A senior Hamas official told the New York Times last week that he would not have supported the October 7, 2023, terror attack against Israel if he had known the outcome — the destruction of Hamas and the devastation of Gaza.
The Times reported Monday:
Mousa Abu Marzouk, the Qatar-based head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, said in an interview with The New York Times that he would not have supported the attack if he had known of the havoc it would wreak on Gaza. Knowing of the consequences, he said, would have made it “impossible” for him to back the assault.
…
Mr. Abu Marzouk said that Hamas’s survival in the war against Israel was itself a “kind of victory.” He also likened Hamas to an average person fighting Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight boxing champion: if the untrained novice survived Mr. Tyson’s punches, people would say he was victorious, he said.
In absolute terms, he said it would be “unacceptable” to claim Hamas won, especially considering the scale of what Israel inflicted on Gaza.
The Times of Israel noted that Hamas was quick to disavow Abu Marzouk’s comments. Still, his candor suggests that the group understands that it has been defeated.
Abu Marzouk appears often in the Western media, presenting a more moderate face as part of Hamas’s public relations strategy. It is not clear whether his statements were an effort to relieve pressure on Hamas, or whether he was truly taking a different line from the terror organization as a whole.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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