When Hamas terrorists burst across the Gaza border on October 7, 2023, the modern world saw something it had tried very hard to forget: jihad in its original form.

For years, diplomats, professors, and media commentators insisted that Hamas was really a “political actor” that could be moderated with enough concessions, money, and respect. They spoke about “cycles of violence,” “disputed narratives,” and “two sides” that simply needed more dialogue. On that Sabbath morning, while Israeli families were still asleep in their homes and young people were dancing at a music festival, that illusion died.

The men who flooded out of tunnels and across the breached border fences did not shout about “two states.” They shouted “Allahu akbar.” They were not confused youths who snapped in a moment of panic. They were trained fighters, guided by years of indoctrination, funded and armed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and motivated by the same Qur’anic verses and hadith that had once driven Muhammad’s warriors against Jewish tribes in Arabia.

Modern technology did not soften their brutality. It magnified it. Hamas gunmen carried GoPro cameras and phones, recording and live-streaming their crimes. They wanted the world to see, because they viewed what they were doing as a form of worship.

Jehovah’s Word judges this very differently. The Law commands, “You shall not murder.” The prophets condemn those who “devour” the poor and shed innocent blood. The Lord Jesus teaches His followers to love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them, and measure greatness by service, not terror. What Hamas and its Iranian backers unleashed was not the work of the true God; it was another chapter in Islam’s long war against the people who first received the Scriptures and against the Gospel that fulfills them.

From Gaza Tunnels to Israeli Fields: The Invasion No One Wanted to Believe

Before October 7, many Western officials spoke of Gaza as “contained.” Israel had withdrawn its soldiers and settlers from the strip years earlier. Crossing points were monitored. International agencies poured in aid. Hamas periodically fired rockets or organized border riots, but there were also long stretches of relative quiet. Talk of “economic projects” and “stabilization” multiplied. Some in Israel convinced themselves that Hamas had become pragmatic, more interested in ruling Gaza than in suicidal wars.

Underneath that quiet, another reality developed.

Hamas, founded in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, never renounced its charter calling for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews as a religious duty. Its leaders openly praised suicide bombings in earlier years and portrayed all of Israel—Tel Aviv as much as settlements—as occupied Islamic land. Any truce was tactical. Their ideology divided the world into Islam and unbelief; the existence of a Jewish state in what they considered “waqf,” holy Muslim territory, was intolerable.

While diplomats held conferences, Hamas dug. Beneath Gaza’s crowded streets and refugee camps, a city of tunnels expanded—passageways for moving fighters, storing weapons, and preparing for the day when they would surge outward. Iranian money and expertise helped them assemble and smuggle in rockets, anti-tank missiles, drones, and explosives. Training camps turned boys into militants, drilling them not only in weapons but in chants and sermons that glorified martyrdom and demonized Jews.

On October 7, a major Jewish festival—Simchat Torah—coincided with the weekly Sabbath. Many soldiers were home. Some units near Gaza were undermanned. That morning, Hamas launched a huge rocket barrage toward Israeli towns and cities, overwhelming parts of the missile defenses and drawing attention skyward. While sirens wailed, teams of terrorists moved.

They blew open sections of the border fence with explosives and bulldozers. Others used motorbikes, pickup trucks, and even paragliders to cross. They headed for kibbutzim, small farming communities, and for a music festival being held near Re’im. The targets were not military bases; they were civilian centers chosen precisely because they were vulnerable.

Communities like Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and Nahal Oz woke to gunshots and shouted Arabic. Hamas squads went house to house, setting homes on fire, shooting people trying to flee, and dragging others out as hostages. At the festival, videos later showed crowds running through fields as pickup trucks full of gunmen roared toward them, firing into unarmed groups. Roads became killing zones.

Many Israelis could not initially process what was happening, because it seemed impossible. The border was supposed to be secure. Hamas was supposed to be deterred. Yet here were hundreds of armed men, some dressed like soldiers, roaming freely on Israeli soil for hours. The invasion shattered not only defenses but also illusions—that a movement built on jihadist doctrine could somehow be turned into a peaceful neighbor by granting land, money, and legitimacy.

