Khaled Abu Toameh
Gatestone Institute, July 28, 2025
“Hamas has no problem lying to Trump and US envoy Steve Witkoff, as they have probably already figured out.”
On October 24, 2023, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad threatened that his Iran-backed terror group would carry out more massacres against Israelis — time and again until Israel was annihilated. Referring to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel that resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, Hamad said:
“The Al-Aqsa Flood [the name Hamas uses to describe its October 7 slaughter] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth…. 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, whose group continues to hold captive 50 Israeli hostages (only 20 of whom are believed to be alive) repeated Hamas’s call for the elimination of Israel:
“The existence of Israel is illogical. The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears.”
Hamad made the threat from Qatar, where he and several other leaders of Hamas have been leading comfortable lives for the past few years. Qatar and Turkey are among the few countries that continue to host and protect the leaders of the Palestinian terror group whose members committed the worst crimes against Jews since the Holocaust. Hamad and other Hamas leaders have no problem boasting about the October 7 massacres and threatening to launch similar attacks against Israel from their villas and hotel suites in Doha and Istanbul. The Hamas leaders feel safe because they know they enjoy the luxurious support of governments far away from the fighting in Gaza.
On July 25, 2025, Hamad gave an interview to an Arab television station from Qatar. This time, however, he sounded different. Asked about the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip because of the war Hamas launched nearly two years ago, Hamad said that his group’s primary goal now was to end the war with Israel. “This is a painful and horrific war,” he remarked. “We fully understand the pain and suffering of our people in Gaza.” Hamad went on to praise the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for their “steadfastness and patience” during the war. ….SOURCE