islamic Jihad attackers did not consider Muslims.

Their rationale was not a “Palestinian” cause or any of the later war propaganda myths about an “open air prison”, but an Islamic religious imperative to drive out infidels. That’s why they named their genocidal campaign, ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ after their occupation mosque planted in Jerusalem that they hoped to reclaim when they had killed or enslaved all the infidels in Israel.

In their earliest statements when they thought they were winning, Hamas leaders emphasized their religious agenda, of seizing the Al Aqsa Mosque and driving out the infidels, not a ‘Palestinian’ cause or the partial Israeli embargo on its limited border with Gaza.