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Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again
(@MEMRIReports)
Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo and Hamas deputy prime minister, said in an interview on Lebanon's LBC TV that Hamas will continue to repeat the October 7 'Al-Aqsa Flood' Operation, in which over 1,400 people were cruelly slaughtered and over 200 people kidnapped into Gaza, over and over until Israel is "annihilated."
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Hamad said in the interview that Hamas should not be blamed for what it did on October 7 because the Palestinians are the victims and "everything we do is justified."
Hamad told the LBC anchor, in the interview broadcast in Arabic on October 24, that "Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country. We are not ashamed to say that with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again."
The interview was translated and distributed by the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.
"The 'Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight," Hamad said.
He added that Hamas is ready to pay the price of its attacks on Israel. "We are called a nation of martyrs and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs," he said.
Hamad claimed that Hamas "did not want to harm civilians," but that there were "complications on the ground" when they entered Israel, including the large Nova music festival.
He asserted that the "occupation must come to an end." Not just Gaza, he added, "I am talking about all the Palestinian lands."
The Hamas official did not take any responsibility for the difficult existence for the Palestinians in Gaza. "The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood and tears," he said.
"It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period," he stated. "Therefore, nobody should blame us for what we do - on October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 - everything we do is justified.
Earlier this week, Hamad cut short and stormed out of a BBC interview after the BBC's Middle East correspondent Hugo Bachega pressed him to explain how it's justifiable to murder families in their homes as they're sleeping.