The Success Of Martyrdom

“Victory or Martyrdom.”

That has been the rallying cry of Hamas since its inception. It was not a metaphor or rhetorical flourish. It was a strategic doctrine and a religious creed. Victory would mean the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a devout Islamic state “from the river to the sea.” Martyrdom meant dying in pursuit of that cause — not just willingly, but eagerly.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas made its major play for victory. Thousands of militants and civilians from Gaza poured into Israel, raping, torturing, and slaughtering Jews in a pogrom of medieval barbarism. They hoped the spectacle would provoke a regional war — Hezbollah from the north, Iran from afar, Arab street uprisings across the Middle East. They imagined a domino collapse of the Jewish State.

It did not play out according to the preferred plan.

Hezbollah has been badly bruised. Iran has been humiliated. The IDF shattered Hamas leadership and destroyed its terror tunnels. The remaining Hamas fighters are mostly hiding — or dead or captured. Gaza’s infrastructure, above and below ground, is rubble.

Which leaves plan B: martyrdom.

Not just for themselves — many of whom will choose death over surrender — but for the people of Gaza whom they have indoctrinated for two decades. From kindergartens to mosques, from textbooks to television, they taught Palestinians that death for Allah is better than life without “liberation.” That there is nobility in dying while killing Jews.

Over 20,000 Hamas fighters are dead. There are almost twice that number of dead civilians. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza are leveled. Tunnels, schools, hospitals are gone.

That’s not failure for Hamas. That’s evidence that the campaign for martyrdom worked. Every dead Gazan is a stepping stone to paradise. Every civilian loss is a propaganda weapon. Hamas always calculated that if they couldn’t beat Israel in battle, they could win in death.

And it’s working.

Around the world, nations are blaming Israel for a “power vacuum” in Gaza — as if Hamas’s evil leadership was a success story over seventeen years. They demand “reconstruction” — as if Gaza was a victim of a natural disaster and not a self-inflicted holy war launched atop a powder keg. The idea that Gazans were brainwashed into seeking martyrdom is dismissed as Islamophobic. The western mind cannot comprehend that death is an accepted goal, not a consequence.

New York Times article blaming Israel for Hamas’s refusal to surrender

In the West, every death is a tragedy. But in Gaza under Hamas, it is currency. Suicide bombers once strapped explosives to their chests. Now, the entire Strip has been strapped into a suicide vest, and the detonator pressed.

This isn’t suicide-by-cop. It’s martyrdom-by-genocide — a warped campaign in which Hamas initiated all-out war against a vastly superior enemy, knowing full well the toll. And the more people die, the more it fuels the narrative they’ve crafted: that they are eternal victims, even while firing rockets from hospitals and launching ambushes from schools.

It is cruel. It is evil. And it is successful.

Because the more Gazans die, the more the world turns on Israel. The more Israel defends itself and fights to return its hostages, the more it is blamed for the destruction of Gaza. The West is so allergic to the idea of mass death as a chosen outcome that it must assign blame elsewhere.

So Hamas continues to fight, not to win, but to die. And in death, they declare success because the narrative of the Global South has been successfully instilled into consciousness of the Global North for the past decade. The insidious jihad has now reached peak toxicity.

“Victory or Martyrdom.”

A true defeat of Hamas – in which it gets neither victory nor martyrdom – would be for it to surrender. To hand over its weapons. To leave the Strip and be stripped of mention on any building, square or monument. To be vacated from government, military and textbooks.

That is precisely what Hamas is avoiding at all cost. It will not hand over the hostages and lay down its weapons. It will fight until every child in Gaza is dead rather than concede defeat. And the majority of Gazans continue to back that plan, even as recently as a May 2025 PCPSR poll.

The world refuses to admit the reality and prefers to blame Israel for the continued deaths rather than pressure Gazans to stand down. Without a Hamas concession, there is really no “day after.” The war will continue. Deaths will fill the pages of the next chapter.

Israel has denied Gazans the victory of victory and the world is enabling the victory of martyrdom.

All because the West cannot comprehend the mindset of psychopaths and remains blind to the mainstreamed antisemitism in their midst.

ACTION ITEM

Post on social media that the Gazan dead are not only victims of Hamas’s war but Hamas’s education. No such society is deserving of sovereignty.