Hamas is the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among its own population as a strategy for victory.

Understanding that it can’t defeat Israel militarily, but obsessed with destroying the Jewish state, Hamas is engaged in the human sacrifice of a limitless number of its own civilians in order to turn public opinion against Israel and force it into a premature permanent ceasefire.

Thus far, this strategy would appear to be working.

If Israel fails to destroy Hamas — the Palestinian terror group ruling Gaza, a de facto state — other enemies of the West will learn that committing atrocities, kidnapping, civilian sacrifice and disinformation should be the playbook for challenging the U.S. and its allies around the world.

Since 2006, Hamas has been quietly preparing for this current war while Israeli leadership incorrectly believed that the terrorists were content with governing the Strip, amassing billions of dollars from patrons and orchestrating periodic limited rocket attacks.

Instead, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, assisted by Iran, developed a brilliant war strategy based on a keen understanding of Israel, the Biden administration’s penchant for appeasement, the latent antisemitism in the West, the power of a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign and the nature of woke culture in the West.

Hamas entrenched itself in the densely populated Gaza urban areas, spending 15 years and billions in Western and Arab aid to build 500 miles of unique subterranean fortifications, deep under civilian infrastructure as well as under protected locations — hospitals, schools, mosques — where Israel would refrain from bombing.

Understanding that Israel was reluctant to conduct a full-scale war in Gaza’s booby-trapped urban terrain with its potential for high loss of life, Hamas concluded that only a heinous, large-scale massacre of Israeli civilians would prompt such an invasion.

If Jerusalem failed to respond, it would appear devastatingly weak, unwilling or unable to defend itself and its government would likely collapse.

If Israel decided on a full-scale response, Hamas would use its assets to effectively manipulate public opinion against the Jews.

On Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas committed a barbaric atrocity, killing 1200 Israelis, the largest-scale murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

Hamas took over 250 hostages, both as human security shields to protect its leadership and as bargaining chips to cause the Israelis to compromise strategic war interests in order to rescue its people, alive or dead.

In 2011, Palestinian terror leader Sinwar and over 1000 other Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Once Israel entered Gaza, Hamas purposely sacrificed Palestinian civilians by forcing them into the line of fire, locating rocket launchers and military equipment in and under their homes and businesses.

Then, they let the press do the rest.

The images of desperate Gazans and vastly exaggerated reports of Palestinian civilian deaths and famine have been cycling daily in the mainstream media, eager to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

Palestinian leadership understood that this massive disinformation campaign, assisted by a widespread explosion of antisemitism, would almost immediately flip the narrative of the war from a necessary reaction to unspeakable atrocities to one about Palestinian victimhood.

The Palestinians, under Iran’s guidance, had managed to develop a global movement of activists willing to fight an information war isolating Israel diplomatically and undermining its right to exist.

Universities and social media platforms are fronts in this campaign.

Palestinian agents are organizing rallies in cities across the world in support of terrorism, the extermination of Israel and the murder of Jews.

Marxist left-wing professors have been indoctrinating students to believe that Israelis, the indigenous people of the Holy Land, are Western colonialist oppressors and that Jews, a centuries-old oppressed minority, are white supremacists.

Propagandized students are protesting on campuses, convinced the Palestinians are America’s "Blacks" fighting for their civil rights.

Having studied the Biden administration’s appeasement in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, and in nuclear negotiations with Iran, Sinwar was confident that high Palestinian civilian casualties together with this disinformation campaign would cause the U.S. to prevent Israel from finishing the job, allowing Hamas to survive to fight yet another day.

Initially, Mr. Biden expressed strong support for Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas.

Then he caved to his left-wing base and Muslim Michigan voters, just as Sinwar expected, imposing an arms embargo on Israel to prevent it from destroying Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah.

Winning an election matters more than the national security of the United States and Israel.

Additionally, an Israeli victory would deal a crushing blow to the Obama-Biden project of realignment with Iran, empowering the mullahs as Mideast hegemons, the current administration’s real but unacknowledged policy.

If Hamas were to survive, it would lead to many other attacks — as it promised — (here, here), the ultimate goal being the destruction of the Jewish state and all Jews globally.

Yahya Sinwar sent a message, "Don’t worry, we have the Israelis right where we want them."

Message to Sinwar: The Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Ziva Dahl is a senior fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Ziva writes and lectures about U.S.-Israel relations, U.S. foreign policy, Israel, Zionism, Antisemitism and BDS on college campuses. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The Hill, New York Daily News, New York Observer, The Washington Times, American Spectator, American Thinker and Jerusalem Post. Read Ziva Dahl's Reports — More Here.