How Has Hamas Attempted to Justify Its Invasion of Israel?

Question: How (if at all) has Hamas attempted to justify its invasion of Israel?

Response:

Hamas has offered a fairly elaborate justification for its October 7, 2023 invasion, which it calls “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” Its argument has two distinct parts: justification for launching an armed operation at all, and denial or minimization of what its forces did to civilians.

Hamas’s principal claims are:

• Resistance to occupation. Hamas portrays the operation as an exercise of the Palestinian right to resist Israeli occupation and obtain national independence. It places October 7 in the context of Palestinian displacement beginning in 1948 and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza beginning in 1967.

• The Gaza blockade. It cites Israel’s land, sea, and air restrictions on Gaza, then in their seventeenth year, as an intolerable siege to which armed resistance was a “necessary” and “normal” response.

• Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem. Hamas accused Israel of threatening Muslim control of, and access to, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. This supplied both the operation’s name and one of its most emotionally powerful rationales.

• West Bank settlements and settler violence. Hamas points to continued settlement expansion, Palestinian displacement, home demolitions, Israeli military operations, and attacks by settlers.

• Palestinian prisoners. One declared objective was to seize Israeli soldiers and exchange them for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Hamas has described those prisoners as being mistreated and wrongfully detained.

• Failure of diplomacy. Hamas contends that the Oslo peace process produced neither Palestinian statehood nor an end to settlement expansion, and that Israel had effectively foreclosed a negotiated Palestinian state.

• Restoring the Palestinian issue to international attention. Hamas officials subsequently acknowledged a larger strategic purpose: disrupting the status quo, preventing the Palestinian question from being ignored, and apparently interfering with the developing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In other words, the catastrophic Israeli response was not necessarily unforeseen; Hamas regarded regional upheaval as preferable to a gradual consolidation of Israeli control.

Hamas assembled these arguments most fully in its January 2024 paper, Our Narrative … Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

The much weaker part of Hamas’s defense concerns the treatment of civilians. Hamas asserted that the operation was planned principally to attack military installations and capture soldiers. It claimed that its religious and moral rules prohibited intentionally attacking civilians, that Israeli defenses collapsed unexpectedly, and that “some faults” occurred in the resulting chaos. It has also attributed some Israeli deaths to Israeli fire and suggested that unaffiliated Palestinians entering through the breached border committed some atrocities.

Those assertions cannot satisfactorily account for the evidence. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups deliberately killed and mistreated civilians, took hostages, and committed war crimes—including intentional attacks against civilians. It also found evidence of sexual and gender-based violence. The Commission’s detailed findings do not support Hamas’s characterization of civilian deaths as merely unintended consequences of an operation directed at military targets.

There is therefore an important distinction:

Hamas can point to genuine Palestinian grievances that help explain why the attack occurred. Those grievances do not justify deliberately killing civilians or taking civilian hostages.

Even if one accepts a Palestinian right to resist occupation, the laws of armed conflict still prohibit intentionally attacking civilians, indiscriminate attacks, hostage-taking, torture, and sexual violence. A lawful cause does not legalize unlawful methods. Moreover, statements by some Hamas leaders that October 7 should be repeated and that Israel ultimately must be eliminated undermine the narrower claim that the operation was merely a limited defensive action.

My assessment is that Hamas has constructed a recognizable political justification for armed resistance, based on occupation, blockade, settlements, prisoners, and failed diplomacy. But it has not produced a credible legal or moral justification for the defining features of October 7: the deliberate massacres of civilians and the seizure of civilian hostages. Its response to those acts has chiefly been denial, minimization, blame-shifting, and an attempt to subsume them within the broader Palestinian cause.

Did Hamas Foresee a Disproportionate Israeli Retaliation?

Question: Given the huge disparity between the military capabilities of Israel, versus those of Hamas, did not Hamas foresee the disproportionate retaliation to which it would be subjected?

