Hamas Is A Third Rate Terrorist Organization
1 May 2024 by Larry Johnson
Let me start by establishing that I do not think it is fair to describe Hamas as an exceptional or deadly terrorist organization. Yes, it is a group that has carried out “terrorist” attacks — where terrorism is defined as an act of violence carried out on civilians or civilian targets — but the attacks have been sporadic. Israel’s own Foreign Ministry presents evidence that Hamas and other Palestinian Islamic groups, such as Islamic Jihad, since 2000, have killed an average of 60 Israelis per year (excluding October 7). Hell, Al Qaeda is credited with killing 2,996 people on September 11, which represents twice as many casualties in one day as Hamas and other Palestinian groups inflicted over a 24 year period — i.e., 1455 dead.
When you dig into the description of the attacks, a different picture emerges regarding Hamas. Take the year 2000 as an example (it was one of the years with the largest number of attacks). The Israeli Foreign Ministry records 35 attacks. Seventeen of these (49%) were attacks on military or police, not civilians. Guerrilla attacks on people wearing uniforms and carrying firearms is not terrorism. It is war.
I am not suggesting that Hamas has not been guilty of heinous terrorist attacks that killed civilians — they absolutely did. But we cannot ignore the fact that a significant number of the Palestinian Islamic attacks targeted military.
Hamas is first and foremost an ultra Sunni Islamist national liberation movement. Using the label “terrorist” is designed to discredit Hamas as having any legitimate claim to exercise political power within the Palestinian community. The 7 October attack on Israel was not a “terrorist” attack. While it may have scared the hell out of Israel as a nation, the attack itself was a well-organized military operation that targeted Israeli military installations and sought to take hostages from kibbutzim that abutted Gaza’s eastern border.
I am in the process of organizing the Israeli Foreign Ministry data set into a spreadsheet. Maybe someone else has done this, but I have not been able to locate such a product. Not all of the attacks recorded by the Foreign Ministry are attributed to Hamas. Many are credited to the PIJ.
Compare the loss of Israeli lives to the death toll Israel has inflicted on Palestinian civilians. In the period 2000 to 2014, the Israelis killed 7065 Palestinians — most of those in Gaza. Statista.com provides a breakout of the dead and wounded Palestinians in the period from 2008 to September 30, 2023:
The number of fatalities amongst the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza between 2008 and September 2023 stood at 6,407 and the number of injured people was 152,560. While the majority of fatalities amongst the Palestinians was in the Gaza Strip, more than half of the injured were based in the West Bank.
The facts are irrefutable — between 2000 and September 2023, Israel killed 8660 Palestinians. That is almost six times the number of Palestinians compared to the Palestinian Islamist terrorist attacks in Israel. The differential in the number wound is staggering. A fair analyst would conclude that the Palestinians are more victimized than the Israelis based on the lop-sided number of killed and wounded on the Palestinian side.
I discussed this issue today with Michael Farris on his podcast, Coffee with a Mike: