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The war that began on October 7, 2023 continues around us here in Israel. Our soldiers include our friend's and neighbor's sons, sons in law, and fathers, many of whom have spent over 400 days each in active duty. While the majority of Israelis agree on the war aims: Return of all hostages and the eradication of Hamas, the Israeli street protests are over the "how" to prosecute the war to return the remaining hostages as soon as possible. The Western Press paints a picture of civil war in Israel, this is not the case. The disagreement is over tactics not long term goals. In the mean time, 50 hostages, both alive and dead, are still held by Hamas in Gaza. The Houthis in Yemen continue to launch missiles and drones at Israel from Yemen over Saudi Arabia, and Iran still threatens Israel, 1200 miles away, with no shared border. | The conflict is not over land, Rettig Gur, argues, but over religious ideology that animates the Islamic world against not only Israel, but the West as well, and why Iran would fund terror proxies around the World and around Israel at great expense to its own population that is down to its last 10% of water reserves. |
Brief Synopsis
Haviv Rettig Gur argues that the true shock of October 7 was not just Hamas’s tactical success but the revelation of a decades-long strategy: turning Gaza into a fortress of tunnels and sacrificing Palestinian society to wage perpetual war against Israel. Rooted in Islamist theology since the 19th century, Hamas sees Israel not as a political opponent but as a theological challenge—proof of Islam’s weakness that must be overcome to redeem the Muslim world. October 7 was designed to provoke Israel into Gaza’s destruction, which Hamas views as a worthy sacrifice. Rettig Gur contends that Hamas’s ideology rejects peace, thrives on Palestinian suffering, and ensures endless war. He concludes that Gaza and the Palestinian cause have no future until Hamas is dismantled, and urges the international community to turn its pressure on Hamas rather than Israel.
Bullet Point Summary
- October 7, 2023 was both a tactical shock (IDF unpreparedness, Hamas’s boldness) and a deeper shock (Hamas’s long-term strategy).
- Hamas’s tunnel network:
- Built over 15 years using Gaza’s resources and taxpayer money.
- Estimated 500 km of tunnels, 60,000 shafts, some electrified and air-conditioned.
- Largest underground military system in history.
- Civilians barred from using them; purpose was purely military.
- Designed to force Israeli attacks through civilian areas.
- Built over 15 years using Gaza’s resources and taxpayer money.
- Strategic purpose:
- Hamas deliberately engineered Gaza’s destruction by ensuring war was inevitable.
- October 7 was meant to provoke an Israeli invasion into a battlefield built for Hamas.
- Hamas views Palestinian sacrifice as necessary for Islamic redemption.
- Hamas deliberately engineered Gaza’s destruction by ensuring war was inevitable.
- Hostages:
- Hamas refuses to release all hostages because it would lose leverage.
- Retention aligns with a long-term religious-political strategy, not short-term gains.
- Hamas refuses to release all hostages because it would lose leverage.
- Theological roots:
- Hamas ideology is tied to two centuries of Islamic thought on weakness, power, and redemption.
- Thinkers like Al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida shaped Islamist revivalism.
- Rashid Rida’s framing of Zionism as an existential, theological crisis (weak Jews overcoming Islam) deeply influenced later Islamist movements.
- Hamas is part of this lineage (Muslim Brotherhood origins, 1988 charter).
- Hamas ideology is tied to two centuries of Islamic thought on weakness, power, and redemption.
- Core belief:
- Hamas sees itself as leading a total, existential struggle.
- Peace is viewed as defeat; only “all-or-nothing” war redeems Islam.
- Israel is seen as the first necessary obstacle for Islamic revival, which unites Sunni Hamas and Shia Iran.
- Hamas sees itself as leading a total, existential struggle.
- Critique of Western/Pro-Palestinian discourse:
- By labeling Israel as colonialist, apartheid, Nazi, etc., activists unintentionally validate Hamas’s argument that Israel is “removable.”
- This sustains Hamas’s zero-sum worldview and perpetuates Palestinian suffering.
- By labeling Israel as colonialist, apartheid, Nazi, etc., activists unintentionally validate Hamas’s argument that Israel is “removable.”
