While Iran continues to weave its global web of terror, its apprentice, Hamas, continues to hold Israelis, Americans and foreign nationals hostage. Hamas leverages skillful propaganda and manipulates media to stoke the flames of antisemitism worldwide, inciting violent and even deadly attacks on Jews in the United States.
Despite the challenges and threats, in defiance of evil, the Jewish people continue to oppose terror and demand freedom for the remaining hostages. Through the joint efforts of the Israel Defense Forces and the United States, many have been freed, yet more than 50—some alive and some dead—remain in the dark tunnels of Hamas captivity.
Iran and Hamas remain partners in goal of destroying Israel
Iran is the head of global terror, but Hamas is its most lethal arm—working in partnership for the shared goal of destroying both the State of Israel, which they label “Little Satan,” and the United States, “Big Satan.” They make threats and declarations while continuing the enrichment of uranium far exceeding limits for peaceful use. Iran’s supreme leader has openly called out leaders in Washington for trying to stop its nuclear goals, vowing not to stop enriching uranium:
“The proposal that the Americans have presented is 100% against our interests. The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech.
Iran has been repeatedly caught by nuclear watchdogs testing its nuclear-weapons delivery systems as well as hiding enriched uranium storage areas from U.N. nuclear-weapons inspectors. While denial and secrecy run in the background, in the foreground, Iran continues to stall negotiations and refuses to consider any proposed diplomatic solution with the United States. In efforts to gaslight and shift the world’s focus from them to Israel, Iran has boasted that it has acquired and soon will release a “treasure trove” of secrets about Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
Hamas and Iran are partners in terror and murder.
U.S. President Donald Trump revealed that Iran has been involved in ceasefire negotiations between Israel, the United States and Hamas. In a recent phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the nuclear talks with Iran, Trump, pointing out the challenges of the negotiations, added: “It’s tough. They are great negotiators. They’re just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up. They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment. We want just the opposite. And so far, they’re not there. They have given us their thoughts on the deal … it’s just not acceptable.”
As history has shown, Iran and its proxies mean what they say, and they openly state future plans to cause death and destruction on a massive scale. This threat is substantially increasing as Iran’s atomic chief just announced that Russia has agreed to construct eight new nuclear plants in Iran, potentially tripling the terror giant’s nuclear capacity.
Hamas, Iran’s terror arm in Gaza, mimics its tactics
In the same way that Iran has refused any compromise on its uranium enrichment in nuclear negotiations with the United States, Hamas has mimicked that strategy and also refused compromise, turning down various ceasefire plans by Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. Hamas has responded to U.S. ceasefire and hostage exchange offers by delivering fake plans and demanding major changes, forcing the remaining captives to struggle even longer.
Hamas refuses to disarm and give up its power over the Gaza Strip, demanding a seven-year ceasefire with zero commitment to end its terror campaign against Israel. To further terrorize Israeli families, Hamas periodically releases proof-of-life videos of hostages to cause psychological harm to Israelis. While Israel has agreed to every offer by Witkoff, with the hopes of freeing its captive citizens, Hamas’s continual refusals have forced Israel to increase its military campaign in Gaza.
Before the recently discovered body of Hamas military leader Mohammed Sinwar in a tunnel under a Gaza hospital, the IDF recovered the murdered bodies of two elderly American hostages. The IDF exposed Hamas for using a place dedicated to the preservation of life as a command center from which to plan murder and the starvation of its own people. A few days later, soldiers recovered the body of slain Thai hostage Nattapong Pinta. Pinta had been kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz by another terrorist group operating within Gaza, the same group that murdered Shiri Bibas and her two young sons.
Like the approximately 30,000 workers from Thailand who came to work in Israel prior to the events of Oct. 7, Pinta had left his wife and young son in Thailand a year and a half before the Hamas onslaught to work on an Israeli farm. Israel and Thailand have had a bilateral agreement easing the way for many workers from Thailand to come to Israel for jobs. Pinta was among the 31 Thai nationals working in agriculture who were abducted by terrorists on Oct. 7. While many had hoped that he was still alive, he had been killed shortly after being kidnapped to Gaza.
He is now counted among the 46 Thai workers murdered by Hamas since the beginning of the war.
Discovery of tunnel network under Gaza hospital proves IDF claims
The bodies of Mohammed Sinwar and the Thai national were discovered in another underground tunnel network Hamas had built directly under the European Hospital, which is funded by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) and the European Union.
Israeli forces gave a small group of foreign reporters a tour of the tunnel that had been uncovered beneath the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, which IDF spokesperson Effie Defrin said was a major command and control compound for Hamas.
“This is another example of the cynical use by Hamas, using civilians as human shields, using civilian infrastructure, hospitals, again and again,” stated Defrin. “We found underneath the hospital, right under the emergency room, a compound of a few rooms. In one of them, we killed Mohammed Sinwar.”
Netanyahu announced Sinwar’s death last month, but Defrin said they now had his DNA, which proved beyond a doubt that it was him.
Gazans: Hamas’s other captives
Hamas also holds hostage in Gaza the civilians it claims to advocate for. Jerusalem and Washington have worked to ensure that all humanitarian aid reaches the people of Gaza. Hamas continues to intercept the aid, robbing it from those it is intended for. Hamas threatens the people of Gaza who travel to accept aid and murders its own civilians.
