The whole world now knows about Hamas’s attack on Israel a month ago and the unimaginable butchery and slaughter that its terrorists inflicted on over 1,400 innocent civilians including babies, children, women, some of whom were pregnant and the elderly, some of whom were Holocaust survivors.

Many of the victims were killed in the most heinous and brutal manner with kids set on fire whilst alive in front of their parents and parents executed in front of their children. Babies were shot in their cribs, others were decapitated and at least one pregnant woman’s stomach was cut open, the foetus removed and stabbed in front of its mother who was then executed. Houses were set on fire to force civilians to come out of their security rooms to be shot. Over 260 young people attending a music festival were shot at point-blank range.

And over 240 innocent people including babies, children, women and the elderly have been kidnapped and are being held as hostages in Gaza.

I am listing these crimes against humanity not just because it is important for people to know and remember what happened but to ask a couple of questions.

What were the Hamas leaders trying to achieve and how did they think Israel would retaliate following this unspeakable massacre of people just going about their business?

Could it be that they just wanted to kill as many Jews as possible, because they had the same motivation as the Nazis who during World War Two also wanted to kill as many Jews as possible. But to what end?

Hamas leaders knew that this internationally proscribed terrorist organisation would not be able to stand up to the IDF in a long-term conflict so they decided to try and surprise Israel by using the time they would have available before the Israeli Defence Forces could effectively respond, to massacre any Jew they could get their hands on.

But surely these Palestinian leaders who rule Gaza and are supposed to look after and protect the citizens of this area must have taken into account in their considerations to attack, that the day after the massacre, Israel would take revenge with the kind of response that meant that the people in Gaza would end up paying the heaviest possible price for this inconceivable cruelty. So why did Hamas do it?

One only has to read the Hamas Charter to understand their motivation which includes the goal to eradicate the State of Israel off the map by annihilating all its citizens, Jews, Moslems, Christians, Druze, Bedouin, Baha’i and all others including those of no faith. But the Hamas leaders knew that this objective would not have been possible even though they attacked on a Sabbath and Jewish holiday of 7 October and so what was it?

For the Hamas leaders, the objective was intended to instil terror in the hearts of Israelis and send a message that the Jews are not safe in the Jewish State.

In an interview with the Lebanese TV channel LBC which was translated and published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau stated that Israel is a country that has no place on their land, He stated that Hamas must remove Israel because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation. He continued by saying that Hamas must teach Israel a lesson, and it will do it twice and three times. The attack on October 7 was just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth he continued. This will be the case even if Hamas will have to pay a heavy price which it is ready to pay. The Palestinians are a nation of martyrs and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.

But it is not the leaders of Hamas that are paying the price whilst they live with their families in luxury in Qatar or Turkey. Gaza is considered to be one of the poorest regions in the world, with an unemployment rate of over 60% and a GDP per capita estimated at approximately one-fourth of the estimated per capita in the West Bank. These figures make it one of the world’s most impoverished places whilst the leaders of Hamas enjoy lives with fortunes of millions or billions of dollars.

Many attribute Gaza’s limited economic growth to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade that, since 2007, has imposed restrictions on goods entering or exiting the Gaza Strip. This argument, however, ignores a fundamental issue in Gaza, which is the wealth of the Palestinian leadership which has built its wealth mainly through the booming tunnel industry, with Hamas officials receiving taxes, generally 20%, on the goods smuggled through the tunnels.

Hamas has declared that it is not its goal to govern Gaza and establish an administration that will deliver water, electricity and other essential services. Its objective is not to improve the situation in Gaza. That is a job for the Americans, the Israelis and the United Nations. Hamas’s goal was to start a large-scale regional war to be joined almost immediately by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority, Israeli Arabs, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and hopefully Iran.

Hamas leaders were also determined to resurrect the Palestinian question and return it to the centre of the world’s attention. The success of the Abraham Accords and the possibility that normalisation will be achieved with the Saudis has relegated the importance of the establishment of a Palestinian State in favour of setting up a united front against Iran. These possible peace initiatives necessitated extreme action to try to stop or possibly kill off this initiative thus making it clear to the Arab and Western world that it would be impossible to reach agreements in the Middle East without first resolving the fate of the Palestinian people.

A few days after 7 October, a silent vigil was held on the Concert Hall steps in Glasgow. Speaker after speaker said that the world must not forget what happened on that terrible day because as in the past, it will not be long before all the media headlines will be about Gaza and how its civilians are suffering because Israel is determined to continue with its long-running policy of ethnic cleansing of the Strip and this is a breach of international law. And as expected, five weeks after that fateful day, the world is screaming that for humanitarian reasons, Israel must agree to a cease-fire.

But why is the world not demanding that for humanitarian reasons, a cease-fire should be preceded by the release of all the innocent hostages? Why is the world not demanding that Hamas should confirm that it would honour a cease-fire? Why is the world not criticising Hamas for the tragedy it has brought on the people of Gaza?

Could this be the world’s way of confirming that Israel cannot continue to be the homeland for the Jewish People and once again that the Jewish people do not count?