If Hamas hadn’t attacked on October 7, Israel would not now be at war.

Before October 7, 2023, one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict was already keeping to the terms of a cease-fire, despite the fact that no cease-fire had previously been agreed upon.

The Israeli military forces weren’t visiting acts of aggression down upon their neighbors.

Hamas wasn’t keeping to any cease-fire, however. Before October 7, Iran’s terrorist proxy force of Hamas was continuously launching rocket attacks at Israel. Iran, suddenly free of the crushing sanctions of the Trump years by the Biden Administration, spent freely of its newfound wealth to attack Israel and other targets in the Middle East.

But while Israel was absorbing rockets and maintaining a cease-fire, we now know the terrorist masterminds of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah were busy plotting the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel — and whatever they have in store for the unsuspecting world next.

Will it be a lone-wolf terror attack at the concert of a major pop superstar — perpetrated by some youth radicalized by online propaganda?

Or will it be some major sporting event?

Will the Iranians manage to assassinate a former — and perhaps future — U.S. President?

The same forces currently attacking Israel are the same forces that plotted the 9/11 attack against the United States. They would undoubtedly love to perpetrate another such high-profile attack on U.S. soil.

Will they be successful?

National security experts and U.S. intelligence agency analysts have been warning recently that the homeland is increasingly vulnerable to a terror attack. Our southern border is unsecured and the FBI is reporting encounters with suspects on the terror watchlist.

The U.S. is protected by a vast ocean from the terrorist forces of Iran, ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Israel is not.

In addition to Israel’s current War on Terror, Israel is fighting hourly on another front: That of public opinion.

The fact that Hamas uses the Palestinian people as human shields — a war crime in itself — is lost on many in the West. Logically, it is impossible to ignore the fact — if Hamas didn’t use human shields, Israel’s superior military force would wipe Hamas from the face of the earth.

And yet those who would defend Hamas — and criticize Israel — often choose to forget it. Many calling for a cease-fire from Israel certainly don’t expect Hamas to adhere to the same concessions.

“And don’t be fooled when the blood libels against the Jewish State come from people who wear fancy silk robes and speak in lofty tones about law and Justice,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of Congress last month.

“Here’s a case in point: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza,” said Netanyahu. “This is utter complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food, and that’s more than 3,000 calories for every man, woman, and child in Gaza. If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”

“So much for that lie, but here’s another: The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians,” Netanyahu said. “What in God’s green earth is he talking about? The IDF has dropped millions of flyers, sent millions of text messages, and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way. But at the same time, Hamas does everything in its power to put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way. They fire rockets from schools, from hospitals, from mosques. They even shoot their own people when they try to leave the war zone.”

“For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy,” Netanyahu pointed out. “For Hamas, it’s a strategy. They actually want Palestinian civilians to die, so that Israel will be smeared in the international media and be pressured to end the war before it’s won. This would enable Hamas to survive another day, and as they vowed, to carry out October 7th again and again and again.”

If Hamas had never attacked Israel on October 7, Israel would not now be at war against Hamas.

On the other hand, if Israel hadn’t been attempting — successfully — to broker peace treaties, normalize relations, spark trade relationships, and build diplomatic inroads with its neighbors, Hamas might never bothered to attack Israel on October 7.

Disrupting that peace process was the main reason Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Provoking Israel into an attack allowed Hamas to use its most powerful weapon of all: Propaganda.

Without propaganda, Hamas would be nothing.

Hamas isn’t strong militarily. It isn’t a good governing force in Gaza. The Palestinian people suffer depredations, subsistence poverty, and lack of educational resources while Hamas spends billions in foreign aid and Iran’s money to launch rockets at Israel.

Instead of being educated, Palestinian children are indoctrinated to hate and fear Jewish people — not to hate and fear the terrorist organization hijacking and terrorizing the Middle East.

As a terrorist organization, Hamas is anathema to peace in the Middle East or anywhere else.

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)