Response:

Yes. It is virtually inconceivable that Hamas did not foresee an overwhelmingly powerful Israeli response. The available evidence indicates that its leaders expected one and regarded Palestinian suffering as an acceptable—or strategically useful—cost.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said afterward: “We knew there was going to be a violent reaction.” Khalil al-Hayya was even more explicit: Hamas knew that Israel’s reaction to such a “great act” would be correspondingly large. He explained that the objective was not to improve Gaza’s immediate living conditions but to overturn the existing political situation and force the Palestinian question back onto the international agenda. The Center for Strategic and International Studies summarizes these statements and the apparent strategy.

Several considerations reinforce that conclusion:

• Hamas had experienced major Israeli operations in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and 2021. It therefore had ample evidence of Israel’s capacity and willingness to respond heavily to much smaller attacks.

• October 7 was planned over a long period, involved breaching Israel’s border, overrunning military posts and communities, killing approximately 1,200 people, and taking more than 250 hostages. No rational planner could have expected Israel to treat that as another limited rocket exchange.

• Hamas constructed an extensive tunnel system and prepared underground command posts and supplies. Those preparations show that it anticipated a prolonged Israeli counterattack—although the tunnels afforded far greater protection to Hamas fighters and leaders than to Gaza’s civilian population.

• Hamas apparently hoped that Hezbollah, Iran, West Bank Palestinians, and perhaps other regional actors would enter the conflict more fully. That did not happen on the scale Hamas may have anticipated. A broader uprising might have divided Israeli forces and altered the military balance.

• Hamas leaders subsequently spoke of the attack as having shattered the status quo, revived the Palestinian cause internationally, and disrupted Israeli-Arab normalization. Those are benefits that arise partly through the Israeli reaction, not despite it.

I would nevertheless distinguish between foreseeing a devastating response and foreseeing its precise magnitude. Hamas may have miscalculated:

• how completely Israel’s political divisions would disappear immediately after the attack;

• how firmly the United States would initially support Israel;

• how little direct military assistance Hezbollah and Iran would provide;

• Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas rather than negotiate an early hostage exchange; and

• the duration and physical destructiveness of the resulting campaign.

But these are possible errors concerning degree, not kind. Hamas undoubtedly knew that Gaza’s civilians would bear an enormous share of the consequences.

That produces a grim but important conclusion: Hamas did not necessarily regard protecting Gaza’s population as its controlling responsibility. It appears to have reasoned as a revolutionary movement rather than as an ordinary government—treating civilian deaths, destruction, and displacement as sacrifices in a multigenerational struggle. Some leaders may also have calculated that extensive Palestinian suffering would isolate Israel, mobilize international opinion, and prevent the Palestinian issue from fading away.

That does not relieve Israel of its independent duty to comply with international humanitarian law. Foreseeable Hamas provocation cannot legally excuse disproportionate or indiscriminate Israeli conduct. But as a matter of Hamas’s own responsibility, the evidence strongly indicates that it knowingly exposed the population it governed to catastrophic retaliation in pursuit of political and ideological objectives.

Can Objective Evidence Resolve the Conflicting Accounts?

Question: Israeli and Hamas versions of actions since October 7 are irreconcilable. To what extent is objective evidence available to determine whose contentions are more worthy of belief? And what conclusions may be legitimately drawn by what appears to be systematic killings of journalists?

Response:

A considerable body of objective evidence exists, although Israel’s restriction of independent access to Gaza has made verification much harder than it should be. That evidence does not vindicate either side’s complete narrative. It does, however, allow several firm conclusions:

• Hamas’s denial that its forces deliberately attacked civilians on October 7 is untenable.

• Israel’s contention that its Gaza campaign has consistently distinguished civilians from combatants and taken all feasible precautions is also untenable.

• Evidence that some journalists were deliberately targeted is strong; evidence of a centrally directed policy to kill journalists as a class is substantial enough to demand prosecution-level investigation, but has not been conclusively established in a court.

What Objective Evidence Is Available?

