Captured Hamas documents provide reality check for those interested in reality

Critics of Israel’s all-out war in Gaza like to say that Hamas is an ideology and therefore can’t be destroyed through military means. But Hamas isn’t an ideology, it’s a terrorist military organization with an ideology.

A terrorist military organization can be destroyed through military means. In fact, that’s the only way it can be destroyed.

Israel’s critics do have a point, though. The ideology of Hamas can’t be destroyed militarily.

However, the critics’ point doesn’t yield their conclusion — that Israel shouldn’t use all military means possible to crush Hamas. In fact, it yields a conclusion the critics abhor — that after crushing Hamas militarily, Israel must remain in Gaza to make sure that Hamas’ ideology does not revive it, or some successor group, as a military threat to the Jewish state.

This conclusion is reinforced by the trove of Hamas documents Israel has captured in Gaza. The Washington Post, which grudgingly vouches for the authenticity of the documents, reports:

Years before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Hamas’s leaders plotted a far deadlier wave of terrorist assaults against Israel — potentially including a Sept. 11-style toppling of a Tel Aviv skyscraper — while they pressed Iran to assist in helping achieve their vision of annihilating the Jewish state, according to documents seized by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Electronic records and papers that Israeli officials say were recovered from Hamas command centers show advanced planning for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots — though several plans were ill-formed and highly impractical, terrorism experts said. The plans anticipate drawing in allied militant groups for a combined assault against Israel from the north, south and east.

Facing an enemy so determined to destroy it, Israel has no choice but to (1) make an all-out effort to kill as many enemy fighters as possible and destroy Hamas’ infrastructure and (2) remain in Gaza to prevent a Hamas revival. The task cannot be farmed out to the U.N. or the Palestinian Authority.

The U.N. is sympathetic to Hamas and has failed miserably to enforce the demilitarized zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon. The ceasefire that ended Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah was conditioned on the creation and enforcement of that zone. As for the PA, it shares Hamas’ goals, though perhaps not its determination and certainly not the level of support Hamas receives from Iran.

Arab countries not hostile to Israel want nothing to do with Gaza. But even if they did, Israel could not rely on their forces to prevent a revival of Hamas. Only a nation with skin in the game can maximize the likelihood that Hamas’ deadly and powerful ideology won’t enable it to rise again.

The trove of Hamas documents supports additional conclusions. One is the inexcusable cluelessness of Israel’s prime minister and its intelligence apparatus in understanding the enemy it faces in Hamas. Before October 7, they had no idea of the threat Hamas posed to Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu viewed Hamas more as a vehicle through which to undermine the Palestinian Authority than as a serious threat to Israel’s security. To be fair, since October 7, Netanyahu has been an excellent wartime leader, in my view. The Israeli electorate will have to decide whether this leadership outweighs his pre-war negligence.

The documents also shed light on Iran’s relationship to the October 7 attack. No smoking gun document shows that Iran knew in advance about that attack. However, it’s clear from the documents that Iran knew Hamas was planning something big. In fact, Hamas kept asking Iran for more resources with which to make something big happen. And Iran kept providing them:

In the letters written in 2021, Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar mounts a vigorous appeal to several senior Iranian officials — including the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei — for additional financial and military support, pledging that, with Iran’s backing, he could destroy Israel completely in two years. . . .

In the letters, Sinwar does not provide details of how he intended to destroy Israel. Israeli and other Middle Eastern officials say Tehran was surprised by the attack on Oct. 7, and angry at Sinwar for not revealing his intentions in advance. But they contend that both Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah knew that Hamas was making preparations for a major assault. “It was their shared strategy to attack Israel,” one analyst said. U.S. and Israeli analysts believe that Iran provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas’s military wing and increased its support in 2023.

(Emphasis added)

Iran was able to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas’ military wing because the Obama and Biden administrations, by lifting sanctions against the regime, enriched the mullahs. Critics warned that Iran would use a healthy portion of its new-found wealth to sponsor terrorism, especially against Israel.

Nor was this reality (one can’t really call it an insight) confined to critics. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that some of the $150 billion in sanctions relief the Obama administration was providing Iran’s rulers would fund terrorism. But Barack Obama provided the relief anyway. And after Donald Trump reimposed sanctions, Joe Biden provided Iran with new relief to the tune of billions of dollars by rescinding the Trump sanctions. .

The Obama/Biden chickens came home to roost, but in Israel rather than in the U.S. Maybe now, belatedly, they will come home to roost in Michigan.