‘Like a Miracle’: West Bank Palestinians Praise Hamas Atrocities

NPR published a glum report on Thursday that found that support for Hamas, its militarized Qassam Brigades, and even the horrific atrocities Hamas terrorists perpetrated on October 7 is soaring among Palestinians in the West Bank.

“Hamas made the most important action against Israel since its existence. To me it’s something like a miracle, the 7th of October,” Palestinian journalist Nihad Abughosh gushed about the attack in which Hamas raped, tortured, kidnapped, and murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians, including small children and babies.

 

“Palestinians do not support the harming of innocents. From the first day, there was a question on many Palestinians’ minds: Is this all true?” said West Bank activist Fadi Quran, who apparently has not consulted with Nihad Abughosh about the dark “miracle” of fear, pain, and death he celebrated.

NPR found dozens of Palestinians who viewed the Hamas attack as a “legitimate act of defiance” and dozens more who insisted the atrocities did not happen at all.

Both of these responses track closely with the positions taken by left-wing Hamas supporters in the United States and Europe, who are prone to reciting the oppression dialectic they were taught in college: the “oppressed” can do no wrong, they should be given absurd levels of the benefit of the doubt, and even if they do go a bit overboard, the “oppressors” are the real villains for leaving them no other choice.

Polls taken by Palestinian groups showed support for Hamas in the West Bank nearly quadrupling, from 12 percent to 44 percent, after Israel launched its counterterrorism operation in Gaza. Hamas started much higher among Palestinians in Gaza itself but grew their support only a little, from 38 percent to 42 percent.

Another poll found 68 percent support for the October 7 atrocities among West Bank Palestinians. Some surveys showed the Palestinians supporting the atrocities more than they support Hamas itself.

NPR suggested that besides romanticizing the Hamas attack as a plucky band of resistance fighters striking out against the evil Israeli empire and expressing support for Hamas as a means of rebuking Israel for its operation in Gaza, West Bank Palestinians increasingly support Hamas because it looks strong, or at least defiant. 

November’s lopsided prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal, for example, was seen as a huge victory for Hamas, especially because some of the freed Palestinian prisoners were held under “administrative detention” for activities such as participating in destructive protests. Palestinians tend to see administrative detention as inherently unfair and abusive.

A fourth factor is the collapse of support for the relatively “moderate” Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank. Some West Bank Palestinians see the PA as weak, or even “collaborators” with Israel, because it claims to prefer negotiations to violent action.

The Associated Press (AP) pointed out last week that 90 percent of respondents in the polls NPR is referring to wanted PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, and 60 percent wanted the Palestinian Authority to be dissolved entirely. 

This is rather inconvenient for Western politicians, including many members of the Biden administration, who dream of the “moderate” PA taking charge of an independent Palestinian state.

According to Palestinian pollsters, if a race were held for the presidency of a unified Palestinian system, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would defeat Abbas easily. The only wild card third candidate who might shake things up is Marwan Barghouti, a member of Abbas’s Fatah party, who might win a three-way race – if he were not serving multiple life sentences in prison for launching terrorist attacks.

These polls are also difficult for Westerners who portray the Palestinian people as innocents who are helpless captives of the brutal Hamas terrorist gang. Hamas runs Gaza because it won elections in 2007, and it enjoys a great deal of popular support – apparently more so in the West Bank, whose residents do not actually have to live under Hamas misrule.

Gaza residents who live under Hamas often have a much lower opinion of the terrorist organization than West Bank Palestinians who can romanticize it from afar. The difference in polls between the West Bank and Gaza was illustrated in a graph from the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs:

New Palestinian public opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy & Survey Research:

🔴 72% of Palestinians say that #Hamas' #October7 massacre was the "correct" decision.

🔴If presidential elections were held today for Palestinian leadership & there were only… pic.twitter.com/bl0hkNtA2D

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) December 13, 2023

An especially awkward demonstration of this occurred in early December, when Al Jazeera – the news network based in Qatar, which provides Hamas leaders with luxurious accommodations – had to cut off an interview with a Gaza resident who began railing against Hamas for bringing death and misery to his neighborhood and criticizing Qatar for supporting Hamas.

Something similar happened in November when Al Jazeera interviewed an injured Gaza resident in a hospital, expecting him to rail against Israel for bombing his home. Instead, the man turned against Hamas, demanding to know why the terrorists hide among civilians and inviting them to “go to Hell and hide there instead.” Al Jazeera hastily ended the interview and scurried away from the irate patient.