Investigators possess much more than competing press releases:

• contemporaneous cellphone, security-camera, drone, and body-camera recordings;

• satellite imagery documenting destruction and changes over time;

• geolocated and chronologically verified photographs and videos;

• weapons fragments and blast-pattern analysis;

• hospital registers, death certificates, and named casualty lists;

• testimony from survivors, hostages, medical personnel, soldiers, and humanitarian workers;

• radio communications and military documents;

• admissions by Hamas and Israeli officials;

• Israeli military investigations and casualty databases; and

• reporting by Palestinian journalists, international news organizations, and Israeli investigative journalists.

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry describes preserving thousands of digital items, authenticating visual material, extracting metadata, geolocating and dating images, cross-checking sources, and interviewing witnesses. Israel declined its requests for information and access; conditions in Gaza also restricted contact with Palestinian witnesses. The Commission explains both its methodology and limitations in its report.

This is important because “independently verified” does not necessarily require an investigator to stand at the location. A video can be authenticated through landmarks, shadows, weather, metadata, satellite imagery, and comparison with several unrelated recordings. But physical access remains essential for recovering weapons fragments, examining bodies, interviewing witnesses privately, and determining who knew what before an attack.

What Does That Evidence Establish About Hamas?

The independent evidence overwhelmingly contradicts Hamas’s claim that October 7 was directed principally against military targets and that civilian casualties were accidental deviations.

The United Nations Commission found reasonable grounds to conclude that Hamas and other armed groups:

• intentionally attacked and killed civilians;

• deliberately took civilian hostages;

• mistreated captives and persons who were hors de combat;

• committed sexual and gender-based violence;

• desecrated bodies; and

• indiscriminately fired rockets at populated areas.

It also rejected or declined to verify some Israeli allegations—including some highly publicized sexual-violence accounts—where the evidence was contradictory or insufficient. That selectivity increases rather than diminishes the credibility of its conclusions: it did not simply accept everything Israel alleged.

Thus, on the central question—whether civilians were deliberately targeted on October 7—the objective evidence supports Israel and refutes Hamas.

What Does It Establish About Israeli Conduct?

The same evidence substantially contradicts Israel’s broad assertion that civilian deaths are unfortunate but lawful consequences of attacks carefully confined to military objectives.

Independent investigations have documented:

• attacks in which no identifiable military objective could be established;

• use of large explosive weapons in densely populated areas;

• civilians shot while apparently unarmed, evacuating, or displaying white flags;

• strikes on homes, shelters, hospitals, schools, aid convoys, and designated refuge areas;

• obstruction of food, water, fuel, and humanitarian assistance;

• repeated attacks in which anticipated civilian deaths appear grossly disproportionate to the asserted military advantage; and

• destruction on a scale independently visible through satellite imagery.

The United Nations Commission concluded that Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the enormous civilian toll was not merely an unforeseeable collection of mistakes but the predictable result of its chosen methods. United Nations satellite analysis had already documented tens of thousands of damaged and destroyed structures early in the war. Reuters reported the UNOSAT findings.

This does not establish that every Palestinian casualty was a civilian, that every Israeli strike was unlawful, or that Hamas never operated from civilian locations. Those questions must be examined incident by incident. But Israel’s categorical narrative—precision warfare, rigorous precautions, and civilian casualties chiefly attributable to Hamas—cannot reasonably be reconciled with the aggregate physical evidence and numerous independently reconstructed incidents.

There is also an evidentiary asymmetry. Israel possesses targeting files, surveillance recordings, operational logs, and after-action reports that could substantiate its claims. When it asserts that a destroyed building contained a command center or that a dead journalist was a combatant but withholds the underlying intelligence, outsiders cannot treat the assertion as verified merely because the evidence is classified.

The Journalists

The numbers alone are extraordinary. Press-freedom organizations have described Gaza as the deadliest conflict for journalists since systematic recordkeeping began. In its report on 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists attributed 86 journalist deaths that year to Israeli fire and classified Israel as responsible for most of that year’s killings it considered intentional. Reuters summarizes the Committee to Protect Journalists’ findings.

