The sad fact is that Hamas, or at least its policy toward Jews, is quite popular. Recent polling performed in July 2023 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reveals that “57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas—along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%).” Though measured a few months before the October attacks, this support does not reflect a “bait and switch” mechanism, whereby Gazans wanted the trains to run on time but could claim ignorance of Hamas’s genocidal policies. The Hamas Charter calls for the extermination of Israel, and the organization has long been indiscriminately lobbing rockets across the border and redirecting foreign aid toward terrorism. Buttressing the notion that violence against Jews is popular is the fact that other terror organizations in Gaza, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lion’s Den, enjoy even more widespread support, with three quarters of Gaza expressing support for both groups.

Gazans’ support for Hamas has proved remarkably stable. In a 2014 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, nearly nine in ten Palestinians expressed support for terror attacks against Israel. True to form, Hamas’s popularity in Gaza only surged in June 2021, just one month after the group began launching rockets into Israel, prompting the 2021 Gaza War. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 53 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at the time believed Hamas to be “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people.” Indeed, polling from March 2023 reveals that if elections were held in Gaza between Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas head would win 61 percent of the vote to Abbas’s 35 percent. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian civilians are not “moderate,” by even the loosest standards of the term.