- Conclusion:
- Gaza has no future with Hamas in power.
- The Palestinian cause cannot advance while Hamas leads.
- International pressure should shift from Israel to Hamas.
- Only after Hamas is gone can Palestinians have a path to peace and a viable future.
- Gaza has no future with Hamas in power.
Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Okay.
Thank you for coming out. My last talk in Arendal was a protester. Are you a protester? Well, if you are, you’re welcome. But I promise to listen to every word of your protest, no matter how long it is, if you listen to my talk.
And if you can’t listen to my talk, I don’t have to listen to your protest.
October 7: The Shallow and the Deep Surprise
October 7 was a surprise. We know that. But there was a shallow surprise and a deep surprise for Israelis.
I mean Israelis—I can’t speak to other perspectives, even though I try. But you should believe me when I tell you what Israelis like me think. You should double-check me when I tell you what anyone else thinks, like Norwegians.
October 7 was a shallow surprise in the sense that we did not understand that the enemy was brazen enough, brave enough, and competent enough to do what they did. And we did not understand that our military was capable of being so passive, inattentive, and incompetent—so disastrously—as we saw on that day.
We are used to the kinds of victories you saw in the 12-day war with Iran. We are not used to October 7.
But the deeper surprise had nothing to do with the IDF. It had nothing to do with Israel. It wasn’t about Hamas’s tactical skill, the astonishing planning.
The deeper surprise was discovering that Hamas had been planning some version of October 7 as a strategy for at least a decade, if not 15 years. And that Hamas had taken Gaza’s entire economy and bent it to that strategy—at least everything Hamas could tax in Gaza.
The Tunnel SystemThe main source of income for the tunnels wasn’t foreign aid. Foreign aid was an important piece of it, and it’s a problem we should talk about: how do you aid Gaza, how do you rebuild Gaza without letting Hamas just rebuild tunnels?
Gaza is built on soft sandstone. It’s very easy to build tunnels there. But the main source of resources was the Gazan taxpayer. Hamas was a government, it taxed Gazans, and it built tunnels.
People know there are tunnels in Gaza, right? You’ve heard about them. But I don’t know if people quite understand the scale—the astonishing achievement. This is the greatest Palestinian achievement in a century: this tunnel system. And I’m not criticizing or diminishing. I mean it literally.
The entire territory of Gaza—you use kilometers in Norway—is about 40 kilometers long. The long way. There are 500 kilometers of tunnels under Gaza. Imagine! No military in the history of war built 500 kilometers of tunnels. Not in Vietnam, which is a vastly larger country, orders of magnitude larger. It didn’t build a fifth of what Hamas built in Gaza.
There are probably somewhere near 60,000 entrances—shafts down into those tunnels—in every town, city, and neighborhood in Gaza.
A lot of the rubble you see from the Israeli war effort in Gaza has to do with destroying that tunnel network. To destroy that tunnel network, very little remains above ground. And that’s when the tunnel network is destroyed.
Now, you can say it’s not worth it. You can say you should leave the cities intact and just leave the tunnel network there. But if you do want to destroy the tunnel network, that’s the only way to do it.
All of Gaza—just about all of Gaza—was transformed into a battlefield specially built to force the enemy underground to find Hamas. It is an amazing accomplishment, absolutely unprecedented in the history of war.
The Purpose of the Tunnels
And what was the basic tactical purpose of building out that enormous tunnel network?
I’ll give you a hint: in 22 months of war, Gazan civilians have stood between Hamas and the Israeli military, and tens of thousands of Gazan civilians have died. And as far as we can tell—including literally by asking Gazans—not a single Gazan who isn’t Hamas has been allowed to step foot in the tunnel network in 22 months of war.
Hamas built the most comprehensive system of bomb shelters in the history of war. And yet no Gazan civilian was allowed into any of those bomb shelters in 22 months.
I go to college campuses sometimes and people tell me, “We know that if there’s inequality in society, we know that’s purposeful systemic racism. The purpose of a system is its outcome. What the system does is its purpose—not what it claims to want, not what well-meaning people in the system are trying to do. The system’s purpose is its end point, its accomplishment.”