From Jehovah’s point of view, this was not a mysterious tragedy. When rulers allow groups committed to hatred of His chosen people and rejection of the Gospel to arm themselves next door, disaster is a matter of time. The Hebrew Scriptures warned Israel that if they tolerated idolatrous nations dedicated to their destruction, those neighbors would become thorns in their sides. The spiritual principle still stands: ignoring the declared intent of those who despise Jehovah’s truth leads to grief.

Allahu Akbar and GoPros: Theology of Torture in Real Time

What made October 7 especially shocking was not only the scale of killing, but the way it was documented.

Hamas terrorists came equipped with body cameras, phones, and live-streaming apps. Many wore GoPros strapped to their chests or helmets, recording everything as they moved through Israeli homes and streets. They sent videos back to their commanders and broadcast some footage directly to social media. In several cases, they seized their victims’ own phones and devices, using them to post images of killings on family accounts so parents or siblings would see the last moments of their loved ones.

These recordings were not acts of shame; they were acts of pride. The men shouted “Allahu akbar” as they fired into cars and houses. They praised Allah when they found children hiding. They chanted Quranic phrases while setting homes ablaze. They saw torture and murder as obedience.

In some clips, gunmen laugh and celebrate over bodies. In others, they argue briefly over whether to kidnap or kill, then resolve the matter in seconds with bullets. Hostages are dragged into Gaza barefoot, bleeding, surrounded by cheering crowds who shower captors with praise. Elderly women, mothers with infants, and wounded men are paraded and slapped. Through it all, the same cries resound: “Allah is greater.”

This behavior flows directly from Hamas’s theological training. From childhood, Gazan children in Hamas-run schools memorize verses that portray Jews as cursed for rejecting prophets and that cast fighting them as an act pleasing to Allah. Sermons in mosques speak of “stones and trees” on the Day of Judgment calling Muslims to kill Jews hiding behind them. Martyrs are glorified as heroes whose death secures forgiveness and honor for their families.

When those ideas meet modern cameras, we get October 7 on video. The world was given an unfiltered look at what jihad looks like when its adherents feel unrestrained. It is not a clean, surgical operation. It is men kicking in doors, shooting strangers at point-blank range, and praising their god while doing so.

Jehovah’s Word reveals that what a person truly believes about God will eventually show in how he treats other human beings, who bear Jehovah’s image. The Lord Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks. When men scream “God is greater” while desecrating bodies and terrorizing families, they display the heart of their god. That god is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a counterfeit spirit that delights in fear and death.

For Christians, this is a stark reminder. The Gospel calls us to bear witness even under persecution, never to become persecutors ourselves. The early holy ones were thrown to beasts, burned, and beheaded, but they did not storm pagan homes to slaughter families. They sang hymns in prison, prayed for their enemies, and preached forgiveness through Christ. Any “theology” that takes joy in livestreaming cruelty stands condemned by the Scriptures.

Tehran’s Proxy Army: How the Islamic Republic Armed and Directed Hamas

Hamas did not design October 7 in a vacuum. Behind the militants in Gaza stands a larger force: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since 1979, the regime in Tehran has cast itself as the vanguard of global Islamic revolution, hostile both to Israel and to the West. It has built a network of proxy militias and parties across the region—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Palestine, Houthi forces in Yemen. These groups share different ethnic and sectarian backgrounds, yet they receive training, weapons, and funding from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), especially its Quds Force branch.

For Iran’s rulers, the destruction of Israel is not merely a political goal; it is a religious one. They frame their hostility in terms of Qur’an and hadith, casting Israel as an illegitimate “Zionist regime” occupying Muslim land and as a front line of Western influence. Official speeches speak of wiping Israel off the map, and military parades display missiles decorated with slogans about Jerusalem’s “liberation.”

Over the years, Iran supplied Hamas and other Gaza factions with rockets, anti-tank missiles, explosives, and technical knowledge for local production of weapons. IRGC trainers helped militants refine tactics, from tunnel warfare to drone use. Money flowed through charitable fronts and smuggling networks.

