Israel Vows To Crush Hamas Starting With Its Terror Leaders

ANALYSIS – Israeli officials have vowed to crush Hamas, the Islamist terror group that controls the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the deadliest Palestinian attack in Israel's 75-year history.

Israel has declared it intends to kill Hamas' most senior leaders as part of its efforts to obliterate the terror group.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that every Hamas member is a dead man.

But what is Hamas, and who are its terror leaders?

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas was established during the start of the First Intifada in December 1987. It was founded by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.

It perpetrated a slew of terrorist attacks against Israel in the 1990s. The group became Fatah's main rival and a strong opponent of the policies of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In 2007, Hamas assumed sole control of Gaza.

While Hamas has a host of leadership bodies that perform various political, military, and social functions, its primary mission is to fight Israel, mostly through terrorism.

The United States, European Union, Israel, Australia, Japan, the U.K. and others have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.

Referring to its recent horrific attack against Israel, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “The people who support Hamas are fully responsible for this appalling attack. They are not militants. They are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists.”

General policy is set by an overarching consultative body, often called the politburo, which operates in exile. Local committees manage grassroots issues in Gaza and the West Bank.

Expect most of the Hamas leadership in Gaza to be targeted by air, drone or missile strikes, as well as raids by Israeli commandos.

Chief among Israel's targets is a terrorist known as Mohammed Deif, the reported architect of last week's grisly attack on Israeli civilians.

Deif released an audio tape on the day of the attack, calling it payback for Israeli raids in 2021 on Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque.

Calling the attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” Deif, the commander of Hamas' military wing al-Qassam Brigades, also referred to the “16-year blockade of Gaza, and recent incidents that have brought Israeli-Palestinian tensions to a fever pitch.”

On May 7, 2021, Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, injuring more than 170 Palestinians and dispersing worshippers elsewhere in occupied East Jerusalem.

A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts – the most recent in 2021 – Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public. Only two undated grainy photos exist – others either show him covered in a Palestinian keffiyeh or silhouette.

Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, dubbed Deif, was reportedly born in 1965 to a Palestinian refugee family and settled in the Khan Yunis camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

Deif joined the Hamas movement at the end of 1987. He returned to school and received his education at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in science, an education he put to use making bombs.

He then committed to Hamas' cause of “destroying Israel with warfare and installing a Palestinian state,” quickly rising through the group's ranks as the protege of chief bomb maker Yehya Ayyash, also known as “The Engineer.”

Hamas sources have said that the decision to mount the Israeli assault was taken jointly by Deif and Yahya Sinwar, the former head of Hamas's military wing.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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