By Nicolas Pelham
A few hours after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of civilians in Israel on October 7th, the man who planned the attacks made a rare public appearance. A video broadcast on Hamas’s media channel showed a silhouette of the group’s military leader, Muhammad Deif, as a pre-recorded statement played in the background. His deep voice was strangely measured as he announced an unleashing of terror that would claim more than 1,400 lives.
Hamas is an Islamist organisation, but there was scant mention of religion in Deif’s address. He called for “brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria” to join the fight, but ended by appealing to the non-Muslim people of the world to stage protests. Then he was gone, leaving horror in his wake.
No one alive is responsible for so many Israeli deaths as Deif. Aside from a stint of recuperation from war wounds he has led Hamas’s military wing since the mid-1990s, a rare constant in a leadership frequently disrupted by assassination. Under his command, Hamas’s tactics have become less amateurish and more devastating: first mass suicide-bombings, then the deployment of long-range missiles.
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