The jihadist terrorist group Hamas – and fellow Iran-backed outfits such as Hezbollah – celebrated the one-year mark since the atrocities committed against civilians in the Hamas siege of Israel on October 7, 2023, calling for the extermination of the Israeli people and heralding Iran for its support.
Hamas thugs invaded Israel from their stronghold in Gaza in the early morning hours of October 7 a year ago on Monday, committing widespread crimes against humanity and ultimately killing an estimated 1,200 people. The terrorists invaded residential communities, breaking into the homes of sleeping families and killing them all. Israeli rescuers found dead babies in some of the homes. Significant evidence indicates that the terrorists tortured and raped their victims, then desecrated their corpses after their deaths. On several occasions, the jihadis stole the phones of their victims and uploaded horrific images of their atrocities to the social media accounts of the dead.
At a music festival that morning, Hamas jihadis massacred attendees, in some cases during brutal gang rapes. Hamas terrorists also abducted more than 200 people; of those, the Israeli government believes 101 hostages remain in captivity a year later.
While a somber day to honor the fallen in Israel, Hamas leaders used the occasion to celebrate the slaughter.
“Al-Aqsa Flood returned the occupation [Israel] to square zero and threatened its existence,” Hamas “political” chief Khaled Mashal said in a statement on Monday, referring to the October 7 massacre by the jihadi name for it, the “al-Aqsa Flood.”
Mashal justified the campaign against sleeping civilians in their homes by calling it “a natural response to the occupation and its accelerating plans for settlement, siege and aggression against Al-Aqsa,” the mosque in Jerusalem.
Mashal also claimed that Israel was “fully defeated” in the war it declared against Hamas on October 8, omitting the many losses Hamas has incurred in the self-defense operation ongoing in Gaza. Mashal himself became the “political” leader of Hamas after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh died in an explosion in his lodgings in Tehran, Iran, while in the capital city to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian in July.
Similarly, another senior Hamas terrorist, Khalil al-Hayya, issued a statement celebrating the “heroic acts” of terrorists who gang-raped music festival attendees and slaughtered children.
“A year later, our people continue to write a new chapter of history with their resistance, blood, and steadfastness,” al-Hayya declared, according to the Iranian propaganda outlet PressTV.
Al-Hayya also applauded Hamas’s patrons in Iran, celebrating a largely failed missile barrage by Tehran against Israel last week as “meteors filling the skies over the occupied Palestine.”
Beyond statements, Hamas terrorists marked the occasion with a rocket barrage out of Gaza targeting Tel Aviv and its surrounding communities. Hamas claimed in a statement that it had successfully penetrated “deep inside the occupation,” though Israeli authorities clarified that the rockets had caused little damage and “lightly injured” two people, according to the Times of Israel.
Hamas’s terrorist allies also published statements on Monday applauding the mass killing of innocents a year ago.
“This operation will have historical repercussions and strategic outcomes on the overall situation in the region until justice is achieved,” the Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah announced, “through the elimination of Zionist occupation, allowing Palestinians to reclaim their legitimate rights to their land, from the river to the sea.”
“From the river to the sea” is a genocidal slogan calling for the elimination of the entire state of Israel, which stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Hezbollah, which has seen its leadership largely eliminated in suspected Israeli attacks in the past year, proclaimed that Palestinian jihadist terrorists have a “full right … to resist occupation by all means necessary.”
“There is no place for this temporary entity in the region or within our social, cultural, and humanitarian fabric,” Hezbollah stated. “It has always been and will remain a malignant, aggressive tumor that must be removed, no matter how long it takes.”
Hezbollah joined the war against Israel shortly after October 7, launching a campaign against civilians in northern Israel from Lebanon. The Hezbollah attacks have displaced an estimated 60,000 Israelis so far from their homes in northern Israel, necessitating Israeli military action against Hezbollah. The most decisive Israeli operation so far on Hezbollah was a series of airstrikes in late September in Beirut that resulted in the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah for decades. Israel has since continued to attack Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon, including terrorist infrastructure in the heart of Beirut.
In Israel, residents marked the anniversary of Hamas’s unprecedented invasion of the country with somber memorials and calls for freedom for the dozens of remaining hostages. Ceremonies began in the early hours on Monday – when the attack happened a year ago – and featured memorials to those killed and calls for the end of genocidal terrorism. Rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon necessitated an emergency security meeting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel, to plan a response to the bombings.
FLASHBACK — WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Horror of the Hamas Terror Attack on Civilians at Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel
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