Not all movements that carry the banner of resistance are actually seeking freedom. Some build their creed on death and turn illusion into a booming trade. Anyone who examines the rhetoric of Hamas will quickly discover it is not a project of life or resistance but a project of organized death. It is a system that turns blood into political currency and suicide into a collective identity.
Hamas was built on a hollow yet lethal formula: “If you kill, you are a hero; if you are killed, you are a martyr in heaven.” This equation leaves no room for an ordinary person to choose their own life, dignity, or future. Instead, they are thrown into a bloody spectacle orchestrated by a leadership that is both morally bankrupt and mentally unhinged.
In their world, a hero is not one who builds, protects, or plants but one who blows himself up among others because he is, quite simply, guaranteed a direct path to heaven. A martyr is not a victim of injustice but propaganda fuel: a headline in the news, a face on a poster held high in marches, soon to be forgotten in the dust.
Kill or be killed
The true tragedy of this dark and regressive ideology is that death is not just a possibility; it is an absolute obligation. Followers must either kill or be killed. In either case, they become cogs in a machine that Hamas operates with chilling ideological detachment. In the doctrine of Hamas, a mother’s tears for her son or the orphaning of a small child are of no consequence.
Every tragedy is turned into publicity. A grieving mother is not left to mourn; she is forced to stand heroically before the cameras, shouting that her sons are all potential martyrs. A widow is turned into a symbol of piety and endurance, offered the hollow comfort of rehearsed lines like, “You will be cared for by one who is more pious and righteous.”
As for the children, their fate is predetermined. They are the “cubs of the cause,” and their next step is not toward school but down the path to another death. In essence, Hamas operates death factories, producing the dead while preparing the living to be their ready replacements.
Death for the common people; luxury for the elite
Yet the catastrophe does not end with this suicidal culture. It is compounded by a hypocrisy that is both stark and brazen. The same Hamas leaders who glorify death and demand that their followers sacrifice themselves do not offer their own children and families to the same slaughter.
The families of the Hamas elite are smuggled away in secret to regional and international capitals. There, they enjoy luxurious Western educations, safe homes, blue seas, and fortified comfort. Curiously, the wives of Hamas leaders are not offered to a “more pious and righteous” man, and their sons are not buried in the tunnels where the sons of the poor lie.
The contrast lays the truth bare: Death is an obligation for the children of the common people, while an extravagant life is a right reserved for the children of the elite.
Exporting a culture of death
As if drowning Gaza in this hellish cycle were not enough, Hamas now seeks to export its culture of death to the entire Arab world. Its mouthpieces and leaders demand that Arab governments and armies wage an all-out war with Israel, acting as if they have been deputized by God to hand out free tickets to heaven.
Hamas, like other right-wing religious extremist groups, presents itself as the exclusive broker for paradise, distributing promises of eternity, just as priests in the Middle Ages sold indulgences.
What audacity could be greater? Who gave Hamas the authority to trade in paradise as if it were real estate registered in its name? And who authorized it to decide that the blood of Arab citizens is the cheap and natural price for its delusions?
At this point, we must stop and state the plain truth. Hamas is a terror organization with a single investment: the business of death, which it sells to the gullible and the deluded.
The more corpses pile up, the higher the organization’s political stock rises. For Hamas, victory is not peace, stability, or a secure life. It is the rising death toll and escalating destruction, a perverse thrill its leaders derive from the chaos. Heroism is not a symmetrical military engagement but a bloody spectacle that ends with a demolished home and a new corpse whose name is printed on a poster.
This perverse logic desecrates the sanctity of human life, turning it into a morbid circus owned by leaders who grow richer and more powerful with every tragedy.
Media are partners in Hamas's crimes
This farce, of course, would not be complete without the media mouthpieces who promote it. Here, we see the role of Arab writers and broadcasters who have sold their pens and their voices to market this culture of death, beating the drums for this shameful charade.
They are direct partners in the crime. They sell illusion to the masses while covering the filthy reality with a cloud of resonant slogans.
“Go to paradise,” they urge, as if they were registrars holding the keys to the kingdom.
Did Hamas sign an exclusive contract with heaven? Is the key to paradise kept in the headquarters of the Qassam Brigades? It is a grotesque farce when a lie becomes doctrine and followers are marched to their deaths, while their leaders indulge in the comforts of security and wealth.
The elite should lead by example
Therefore, the response must be unequivocal. If Hamas is so obsessed with death, let its leaders go to it first. Let their sons line up on the front lines. Let them enter the tunnels and be buried under the rubble, just as the sons of the poor are every day.
If they are sincere in their love for death, let them taste it before anyone else. For the sons of leaders to remain in air-conditioned luxury while the rest of the people are used as fuel for the inferno is not courage; it is cowardly betrayal, not sacrifice, but sickening exploitation.
In closing, let us state the unvarnished truth. Hamas is a radical movement with a death wish, hiding behind religious and nationalist slogans. The time has come to expose it for what it is. Hamas is not fighting for freedom; it is fighting for power built on a mountain of corpses. It is not liberating a people; it is bleeding them dry.
The world must tell Hamas: Go with your followers to death, if that is what you desire. But do not drag the innocent with you. Do not rally entire societies behind your illusion of a guaranteed paradise. The people of the region deserve life, while Hamas and its leaders deserve nothing more than to be left alone to embrace the death they so adore.
The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.