Hamas Managed to Turn Terrorists into Heroes and Victims into Bad Guys

And journalists are telling the story Hamas wrote, produced and directed.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.

In the world of journalism if it happened yesterday it’s old news. And if it happened a month ago it’s ancient history.

So it’s no surprise that what happened on October 7 in Israel, as horrible as it was, has already become a dot in journalism’s rearview mirror. It’s time to move on, time to cover the new story — the one about supposed “war crimes,” and “genocide.” And if what we’re witnessing now were a movie instead of a real life horror story, the writer, producer, and the director would come from the ranks of Hamas.

For openers, why did Hamas launch such a horrific attack on October 7? What was its goal, besides, obviously, to kill as many Jews as possible?

Retaliation was its goal — furious, lethal retaliation.

Jews had suffered pogroms before, but this was different. And so if what happened on October 7 was different, Israel’s response would also be different. It would be overwhelming. And that’s precisely what the Hamas plot called for: death, lots of death, civilian deaths — the more the better.

Images have power, and dead bodies, Hamas understands, make for a powerful story.

Hamas’ storyline was ambitious, if not downright absurd. It was, crazy as it sounds, to turn Hamas, the perpetrators of mass murder … into the victims. But here’s what Hamas knew even as it planned the October 7 massacre: that its story would actually take hold — and not only in the Arab world. Hamas knew that its story would turn much of the world against Israel, and much of the world against Jews in general.