So what is the purpose of the tunnel system? Well, what did it accomplish?
The purpose of the tunnel system is that when the enemy comes for Hamas—the Israelis, or any enemy, let’s say Egypt—the only way to get to Hamas is to cut through the cities. That’s the only way. Don’t want to cut through cities? Then don’t get Hamas. That was the equation Hamas built, and it transformed Gaza to do it.
The Scale of ConstructionIn four years, between two skirmishes with Israel, 2014 and 2018, more than 5 million cubic meters of concrete went into Gaza to rebuild it from the damage of 2014. That damage was limited, tiny compared to now. Back then, they called it a war. Compared to what’s happening now, that was not even a battle.
Five million cubic meters of concrete is the equivalent of 16 Burj Khalifas—the tallest building in the world.
So where are Gaza’s skyscrapers? Underground. The tunnels go down 200 feet deep. They are electrified, they are air-conditioned. Norway isn’t air-conditioned! (I’m trying to keep things light—we’re talking about a terrible war.)
These tunnels are an astonishing achievement, and their purpose is to force the enemy to cut through cities or let Hamas survive.
The War Hamas Wanted
After 15 years of building out that tunnel system, and spending every resource Gaza had to build it, Hamas carried out October 7.
What was the purpose of October 7? What, in the Israeli understanding and experience, was it about?
The purpose of October 7 was this war.
Bad analysts, analysts who confuse their feelings for analysis, told Israelis: “Don’t go to war. War is terrible.” But there were also smart analysts. One, the head of the Institute of War at Columbia’s School of International Studies, wrote a very smart op-ed in Newsweek about a year and a half ago. She said: “They are laying a trap. They want you to come in. This is the war they want. Don’t give them this victory.”
That’s a much smarter thing to say than “war is bad.” Because Hamas sought the destruction of Gaza, and October 7 was calibrated to ensure it.
It was about the massacres. About humiliation. About entering families’ homes, killing parents, mocking children while eating from their fridge, then broadcasting it all on social media. That was the point: to tell Israelis, “This is forever. This is the only relationship we will ever have. You will die. Maybe not today, maybe later, but you will die.”
Every Israeli parent I know—me personally—watched those videos and knew my children would have been massacred that day.
October 7 was engineered to drive the war into a Gaza Strip perforated with tunnels, where no civilian was allowed shelter.
Why Israelis See Hamas as Suicidal
The surprise for Israelis is not that Hamas are evil. If the pro-Palestinian campaign cared more for Palestinians, it would have noticed this fact. Hamas has probably killed more Palestinians than it has Israelis.
But Hamas wanted this war. It brought this war purposefully. Why?
And there’s a simple answer. If you understand this answer, you understand this war. You don’t have to like Israelis. I’m Israeli—sometimes I can’t stand Israelis. But whether Israel is doing something wrong is secondary to the single most important fact of this war. The reason it is in its 22nd month, why it may go 28 months or 35 months, why even if it ends in a ceasefire it won’t really end.
And that reason is Hamas.
Israel faces an enemy that believes in the mass suicide of its own people. To outsiders, that might sound bizarre, even convenient—after all, tens of thousands of Gazans have died. But Hamas’s strategy, writings, and doctrine all show that yes, they are willing to drag their own society into destruction.
Why Hamas Holds Hostages
Why does Hamas still hold hostages? Never mind Israeli pain or political talking points—what is Hamas actually planning to get from it?
Imagine Israel releases a thousand prisoners, some mass murderers, in exchange for the last 20 living hostages. Then what? Was it worth it?
Right now, Hamas believes holding those hostages is still worth it. Why?
Not because they are “insane psychopaths.” They believe they are good people. They believe they are redeeming the world. They believe they are sacrificing their own people on the altar of that redemption.
If people understood that story, they would take Hamas seriously. The IDF would not have let its guard down as it did. And people would not think that a ceasefire solves anything—because in five years, the war will be back. And every milligram of concrete that goes into Gaza will be used for more war.