October 7 bore the marks of that influence. The scale of the operation, the coordinated use of rockets to mask infiltration, and the sophistication of some attacks went far beyond earlier random raids. While levels of direct command are debated in political discussions, ideologically and materially Hamas operated as part of Iran’s “axis of resistance.” When they struck, they did so knowing that Tehran would hail them as heroes and that Hezbollah in Lebanon and other proxies might open additional fronts.

This proxy strategy allows Iran to wage jihad against Israel and the West while keeping its own territory largely insulated from direct retaliation. It mirrors, on a larger scale, the way early Islamic rulers sometimes used tribal allies and vassals to extend their reach without risking the core state.

From Jehovah’s perspective, using others as human shields and disposable weapons does not reduce guilt; it increases it. The prophets condemn rulers who “build Zion with blood” and use their people as pawns. The New Testament warns that those who cause others to stumble face harsher judgment. Iran’s regime not only oppresses its own citizens with harsh sharia and repression; it also exports death through proxies, teaching young men in Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere that their highest calling is to die killing Jews.

Christians should see this clearly. The IRGC is not a neutral geopolitical actor; it is a theological army. Its commanders explicitly reject the Gospel, curse Israel as a nation that still remains in Jehovah’s purposes, and seek to extend the rule of a false version of “Allah” over more territory. Their fingerprints on October 7 show that the attack was not just a local outburst—it was part of a broader Islamic war against the Bible’s people and message.

UN, Media, and Campus Allies: How the West Became Hamas’s Megaphone

One of the most revealing parts of the October 7 aftermath was not only what Hamas and Iran did, but how much of the Western world responded.

For a brief moment, when images first emerged of burning kibbutzim and terrified hostages, many leaders condemned the attacks clearly. They spoke of terrorism, of barbarity, of Israel’s right to self-defense. Yet within days, the narrative began to shift. International organizations and large media outlets quickly turned their primary focus to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, often repeating casualty numbers provided by Hamas-controlled ministries with little scrutiny. Headlines blurred the distinction between attacker and defender, speaking of “new rounds of violence” or “escalations” as if the conflict had simply dropped out of the sky with no cause.

At the United Nations, resolutions and emergency sessions often zeroed in on Israel’s responses while soft-pedaling or omitting Hamas’s responsibility. Long-standing institutional bias against Israel resurfaced in calls for “immediate ceasefires” that would have left Hamas’s military structure intact. Some human rights bodies appeared more outraged by the possibility of Israeli ground operations than by the documented kidnapping of children and elderly people.

In major Western cities, demonstrations erupted—not primarily against Hamas, but against Israel. Protesters waved Palestinian flags, chanted “From the river to the sea,” and in some cases praised October 7 as “resistance.” On university campuses, student groups issued statements that described the massacres as a legitimate response to “colonialism” and framed Israeli civilians as “settlers” with no real right to live where they were born. The language of radical activism blended almost seamlessly with Hamas’s own justification: all Israel is occupation, all Jews in the land are fair targets.

This reaction did not arise overnight. For decades, sections of Western academia and media have treated Israel as a perpetual oppressor and Palestinian organizations as oppressed victims whose violence is always “understandable.” The spiritual blindness here is profound. Instead of measuring actions by Jehovah’s standard—murder is evil, kidnapping is evil, targeting civilians is evil—many commentators measure by ideological categories. If someone fits the victim slot in their worldview, almost anything they do is excused as “resistance.”

In doing so, they become megaphones for jihad. Hamas’s own strategy has long relied on this: attack, draw Israeli military response, maximize images of Palestinian suffering (even when caused by Hamas’s own rockets or use of human shields), and rely on global media to amplify only that half of the story. The group hides weapons in mosques, schools, and hospitals precisely because it expects civilian casualties to generate diplomatic pressure on Israel.

The Bible warns that those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, will face Jehovah’s judgment. When professors and journalists justify or relativize rapes, kidnappings, and mass shootings because they fit a fashionable ideological narrative, they participate in that inversion. The cross of Christ stands against such moral twisting. At Calvary, the innocent suffers for the guilty; in jihadist logic, the guilty claim the right to make the innocent suffer.

