Will wonders never cease? Literally the only major American news outlet to even offer a single report on the declaration by Hamas of unending massacres for Israel managed to get an interview with the leader who promised to annihilate Israel yesterday. Not only did they get the interview, NBC News Matt Bradley stuck the landing with the right question, too.

Ghazi Hamad starts off by playing statesman with Bradley, but NBC News immediately cut to Hamad’s declaration of total annihilation for Israel nine days earlier, which Bradley said “sent shockwaves around the world.” Well, everywhere but in the US, where all of the major news outlets completely ignored it, with the exception of NBC’s lone ‘live update.’

But I digress, because Hamad’s mask slips in this interview too. When Bradley asks, “How can you ask for a cease-fire — how can you ask Israel to stop their aggression — when you go on television in Lebanon, here last week, and say that you will continue your aggression, you will continue to do October 7 again and again?”

“What do you want us to do,” Hamad responds angrily, “stop?”

As the Jerusalem Post reports, Hamad insists that Hamas has a “legal right” to conduct October 7-style massacres against Israel:

In his interview with NBC, Hamad was challenged to clarify that statement about repeating the October 7 massacre. He largely deflected, bringing up the massive number of Gazan civilians who have been killed since the start of the war. He said that the people of Gaza have been suffering for 17 years and it is the legal right of Palestinians to “fight against the occupation.”

He furthered his point by bringing up the plight of Jews in Nazi Europe. “It is according to international law,” Hamad said. “According to all of the regulations and the law. In Europe, you right against the Nazis.”

Well, according to international law, Hamas is a terrorist organization and its October 7 slaughter crimes against humanity. Hamad may not want to stand on “international law” four weeks after their baby-beheading and civilian-massacring blood orgy across southern Israel. Furthermore, according to international law, that was a massive cassus belli, after which Israel formally declared war on the offending combatant, Hamas. Therefore, the war in Gaza is not an “aggression,” as Hamad claims, but a consequence of war that Hamas initiated.

Secondarily, his point about ‘occupation’ underscores Hamad’s earlier statement. Gaza was not under occupation on October 7, and had not been occupied by Israel since 2005. Both Israel and Egypt partnered in a containment strategy after the Gazans elected Hamas to control their government and then prevailed in a short civil war against Fatah. When Hamad claims the “right” of resistance to “occupation,” he’s not talking about Gaza, but all of Israel. Hamad leaves this ambiguous with Bradley, but made it much more explicit in his October 24 appearance on Lebanon’s LBC:

HAMAD: The occupation must come to an end.

Q: Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?

HAMAD: No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.

Q: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

HAMAD: Yes, of course.

That alone makes any promise of a cease-fire ludicrous, even for a hostage negotiation. But Hamad and Hamas demand more than just a momentary “pause.” They want Israel to pull all of its forces out of Gaza first:

Hamad also made it clear that Israel would have to draw back its offensive in Gaza in order to have any kind of hostage negotiation. “We want to stop the aggression and killing and the slaughters on our people. And after that, we can talk about hostages, about the prisoners, about everything. But first, they have to stop the aggression.”

This is taqqiya in real time, because Hamas has no intention of ending its aggression — as Hamad makes clear with Bradley. He gives the game away in another sense, too. He claimed success in the Al-Aqsa Flood terror attack by citing the street protests for Palestinians in the West and making the Palestinian cause the top issue in the world. Bradley asked the obvious question arising from that claim:

BRADLEY: You got the people in the streets, in capitals throughout the world, protesting in favor of the Palestinians. It cost you the lives of thousands of people — innocent people. Will you do it again? You’ve said you will, to advance that cause again. Will you kill more civilians to get more protesters in the streets of Washington and London?

HAMAD: We are still fighting. You want us to stop? If we were to stop now —

BRADLEY: You’re asking for a cease-fire.

HAMAD: If we were to stop now, we would go back to the miserable situation, the humiliation, the occupation.

That’s certainly true of Hamas. It doesn’t have to be true of a Gaza without Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, however.

Besides that, this is exactly why a cease-fire won’t work. Hamas won’t even commit to ending the fighting in the short run, let alone the longer term, not even to the Western audiences they want to woo. Hamad insists that Hamas won’t stop fighting no matter what, and defends their “right” to conduct 10/7-style massacres from now until the end of time. Hamas wants everything on their terms, especially the impunity to slaughter women and children without consequence for their objective — the annihilation of Israel and the Jews.

There is no bargaining or negotiation with Hamas worth having, and no point in cease-fires or pauses in this situation. The only rational choice Israel and the West has is to see this grim task of destroying Hamas in Gaza all the way to the end.

Kudos to NBC News and especially Matt Bradley. Finally, one major American media organization decided to report the news rather than cover up for radical Islamist terrorists.

Addendum: Perhaps the New York Times got wind of Bradley’s interview. Late last night, they finally got around to reporting Hamad’s declaration of annihilation.