RELEASED HOSTAGE LIRI ALBAG SAID RUEFULLY THAT GAZA CONSISTS OF '2 MILION TERRORISTS'

Palestinians are Hamas, and Hamas are Palestinians

Even after suffering the effects of war, a majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas and the massacre it launched in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. 

 

By Jason Shvili

 

JNS

Mar 4, 2025 

 

Palestinians, including women and children, in Gaza joined members of the Al-Qassam Brigades to watch Israeli hostages being handed over to the Red Cross on January 19, 2025

 

How many times have you heard well-meaning progressives say that Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian people? Indeed, less than two weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—then-President Joe Biden said, “The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.”

The truth is that the majority of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), supported the Oct. 7 massacre, and more than 1 million (48%) still support “armed struggle” to end the “occupation.”

Palestinians have a long history of supporting Hamas. Back in 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election. It was the last time the Palestinians held elections. Little has changed. While recent polls show support for Hamas falling, Palestinians still support their primary goal: the elimination of the Jewish state.

Research through 2024 shows the overwhelming majority of Palestinians supported Hamas’s attack on and kidnapping of mostly Jewish civilians, though astoundingly, 89% deny Hamas’s atrocities. Thousands of Palestinian “civilians” eagerly took part in the massacre, and 17 months later, many more thousands turned out to mock Israeli hostages during their release.

Ordinary Palestinians also happily assisted Hamas by hiding Israeli hostages and the terrorist group’s tunnels and hideouts. No wonder that Liri Albag, an Israeli who was held hostage in a private home in the Strip and recently released, said ruefully that Gaza consists of “2 million terrorists.”

Moreover, research shows that even those who don’t support Hamas do support the group’s Islamist ideology and its terrorist methods.

Movements around the world, the global media and politicians who excuse the Palestinians for their brutal dictators are simply ignoring the hateful values that course widely through Palestinian society.

It’s time for the politicians, media, social movements and the American public to understand and accept that Hamas speaks and acts for the vast majority of Palestinians. Make no mistake, the Palestinians are Hamas. Hamas are the Palestinians.

Palestinians’ support for Hamas goes back decades. Palestinian voters elected Hamas to power in 2006, with 44.45% of the vote, giving them a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

A year later, Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority. Whereas several Arab states experienced rebellions and revolutions in the past decade, Hamas has encountered little popular resistance to its rule of Gaza.

After the Oct. 7 pogrom, support for the terrorist group increased. According to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) conducted in December 2023, 43% of Palestinians expressed support for Hamas. In contrast, Fatah, the second most popular faction, had just 17% support. A subsequent poll conducted in September 2024 showed that even after nearly a year of witnessing and suffering the effects of war with Israel, Palestinians continued to support Hamas more than any other faction.

Even Palestinians who don’t support Hamas very much support their ideology and methods. Indeed, a survey by researchers at Oxford University found that 98% of Gazans said they were religious and almost as many said they viewed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as religious, not political—exactly as Hamas. Furthermore, polls show that Palestinians in Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, broadly support terrorism as a means to end the “occupation” and achieve independence, just like Hamas. These polls also reveal that more than half of Palestinians want Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state governed under Islamic law—just like Hamas.

Palestinians broadly support the Oct. 7 massacre. The December 2023 poll by PCPSR showed that 72% of Palestinians supported Hamas’s decision to launch the Oct. 7 attacks. The effects of war since then have eroded Palestinians’ support for this decision, yet the September 2024 poll showed that 54% of Palestinians still supported it.

Palestinians enthusiastically participate in Hamas’s atrocities against Israel. In fact, an Israel Defense Forces’ assessment released in August 2024 revealed that more than 2,000 Palestinians who invaded Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7 were not Hamas members—many were mere “civilian” terrorists. Palestinian civilians went into a maniacal frenzy when hostages were kidnapped into Gaza, surrounding the vehicles used to carry them and shouting “Death to the Jews.” Similarly, more than a year later, Palestinian “civilians” cheered and jeered as Hamas mockingly paraded hostages before their release.

When the coffins of the Bibas children, who were murdered with the terrorists’ bare hands, were paraded before civilian mobs through the streets of Gaza, it wasn’t just Hamas presiding, but members and supporters of other Palestinian factions, including the PLO’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Furthermore, some hostages were held in civilian homes, including female soldiers, who were used as slaves, and forced to cook and clean for Palestinian families. Albag, for example, was forced to clean toilets for a family and cook food that she was forbidden to eat. She subsisted on scraps and was only allowed to shower after 37 days.

Palestinian civilians also gladly assisted Hamas during the war by hiding their terrorist infrastructure in civilian buildings—schools, hospitals, mosques, playgrounds and even in children’s bedrooms.

Progressives cannot deny that Hamas and the Palestinian public are virtually indistinguishable. No matter how well-meaning, progressives cannot deny that the Palestinians elected Hamas to govern them. They cannot deny the research that shows broad support among Palestinians for Hamas, their ideology and their methods, or the research that reveals overwhelming Palestinian support for the atrocities of Oct. 7. Finally, they cannot deny that even as Hamas’s popularity fades, Palestinian civilians continue to support its goals, ideology and methods.

Those who assert that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people are either fooling themselves or trying to gaslight you, contrary to all factual evidence.