The Theological Roots
Over the last 200 years, the greatest theologians of Islam in the Sunni Arab world have debated: what happened to Islam?
The Muslim world today is filled with weak, unstable, and corrupt states. Muslim thinkers saw Napoleon land in Egypt, the British take over in the 1860s, and the French and British carve up the Ottoman Empire. They watched North Africa fall to the French, Libya to the Italians, Iraq and Arabia to the British, Syria and Lebanon to the French.
And they asked: what happened to us? Five hundred years earlier, Islam was powerful and Europe was weak.
A thousand years earlier, Islam was advancing while Europe was retreating. What changed?
For them, the question wasn’t political or economic. It was theological. Islam had always associated geopolitical power with divine favor. The early Muslim conquests were seen as proof of God’s grace and the Quran’s truth.
So if Muslims were weak, what did it mean? It meant they were not doing what God wanted. They were not close to God’s plan for history.
The answer, they believed, was to return to piety. To closeness with God. To a religious reawakening.
The Thinkers
A lineage of thinkers shaped this idea:
- Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Egypt, 19th century) – saw France’s achievements and argued Muslims must return to Islam to find the tools for modernity.
- Muhammad Abduh (Grand Mufti of Egypt, student of Afghani) – doubled down, saying piety would give Muslims not only closeness to God, but also constitutions, progress, technology, even republicanism, through Islam.
- Rashid Rida (student of Abduh, publisher of Al-Manar from 1898) – one of the most influential voices in the Muslim world. He began like his teachers, but grew disenchanted with Europe’s colonialism. He turned against the West and became a loud advocate of permanent anti-colonial guerilla war.
Rida was especially influential. His Al-Manar was read from Morocco to Malaysia. He set the Muslim discourse on Zionism, Jews, and Israel—not as a question of nationalism, but as a question of grand theology: the redemption of the world.
He taught figures like Haj Amin al-Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (namesake of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades), and Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood).
Rashid Rida’s View of Zionism
One of my favorite examples of Rida’s thinking is a letter he wrote in 1898 in Al-Manar, addressed to the Arabs of Palestine. He called them “complacent non-entities.”
He was enraged. He wrote: “You will allow the weakest people, refugees from every land, to push you back and become masters in your land.”
Who were these refugees? Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. From 1890 to 1920, millions of Jews fled to the West. Some went to America, some to Canada, even Norway gained a Jewish community in those years. A small fraction—just a couple percent—joined the Zionist movement and moved to Palestine.
Rida was outraged. He asked: how could the weakest of peoples—refugees with nothing but the shirts on their backs—overcome the Muslims? If the Jews could push Islam back, what did that say about Islam?
For Rida, Zionism wasn’t about nationalism or borders. It wasn’t about two states, one state, or even rights. It was a theological crisis. Weak Jews, disorganized and impoverished, becoming strong, was proof of Islam’s weakness.
And weakness was unacceptable. It meant Muslims were distant from God. The answer, to Rida, was a deep process of returning to original Islam and piety.
From Theology to Militancy
Rida’s students carried this vision forward:
- Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, gave the Palestinian national movement its religious character and led violent protests in the 1920s and 1930s.
- Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a cleric who fought the French in Syria and then moved to Haifa, preached jihad and attacked Jews in 1935. He was hunted and killed by the British; Hamas later named its armed brigades after him.
- Hassan al-Banna, another student, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
- The Saud family, after conquering Mecca and Medina, invited Rida’s students to teach in their new Wahhabi state—further spreading his influence.
Hamas’s Ideological InheritanceFast forward: Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter declared:
- It is a Muslim Brotherhood organization.
- It believes in eternal war between Muslims and Jews (not just Zionists).
- Its goal is the destruction of Israel.
In 2017, Hamas issued a new charter. It toned down some rhetoric—saying “Zionists” instead of “Jews”—but never revoked the 1988 charter. The reason for the shift was pragmatic: Egypt, at war with the Muslim Brotherhood, controlled Gaza’s border. Hamas needed better relations with Egypt, so it softened its Brotherhood branding.
But the core ideology remained. Hamas still preached that Palestine must be sacrificed for Islam’s redemption.