Several different explanations could contribute to the total:

1. Gaza is extremely small, densely populated, and subjected to massive bombardment.

2. Palestinian journalists live among the population they cover; they cannot withdraw to protected hotels or safe international press compounds.

3. Because Israel excludes foreign reporters from independent access, local journalists necessarily perform a disproportionate amount of frontline reporting.

4. Israel’s targeting standards and use of explosive weapons have exposed civilians generally—including journalists—to extreme danger.

5. In at least some cases, the evidence indicates that journalists were individually selected for attack.

The first four propositions could explain many deaths without proving that journalists were targeted because they were journalists. They cannot comfortably explain all the documented cases.

Evidence suggesting deliberate targeting includes:

• journalists reportedly receiving threats before being killed;

• strikes on clearly identifiable press positions or groups of journalists;

• Israeli public accusations that particular reporters were Hamas operatives, followed by attacks on them;

• strikes on cameras or broadcasting positions that were demonstrably being used for journalism;

• follow-up attacks killing journalists and rescuers arriving after an initial explosion; and

• Israeli allegations of militant affiliation that were unsupported, altered, or contradicted by later visual evidence.

For example, after five journalists were killed at Nasser Hospital in August 2025, Israel said the target was a Hamas surveillance camera. A Reuters reconstruction found that the camera belonged to Reuters and was regularly used by its cameraman, Hussam al-Masri; the suspicious covering was his prayer rug, used to protect the equipment. The investigation also found problems involving authorization, target verification, and the subsequent strike on people arriving at the scene. Reuters’s visual investigation materially contradicted Israel’s initial account.

What May Legitimately Be Inferred?

I think the evidence supports these conclusions, in ascending order of certainty:

1. Israel has killed an unprecedented number of journalists. This is established.

2. The toll cannot credibly be dismissed merely as Hamas propaganda. Individual identities, employers, and circumstances have been extensively documented by news organizations and press-freedom groups.

3. Israel has failed systematically to protect journalists. Even if many deaths were not intentional, their frequency, repeated factual errors, permissive targeting practices, and lack of meaningful accountability demonstrate something more serious than isolated accidents.

4. Some journalists were probably deliberately targeted. Detailed reconstructions by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and news organizations provide persuasive evidence in particular cases.

5. Israeli accusations of Hamas affiliation require independent proof. A journalist does not lose civilian protection by criticizing Israel, working for a Hamas-associated outlet, or publishing material favorable to Hamas. Under international humanitarian law, the decisive question is whether that person was directly participating in hostilities. Propaganda or political sympathy ordinarily is not enough.

6. The pattern has the effect—and reasonably foreseeable consequence—of suppressing independent reporting. Combined with the continuing exclusion of foreign journalists, the deaths leave Israel as both a principal belligerent and a gatekeeper controlling access to evidence about its own conduct.

A stronger conclusion—that the Israeli government or military has adopted a centralized policy of murdering journalists specifically to conceal its actions—is plausible but not yet conclusively proved by publicly available evidence. Proving that would ordinarily require orders, targeting records, a demonstrable chain of command, or a sufficiently consistent pattern from which no reasonable alternative inference remains.

The absence of such public proof should not be mistaken for exoneration. Israel controls much of the decisive evidence and has blocked independent foreign press access to Gaza. More than two dozen international news organizations have demanded independent entry, precisely because local reporters are being killed while outside journalists are prevented from replacing or corroborating them. The Associated Press describes that continuing restriction.

My bottom-line assessment is therefore asymmetric but not partisan: objective evidence decisively disproves Hamas’s account of October 7, while objective evidence also seriously discredits Israel’s account of how it has conducted the ensuing war. Concerning journalists, the evidence already establishes an indefensible pattern of killings, reckless or deliberately permissive rules, dubious posthumous accusations, and near-total impunity. It strongly establishes deliberate targeting in some cases; whether those cases reflect a centrally ordered program remains an unresolved—and urgently investigable—question.