Better late than never?

Yeah, I suppose, although there is a point where “late” is the equivalent of “never.” The propaganda war against Israel has been very effective, and reporting over a month after 10/7 that Hamas wanted to commit horrible atrocities and get a lot of their own citizens killed for propaganda purposes is like spitting into the wind.

Breaking news: New evidence reveals that Hamas planners intended to strike a blow of historic proportions on Oct. 7 with the expectation that their actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response. https://t.co/B3Ss0Q3LLq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 12, 2023

The Washington Post’s story is not unwelcome, but they are reporting today what has been blindingly obvious for over a month.

The evidence, described by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries, reveals an intention by Hamas planners to strike a blow of historic proportions, in theexpectation that their actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response. Several officials who had not previously spoken about the matter said the intelligence about Hamas’s motivations has become stronger in recent days.

The whole point of the Hamas attack was to be as brutal as possible, for the purpose of generating an overwhelming response by Israel, drawing the Israeli Army into Gaza. The “success” of the attacks, married with the inevitable civilian losses in Gaza, was supposed to spark a wider war–drawing in Fatah in the West Bank (or Hamas operatives there) and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Chances are good that Iran, which helped plan the war, promised support on other fronts through their proxies.

A Hamas official, Basem Naim, asserted in an interview Friday that the group planned in advance for a severe Israeli retaliation. He cited recent events, such as Jewish settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and the storming of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque by settlers, as fueling Palestinian rage.

“We knew there was going to be a violent reaction,” Naim said. “But we didn’t choose this road while having other options. We have no options.”

Hamas meticulously planned and prepared for a massacre of Israeli civilians on a scale that was highly likely to provoke Israel’s government into sending troops into Gaza, analysts said. Indeed, Hamas leaders have publicly expressed a willingness to accept heavy losses — potentially including the deaths of many Gazan civilians living under Hamas rule.

Potentially? Oh, come on. They constantly talk about how every Muslim should strive for martyrdom. Hamas makes no bones about dying in a war against Jews guarantees paradise.

“Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo, told Beirut’s LCBI television in an interview aired on Oct. 24. “We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”

Hamas was willing to accept such sacrifices as the price for kick-starting a new wave of violent Palestinian resistance in the region and scuttling efforts at normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states, according to current and former intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts.

In some ways, the most notable thing is how well Iran has been deterred by Israeli and, to an extent, American warnings. While the Biden Administration has been more restrained than it should have been in failing to respond to relatively minor attacks on US assets, it’s clear that the presence of not one but two aircraft carriers in range of Iran has changed their calculus. Hezbollah has been contained and Fatah in the West Bank looks like it is happy to see Hamas take the hits.

It’s not like Hamas and Fatah are friendly–they have warred against each other, and the Palestinian Authority has been almost as critical of Hamas as the US. Hamas wanted to shame the PA by appearing to be the vanguard of Palestinian resistance; right now it looks to be mostly a martyr-generating machine.

Mahmoud Habbash, adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that Hamas is deliberately killing children and women in Gaza to damage Israel's image

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank knows what Hamas is after fighting against them in 2007pic.twitter.com/PUHLhVYJeJ

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 5, 2023

However, Hamas officials have said repeatedly that they did expect — and welcomed — an extensive Israeli retaliation. Spokesman Ali Barakeh, reached by phone in Lebanon as the Israeli ground campaign was beginning, said Hamas had prepared itself for Israeli bombs and believed it could also repel an IDF ground assault from defensive positions linked by a latticework of tunnels.

“They can thwart it,” Barakeh said of Hamas’s forces. Referring to Israeli ground operations, he said: “Land is easier for us. Let them come attack by land. We are ready.”

Since the start of the ground invasion, other Hamas leaders have publicly exulted about what they perceive to be a strategic victory over Israel. Hamad declared in the Lebanese interview that Hamas was prepared to carry out the same kind of attack against Israel “again and again.”

“There will be a second, a third, a fourth” attack, Hamad said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit.

Hamas exalts in the brutality of terrorism, but that doesn’t mean they had no strategy aside from barbaric brutality. They were determined to stimulate a response in the hope of sparking a broader war.

This was the exact same strategy al Qaeda had adopted, and the goal of the September 11th attacks. As with September 11th, the strategy appears to have half-worked. While in neither case has an Arab uprising against the West been stimulated–in fact, Hamas’ attack so far has not been met with much approval in the Arab world, aside from pro-forma statements–both attacks succeeded in drawing the victim into a bloody, expensive war of indeterminate length.

In this sense, Hamas scored some points, although likely at a price they will regret committing to.

As for Gazans? It’s hard to see how they can escape the fate that Hamas committed them to.