Why Israel Is Target
#1Why does this matter today?
Because both Sunni Hamas and Shia Iran share this idea: the first step in Islam’s revival is defeating Israel.
Iran has no border with Israel. It has no economic competition with Israel. Yet it spends a double-digit percentage of its GDP funding proxies to destroy Israel. Why?
Because in their theology, Israel is the test. If Islam cannot overcome the Jews—who were once the weakest of peoples—then Islam has not returned to God’s plan.
This is the one idea that unites Sunni and Shia Islamists: Israel must fall first.
The ImplicationsThis is why Israelis see Hamas not just as cruel, but as suicidal. Not just personally suicidal, but willing to drag Palestinian society into suicide. Hamas tells Palestinians: this is all or nothing.
- At the height of the Oslo peace process (named after Norway), Hamas unleashed 140 suicide bombings in Israeli cities.
- They fear peace more than occupation, because peace that leaves Israel intact proves their theology false.
- To them, Palestine itself is expendable. If it must be destroyed, then so be it. They see it as a worthy sacrifice on the altar of Islam’s redemption.
Hamas and the Rejection of Peace
For over a century, the pro-Palestinian campaign has told Palestinians that Israel is colonialist, imperialist, apartheid—even Nazi. But these aren’t analytical descriptions. They are categories meant to imply removability.
- You can peel Nazism off Germany and still have a German people.
- You can peel apartheid off South Africa and still have South Africans.
- You can peel colonialism off Algeria or Kenya and still have Algerians and Kenyans.
By calling Israel these things, the message to Palestinians is: Israel is peelable. It is removable. Therefore, it would be immoral to compromise. If victory is possible, why settle?
But this only reinforces Hamas’s zero-sum worldview. It convinces Palestinians that peace is impossible and that endless war is the only path.
Hamas’s Logic
When you tell Hamas, “This won’t work. The Jews are not removable,” they know it’s true. For a hundred years, their strategy has failed. So why double down, even to the point of destroying Gaza itself?
Because for Hamas, Palestine is expendable. If Palestinians lose everything, that loss itself becomes a sacrifice for Islam’s redemption.
So when Hamas says, “It’s all or nothing. One people lives, one people dies,” they mean it. To Israelis, that sounds catastrophic—for both sides. But to Hamas, it is beautiful.
The Hostages
Why won’t Hamas give up the hostages?
Because once they release the last one, they lose leverage forever. Israel will then hunt down every Hamas fighter without restraint.
Hamas knows this. That’s why they will never release all the hostages. Holding them keeps the war alive.
The World’s Role
Here is the tragedy: nothing anyone does for Gaza will matter as long as Hamas is in power.
- No sympathy, no love, no money, no humanitarian shipments, no international campaigns—none of it will help.
- Every bag of cement, every donation, every concession will be turned into more tunnels, more war, more destruction.
Gaza and the Palestinian Cause
Gaza has no future with Hamas. The Palestinian cause has no future with Hamas. You can love Israel, you can hate Israel—it barely matters, as long as Hamas remains.
If this war ends with Hamas still in power—armed, entrenched, even if not formally governing—Gaza will be back at war in 5 or 10 years. October 7 would have happened eventually. If not in 2023, then in 2024, 2025, or later.
Conclusion
October 7 was inevitable. Hamas watched Israeli troop deployments carefully and struck when it saw weakness. If the IDF had responded differently that day, Hamas would simply have waited for another opportunity.
The war is not about borders, or even about Israel’s mistakes. It is about Hamas’s ideology: 200 years of theology, rooted in the idea that Islam must redeem itself by overcoming the Jews.
Until the world takes that seriously, Palestinians will remain trapped in endless war.
If the international community truly wants to help Palestinians, it must stop rewarding Hamas and start opposing it. Only after Hamas is gone can a new day begin for Gaza and for Palestine.
Thank you for having me. I’m happy to answer your questions. I don’t know exactly what the time is—I said I was stopping because I was over time, and then went on another 10 minutes. But that’s Israeli, so that’s on you.
[Applause]
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