The Israeli military discovered the recorded minutes of a high-level Hamas meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported, revealing the true motive for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
According to the document, Hamas leaders ordered the attacks in southern Israel and killed over 1,200 civilians to torpedo peace negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This confirmed what most analyses have suspected. Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, told fellow militants during the Oct. 2, 2023, meeting that an “extraordinary act” was needed to scuttle the talks that he believed marginalized the Palestinian cause and “open the door for the majority of Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path” of normalizing relations with Israel.
The discovery was inconvenient for the throngs of anti-Israel actors worldwide, including the protesters who shut down university campuses across the nation last spring and argued that the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks were acts of legitimate resistance against an oppressive force. In this warped version of events, the attacks and the ensuing conflict in Gaza stemmed from Israel’s supposed settler-colonialism and apartheid policies. A typical example of such a characterization came from the activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, led by the now detained green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who praised the attacks as a “political, military, and moral victory,” and in a Substack post, hailed Sinwar as a “brave man” whose “crowning achievement” was the attacks.
Yet the Oct. 2 meeting minutes expose these claims as baseless. The attacks were orchestrated by a savage death cult to preserve its iron grip over Palestinians, whom it rules through fear, anti-Jewish propaganda, and violence. Israel has the right and duty to ensure that the perpetrators of this atrocity are eliminated and prevented from regaining power in the future.
Sinwar and others surely understood the implications of their decision to spark the conflict. Launching the attacks ensured Israeli retaliation that killed thousands of Palestinians. Hamas chose to sacrifice its people to disrupt negotiations between Israel and Arab nations that stood a realistic chance of bringing stability and peace to the perennially turbulent and violent Middle East. That settlement, which the world has sought for generations, would jeopardize the terrorists’ power. The brutal war in Gaza was the outcome Hamas wanted, and it is what it got. Every single Palestinian life lost is on Hamas’s shoulders.
Israel was doing the world‘s work, and it must be allowed to finish the job and end this war on its own terms and secure its sovereign future. Should Hamas retain any power, future terrorist attacks are certain.
Hamas’s best hope was always that global anti-Israel sentiment would rise to the extent that it prevents Israel from taking the actions necessary to eradicate the terrorist group. The Trump administration’s growing rift with Israel over a “humanitarian crisis” shifts the blame onto Israel and complicates its attempt to destroy Hamas, which is the only resolution to the conflict that will achieve a lasting peace.
“We do not want to see a humanitarian crisis,” said Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, on ABC’s The Week. “We will not allow it to occur on President Trump’s watch.”
Trump and Vice President JD Vance also snubbed Israel in their recent trips to the Middle East. Axios reported Monday that Vance decided against traveling to Israel this week because he feared giving the impression of endorsing Israel’s latest decision to expand military operations in Gaza. The Trump administration also recently pressured Israel to accept a ceasefire-hostage deal, with Witkoff warning in May 2025 that refusal could isolate Israel.
Trump’s desire for peace is laudable, but his apparent ingratiating approach to Arab nations is not. Nor is his eagerness for a quick peace deal in Gaza, for it undermines Israel’s priority of achieving a lasting victory over Hamas by destroying its military capabilities. Every effort must be taken to ensure that civilian casualties are reduced. But the United States must never fall under the mistaken assumption that anyone other than Hamas is responsible for the suffering of innocents in Gaza. They could end this all tomorrow by returning every hostage and surrendering. Israel has every right to press forward until then.
Trump’s Abraham Accords were among his greatest first-term achievements. Hamas declared war on them on Oct. 7. Trump would do well to remember who the real enemy of peace in the Middle East is.