It's pretty clear that when this war between Israel and Hamas started there wasn't going to be much of a chance for Hamas to win it. Israel is more technologically advanced and better trained, and on top of that, their backs are against a proverbial wall with this war. Hamas wants a literal genocide and won't stop till they get it, leaving Israel no choice but to destroy Hamas in totality.
Hamas is very open about their wish to wipe Israel and any Jewish person residing within off the map. As my colleague Ward Clark wrote on Wednesday, Hamas openly admitted that their goal on October 7 was to create a "permanent war to Israel’s borders and renew attention to the Palestinian cause."
Sadly, Hamas will likely succeed in this. It's becoming increasingly clear that this war will continue long after Hamas is gone.
Looking at social media, you can see it is awash with pro-Hamas propaganda, but not a lot of it is aimed at Hamas trying to make a case for genocide. On the contrary, what you see is a lot of footage of dead children, destroyed cityscapes, and the actions of IDF forces. Trending on X was the tag "#GazaHolocaust," a ridiculous effort to make Israel's war on Hamas seem equivalent to Germany's mass imprisonment, torture, and slaughter of the Jewish people in Europe. The entire hashtag is awash with anti-Israel propaganda that focuses on the fallout of the war that Hamas started and Israel is finishing.
(READ: War Is Hell...So Don't Start One)
Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that this hashtag is based on falsehoods from the ground up. Hamas not only started this war, but they used these civilians as human shields in hopes that Israel would kill them so they could use them to generate bad PR for Israel. Hamas will go so far as to shoot at their people to corale them back into areas to up the chances Israel will unwillingly kill them.
Still, for those who aren't fully aware of what's happening, these images can easily shock and fool people into believing that the IDF are truly heartless monsters willing to kill children. It will certainly fool the useful idiots in universities and the gullible leftists in the streets.
This anti-Israel sentiment will persist after the war, and may even become more intense once it's been announced that Hamas has been eradicated. If Israel retakes Gaza and makes it another part of Israel, the narrative of Gaza being "occupied" will grow like a weed. It won't matter if Israel turns Gaza into an oasis of freedom, working utilities, and safety.
There will be attempts to frame the now-fallen Hamas as freedom fighters to be emulated. Acts of terrorism will be done both within and without Israel with the memory of Hamas in mind.
The left's anti-Israel sentiment will influence Democrat politicians here in the States, influencing them to be tougher on Israel in terms of foreign policy than they should be, all of it amounting to a giant virtue signal.
University professors will use the destruction of Hamas and the "occupation of Palestinian land" to brainwash their students into believing in the cause of "social justice," not just in Israel but here in the United States as well, creating a whole new generation of radical leftist activists bent on "freeing Palestine" and chanting antisemitic, genocidal slogans like "from the river to the sea."
In effect, Hamas has already succeeded in what they set out to do. We're watching them martyr themselves in real time for the cause of Israel's destruction, but it won't be Hamas soldiers who continue to fight this war, it'll be the spirit of Hamas living in the gullible, the stupid, the ignorant, and the evil. This is a war that Israel will be fighting for the foreseeable future.