“Hamas has never seen Gaza as a society to build or protect, but as a tool to elevate themselves in the eyes of unelected monarchs and ideological overlords. … to secure long-term contracts of power and protection from the patrons they truly serve … [f]or the Qatari ruling elite who fund the fire from a safe distance, then host the [Hamas] arsonists as statesmen. Hamas offers Gaza as a sacrifice … because they know that a Gaza in ruins keeps them relevant, funded and feared.”
— Hamza Howidy, a Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, June 6, 2025.
Media reporting manipulated by Hamas propaganda
Hamas has controlled much of the news and information being sent from the Gaza Strip. It was recently reported that the spokesperson for the Civil Defense in Gaza, who is in charge of releasing information and damage assessments in Gaza, was secretly an active Hamas terrorist. He abused his role, spreading fabricated and unverified information to international media while falsely attributing war crimes to Israel. This misinformation has resulted in grossly exaggerated fatality numbers coming out of Gaza, as well as many falsified news stories, distorting the reality on the ground.
Hamas and its allies have continuously used false narratives and inaccurate information given by Hamas to create worldwide pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, minus the requirement that Hamas disarm, lose its power or release hostages immediately. The United States recently vetoed a U.N. resolution to this effect.
Hamas’s influence has maintained international reach. A recent rally held in Boulder, Colo., to advocate for the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity was firebombed by an Egyptian national who supported Hamas, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, living in the United States. As he threw homemade Molotov cocktails, he screamed, “Free Palestine!” When interviewed later by authorities, he stated that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
Many organizations and events have been held across the country to show solidarity with the Jews of Boulder. The Boulder Jewish Festival at the Pearl Street Mall in Colorado was held in a location not far from the site of the horrific attack. That same day, more than 500 Americans and Israelis lined the streets of Aventura, Fla., in a solidarity march called “Run for Their Lives,” organized by the sister organization of the event in Boulder, Colo., where they marched in advocacy for the release of the hostages. In New York’s Central Park, hundreds of people gathered to support the hostages in Gaza and to pay tribute to two of the Americans killed by Hamas.
WATCH: Remembering the names and faces of those still held in Gaza
Points to consider:
- Every day that Hamas holds hostages, it commits a war crime.
As a direct result of the fictional narratives perpetrated by Hamas, Israel has been accused of war crimes by several nations, international media, a number of organizations and pro-Hamas protestors since the beginning of the war. Hamas has been guilty of war crimes every day since Oct. 7. Hamas has been holding hundreds of innocent hostages under horrific conditions to torture and starve them while simultaneously using them as bargaining chips to manipulate politics, world media and public opinion. As a terrorist organization running a global propaganda campaign against Israel, Hamas has shifted the world’s focus to demonizing the victim of Oct. 7 instead of holding Hamas accountable for its horrific actions.
- Hamas is a suicidal regime that uses Gazans as sacrificial lambs.
The people of Gaza consistently suffer under oppressive Hamas rule. From withholding humanitarian aid to publicly shooting civilians who try to obtain food and supplies, Hamas rules Gaza as a tyrannical warlord. In a classic game of throw the rock, hide the hand, Hamas hoards the international aid that Israel facilitates sending, starving those it’s supposed to serve, and then calling it Israel’s fault that Gazans are starving. Hamas does not care about Gaza’s citizens, their well-being, safety or survival. They were used as shields when Hamas fired rockets at Israel from civilian neighborhoods, and now are unwilling lambs being sacrificed for the Hamas cause in the latest campaign to control the global narrative. Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya recently admitted this in an interview with Al Jazeera, stating that “Gaza has offered itself as a sacrifice for the Muslim ummah (‘nation’) and, in return, we deserve the full support from the Muslim nations.” It triggered a wave of angry reactions and condemnations from many Palestinians.
- Media continue to fall for Hamas traps.
Israel is forced to fight a just war, in its effort to rescue its hostages, secure its borders and eliminate Hamas’s evil. Hamas has shown no willingness to end its terror actions, but rather it feeds the world a steady stream of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda, shifting focus away from its heinous actions and turning the victim, Israel, into the villain. To reinforce that mission, Hamas manipulates the media to support its tactics and broadcast its made-up “facts.” Media continue to fall into the traps Hamas sets by not placing adequate emphasis or attention on Hamas’s wrongdoing (or failing to report on it at all), vilifying Israel’s every move and lending credibility to the fabricated narratives perpetuated by terror organizations, all funded and sponsored by Iran.
- Iran and Hamas mean exactly what they say.
Throughout world history, madmen and dictators have boasted in advance of their evil plans while the world took their words with a grain of salt, only to be shocked when the threats eventually became reality. Past failures to believe dictators’ explicit threats—from Hitler’s “Final Solution” and the Jewish Holocaust to Egypt’s Yom Kippur invasion in October 1973—highlight a disastrous lesson. Presently, Iran and Hamas openly vow Israel’s destruction, a commitment underscored by Hamas’s sacrifice of its own people and Iran’s proximity to weapons-grade uranium. The world can no longer afford to dismiss these statements; urgent action is required to avert catastrophe.