I bet they were. In fact, we hardly need the Gazan testimony today to know that they fully supported Hamas’ launch of war against Israeli civilians in mass attacks around Gaza’s borderlands. In video after video promulgated by the Gazans and Hamas terrorists themselves, we saw them dancing in the streets as they dragged bodies and hostages into Gaza from Israel, and mocking and terrorizing children hostages as part of their celebration.

As Haaretz reports today, though, it has begun to dawn on Gazans that they seriously miscalculated how Israel and its allies would respond to this war. “At first we were ecstatic,” one Gazan tells their reporter, celebrating it as a “historic day.” Now they are finding out just how historic it might be, as it might send Palestinian Gaza into the history books:

“None of us believed the videos we saw on Saturday morning. Hamas fighters inside Israeli territory and fighting with all their might,” Maha, a 34-year-old woman from Gaza City said in a call with Haaretz. “Who would have thought this would happen?” She called October 7 “a historic day for the Palestinian people.”

Maha is not alone in defining the Hamas invasion of Israeli territory as a historic day. Most Palestinians from Gaza who spoke to Haaretz described the first hours as the beginning of the “liberation of Palestine.”

“We were ecstatic. It’s like a dream that is hard to wake up from,” Maha adds. “But as the picture became clearer, and I saw that there were Israeli prisoners, I realized that we were in a nightmare, in hell.”

First off, let’s parse out “fighting with all their might.” Hamas terrorists paraglided into a concert to slaughter at least 260 unarmed civilians, a number of them foreigners. That’s not “might” — that’s gutless terrorism against defenseless people, the most cowardly attack of all. The fact that this made Gazans “ecstatic” tells us plenty about not just their culture but also their complete embrace of Hamas as their leadership.

But of course, it was much worse than that, as i24’s report today makes clear. The same “heroic” Hamas “fighters” were decapitating babies too:

“I’m talking to some of the soldiers…what they witnessed…babies, their heads cut off…” pic.twitter.com/OzhN9zxaQF

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 10, 2023

This is what made Gazans “ecstatic.” Reports and video showing Hamas raping women and killing children didn’t bother them a bit. Only after they considered the potential consequences of the hostaging did their enthusiasm dim somewhat.

Let this serve as a reminder to those who argue that we should separate Gazans from the Hamas government they elected in 2006 and which they have fully supported ever since. Hamas launched this war in part to make Gazans ecstatic, and they succeeded. And Gazans are clear on the objective, which isn’t more fully autonomous control of Gaza:

“I don’t support Hamas’ positions, but this war is a direct result of the siege on Gaza and the occupation by the enemy. Israel has been occupying our Palestinian lands since 1967, Maher said, adding that Palestinians despair of how they have been treated by successive Israeli governments. “We all know very well that they are not interested in negotiations with the Palestinians. That’s the only option we have left – to fight,” he said. Maher does not agree with the claim that this war was launched because of the normalization process taking shape with Saudi Arabia. “The war for Al-Aqsa is our top priority,” he said, referring to the mosque on the Temple Mount, known to Moslems as Haram al-Sharif.

They want Jerusalem back, and Israel pushed back to its 1948 borders — as a start. Their real mission is clear from the Palestinian protest chant From the river to the sea — the eradication of Israel entirely. That very much includes making everyone they see as settlers into legitimate targets of violence, children and babies included. Raping and pillaging are embraced as well by the Gazans.

So why should anyone object when Israel responds by defeating and subjugating Gaza in the barbaric war their government launched and they cheered?

What becomes clear in this piece from the far-Left Haaretz is the dawning realization that Gazans made a fatal miscalculation by launching this war. They cheered when Hamas terrorists dragged hostages back because they assumed that the Israelis would play by the old rules: some retaliatory attacks and then generous terms for hostage swaps. They likely assumed that Israel’s allies in the West would pressure them, as usual, to use only “proportional” force in precision-targeted strikes.

Instead, the attacks forced Israel to confront a hard reality: there is no peaceful coexistence with Hamas or any other Iranian proxy on its borders. Having tolerated the missile attacks for eighteen years, Israel had hardened its defenses in the calculation that settling the Gaza question would be far more costly than simply isolating it and controlling its borders to keep arms from getting in. This Hamas attack exposed the folly of that approach, as well as the miscalculation of containment of Iran’s ambition to annihilate Israel.

They now have no choice but to uproot and destroy Hamas’ footprint in Gaza and ensure it never returns — and that likely means the end of Gaza as a Palestinian settlement. That should please Egypt, even if they won’t admit it, as Hamas was a malevolent branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the enemy of the al-Sisi regime there. It would remove the Palestinian issue from their border and make it into a West Bank/Jordan problem. Whatever other issues this creates for al-Sisi, removing that headache and putting Israel in control of Gaza may well be worth it.

For that matter, it might simplify things for Mahmoud Abbas, although he won’t admit it either. It will eliminate his main rival for power and the complication of Gaza in any future negotiations. Abbas and his Fatah regime are less connected to Iran than they are the Sunni states, at least traditionally, and furthermore they have to rely on the nearby Sunni states for both diplomatic and economic support, especially Jordan. This certainly serves as an object lesson about the end of Israeli tolerance for intifada and sets a precedent for the consequences that could follow, a precedent that will become more firm if Israel really presses this to its strategic end.

And if they do, this will likely be a serious miscalculation for Tehran, too. Their lines of communication to the West Bank are much more difficult than they are to Gaza, for obvious reasons. It was far easier to foment jihad in Gaza through their Hamas proxy as a way to wear down Israel and the West. The mullahs in Tehran must have also assumed that the result of the Hamas war would be a huge morale boost that would cause the West Bank to rise up, join Hezbollah, and overrun a confused and reeling Israel at its moment of crisis. Instead, Iran appears to be on the brink of losing its only real footprint in Israel and perhaps just days away from a massive refugee crisis, as Egypt and other Sunni states will almost certainly refuse to grant the Iranian-allied Gazans to remain for long once they are ejected from Gaza.

Israel didn’t declare war as a rhetorical device, but as a legal step toward total victory over its enemy. The only way to rescue the situation now would be for Gazans to immediately capitulate the territory to Israel and surrender all Hamas terrorists and hostages. That is the only outcome in the war they launched that might keep them in Gaza and under some form of autonomous government. If not, the Gazans had better study the end of World War II and prepare on the basis of what happened to the Germans after the Allies crushed the Nazis.

This is what happens when you launch wars of annihilation and conquest, especially with this level of barbarity to inspire your enemies and force your allies to back away. You either win it or get crushed. FAFO, indeed.