The apocalyptic aims of Hamas

ABSTRACT

The motivations of Hamas in its October 7, 2023, attacks seem perplexing and not rational. What was the point of the brutality? The essay argues the violence should be considered apocalyptic and in a global tradition going back nearly 100 years. Such violence aims to create an apocalyptic process by eliciting a vast overreaction. Apocalyptic goals and sacred values are not negotiable in a world of realpolitik. Hamas treats its own people as dispensable pawns. They want the indiscriminate destruction of apartments, hospitals, and even mosques to stir a wider upheaval. That is only way for Hamas to hope to offset their huge military disadvantage. We are familiar with the offensive rhetoric of Hamas about wiping Israel off the map (including the antisemitic meme “From the river to the sea”), but the totalistic excesses in the remarks of many Israeli officials and its citizens are disturbing. The more such comments occur, the more extreme calls to “wipe out” and “eliminate” Gaza become normalized. Americans, however, should be humble in what we say about this war. We overreacted to the 9/11 attacks out of rage and humiliation, unleashed two forever wars, killed hundreds of thousands of people, spent several trillion dollars—and lost both wars.

KEYWORDS:

• Apocalypse
• Hamas
• Israel
• rage
• war

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Charles B. Strozier

Charles B. Strozier is Emeritus Professor History at John Jay College, CUNY, where he also was the Founding Director of the Center on Terrorism (2001–2019). A practicing psychoanalyst, he is a member of the TRISP Foundation and is the author of Until the Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and New York City in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses and Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America. He is co-author of The Fundamentalist Mindset and The New World of Self: Heinz Kohut’s Transformation of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, among many other books and scores of articles.