Christians must resist this pressure. Compassion for Palestinian civilians, who are themselves often abused by their own rulers, does not require excusing Hamas. True compassion recognizes that the greatest enemy of ordinary Palestinians is the ideology that turned their sons into killers and their neighborhoods into launchpads. Standing against jihad is not hatred; it is loyalty to Jehovah’s holiness and love.

From Oslo Illusions to Iron Swords: What October 7 Really Proves About Jihad and Israel

Since the early 1990s and the Oslo accords, much of the world has tried to believe a simple story: that the conflict around Israel is mainly about borders, settlements, and imprecise maps. According to that narrative, if enough land were traded, enough handshakes photographed on White House lawns, enough conferences held in European capitals, then peace would naturally follow. Jihad theology, Hamas charters, and Iranian speeches were treated as background noise.

October 7 tore that story open.

Hamas did not attack because Israel had refused to leave Gaza; Israel had already withdrawn its soldiers and settlers years before. Hamas did not slaughter families because it was excluded from political processes; it had been allowed to participate in elections and to rule Gaza with considerable autonomy. It did not kidnap teenagers and grandparents because there were no offers of negotiation; it had repeatedly used kidnappings in the past to extract prisoner releases and concessions.

Hamas attacked because it believes, sincerely and consistently, that all of Israel’s territory is Islamic land and that the presence of a Jewish state there violates Allah’s will. It attacked because its reading of Qur’an and hadith tells it that Jews are a people under divine curse who must be subordinated or eliminated. It attacked because, in its eyes, jihad and martyrdom are the highest expressions of faith. No number of peace accords can change that theology.

Israel’s military response—Operation Iron Swords and subsequent campaigns—was therefore not simply a policy choice. It was a forced recognition that coexistence with a group like Hamas is an illusion. Jehovah gives governments the responsibility to bear the sword against wrongdoers. Imperfect as any human state is, Israel has a duty to protect its citizens from a neighbor that teaches children to rejoice at their deaths.

October 7 also reminds us that the existence of Israel as a nation is not an accident of politics. Jehovah made covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, promising that their descendants would have a specific land. Those promises do not justify every policy of any modern government, but they do mean that attempts to erase Israel entirely collide with Jehovah’s revealed will. Movements that chant for Israel’s annihilation place themselves, knowingly or not, in opposition to the God of the Bible.

At the same time, Christians must remember that the ultimate hope for Jews and Arabs alike is not found in tanks or treaties but in the Gospel. The New Testament proclaims that the wall between Jew and Gentile has been broken in Christ, that both are reconciled to God through one cross. The tragedy is that Islam, from its beginning, has stood against that message, denying the crucifixion and resurrection and offering a different path—one that leads, as October 7 shows, to more graves and more hatred.

The events of that day prove what this book has shown from the start: when Islam is taken seriously, it does not mellow into a harmless spirituality. It revives jihad. It fills hearts with dreams of conquest and revenge. It teaches that killing for Allah can wash away sin. Whether in seventh-century Medina, twentieth-century Iran, or twenty-first-century Gaza, the pattern is the same.

Jehovah calls the world to a different way. His Son shed His own blood instead of spilling others’. He offers forgiveness freely to all who repent, including Muslims who have been taught to hate. He builds a Kingdom not with tunnels and rockets, but with the preaching of the Word and the power of the Spirit through Scripture. October 7 draws a clear line between those two kingdoms. One glories in flame and fear. The other glories in a crucified and risen Savior.

The world may prefer comforting lies about “misunderstandings” and “cycles of violence.” But the facts remain. Hamas, backed by the Islamic Republic, carried out October 7 as an act of obedient jihad. Until that reality is faced, the war they began will not truly end. Only when people turn from Muhammad’s path and bow to the Lord Jesus Christ will the weapons fall silent in any lasting way.

You May Also Enjoy

Muhammad – Conquest of Mecca: Broken Treaties and Forced Conversions (630 C.E.)

About the Author

CLICK LINKED IMAGE TO VISIT ONLINE STORE

CLICK TO SCROLL THROUGH OUR BOOKS