by Thaddeus McCotter and Andrew Zack
Hamas wages war through terror and propaganda, while Israel is blamed for crimes it did not commit—facts ignored as the world embraces a false narrative.
This is the first installment of a three-part series on the Gaza situation, political fallout, root causes, and real-world ramifications.
The movement among key members of the international community to recognize a Palestinian state must be seen in the broader context of the war between Israel and Hamas—beginning with an analysis of the facts on the ground, free from the deceits of propaganda.
First and foremost, Hamas is a radical Islamist terrorist organization that continues to hold both living hostages and the bodies of those they have already slain—a reality far too many in the feckless international community ignore.
Hamas is a radical Sunni Muslim organization that has repeatedly declared its intent not only to destroy the State of Israel but also to murder as many Jews as possible, regardless of nationality. As a confirmed proponent of Islamic jihadism, Hamas also seeks to recreate a second Caliphate, in which Islam would reign supreme over the entire world. Hamas, therefore, also seeks to subjugate Christians (dhimmitude) and will kill as many of them as is necessary to attain this aim. As the jihadist slogan goes, first the Saturday people (the Jews), then the Sunday people (the Christians).
A barbarous cog in the global jihad movement, Hamas has evidenced its rejection of Western values of democracy and human rights through murder, rape, and kidnapping in pursuit of power.
Hamas launched the war on October 7, 2023, when it invaded Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreign residents, and kidnapping 250 people. Hamas murdered its victims in incredibly barbaric ways, including burning families to death, beheading babies, and raping and mutilating women before slaughtering them. Hamas filmed their vile atrocities and broadcast them on public media so the world could witness their crimes and cruelty, and either cower or celebrate in the face of them.
The attacked and aggrieved nation, Israel, didn’t immediately counterattack. When it did, the Israel Defense Forces (“the IDF”) made an unprecedented attempt to protect Gaza’s citizens. Before attacking certain areas, the IDF called Gazans on their cell phones and dropped leaflets announcing where the attacks would take place and where the Gazans should go to avoid being caught in a war zone. While civilians have died, the civilian-to-soldier death ratio has been historically low. Expert military historians, including John Spencer, have hailed the IDF for its efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
But protecting Gazans has never been a priority for Hamas. Not content with intentionally and demonstrably inflating the number of civilian casualties, including the deaths of children, Hamas has deliberately adopted a strategy of maximizing civilian casualties by operating from hospitals, schools, and crowded neighborhoods, forcing the IDF to fight in civilian areas. Most sinisterly, Hamas invested billions of dollars (which it siphoned off the massive amounts of aid Gaza has received from the EU and other countries) to build a massive underground tunnel system that is larger than any subway system in the world. It only lets its soldiers shelter in the tunnels. If Hamas allowed civilians to take shelter in the tunnel system during hostilities, civilian casualties would be minimized.
But in Hamas’ cynical calculations, fewer Gazan civilian deaths mean their goals are further away. And, make no mistake, Hamas’ inhuman strategy has worked: the vast majority of people in the world, including many in the United States, believe Hamas’ perverse propaganda that the IDF is the one who commits war crimes by targeting and killing tens of thousands of civilians and that Hamas is a ragtag group of freedom fighters liberating the oppressed.
Yet, real freedom fighters don’t keep Israeli hostages (both alive and dead) in their terrorist tunnels. Approximately 20 hostages remain alive, while around 30 are confirmed dead. Hostages who were let go in exchanges that freed thousands of Hamas terrorists from Israeli jails report that they were tortured, deprived of food, and otherwise kept in inhumane conditions. The Red Cross has not seen a single hostage in captivity and apparently has made no effort to do so. Except for the United States, the world has been silent about the plight of the hostages and has not demanded their release as a precondition of the IDF entering into a ceasefire. Unconscionably, it seems that if Hamas kidnaps a victim and puts them in one of their tunnels, the international community puts the victim down the memory hole.
The world demands that Israel feed the Gazans, even though their elected leaders launched a brutal invasion; moreover, it insists that Israel continue providing fuel, water, and electricity to Gaza during the hostilities. This is unprecedented in the annals of war. A country that launched a defensive incursion in response to a terrorist provocation is not required to provide the latter’s population with sustenance. If they are now responsible for doing so, it will increase terrorist and other attacks by organizations such as Hamas. The equation will be brutally simple: Hamas can kill Israeli civilians and be rewarded with food for Gaza’s civilians. It is insane and injurious, and not just in the present instance of Gaza. For example, in another present instance, while defending itself against an act of aggression, should Ukraine have to feed Russian civilians?
But logic and the facts on the ground in Gaza hold little attraction for organizations such as the United Nations, which for many years has been an extremely hostile forum against Israel. Its “refugee relief” agency, UNRWA, has proven to be riddled with Hamas members. Among other things, Hamas has controlled UNRWA’s distribution of food and other aid to Gazan civilians, often stealing it at gunpoint and even killing relief workers, truckers, and desperate civilians. Hamas then sells the food and other needed goods at exorbitant prices to Gazan civilians, using the proceeds to finance its operations and pay its operatives.
This is not merely a criminal enterprise. Rather, it is part of a terrorist organization’s deliberate strategy to enforce food insecurity and/or famine conditions—or at least the appearance of it—and blame Israel. Hamas has deliberately sabotaged the efforts of an American- and Israeli-backed food relief group to feed the civilian population, including shooting at IDF soldiers guarding the food supplies and the relief workers, as well as shooting at and killing Gazan civilians who attempt to obtain food from this group.
Nevertheless, despite Hamas’s efforts, the relief group has distributed approximately eighty-five million meals in two months. According to a July 31, 2025, article in the Wall Street Journal, since October 7, 2023, Israel has coordinated and facilitated the entry into Gaza of more than 1.86 million tons of humanitarian assistance.
Nonetheless, this is a fact on the ground that is lost in the fog of incessant Hamas propaganda. In a grotesque display of willful and malicious ignorance, world opinion, including many people in the United States, uncritically accepted this Hamas libel and overwhelmingly declared Israel guilty of starving Gazans and conducting other war crimes, despite overwhelming and conclusive evidence to the contrary that proves that Hamas is the cause of all these crises.
Hamas’s latest blood libel against Israel has exacerbated existing root causes, spawning global political fallout with real-world consequences for Israelis and Gazans alike.
***
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
Andrew Zack is a Detroit-area attorney who is observing these events with great trepidation.
Thaddeus McCotter and Andrew Zack
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/16/gaza-part-one-the-situation/
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