EDITORIAL: Condemning Hamas terrorists ‘with their own words’

The Biden administration continues to pressure Israel to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas. Apparently, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team have turned a deaf ear to what the terror group’s leaders make clear: They have no intention of co-existing peacefully with the Jewish state.

On Monday, the Middle East Media Research Institute released a transcript of a talk this month between a Kuwaiti podcaster and Khaled Mashal, former head of Hamas. The institute, based in Washington, D.C., provides a valuable service by monitoring and translating Arabic speeches, news reports, social media chatter and interviews. “It yields a steady stream of articles and viral video clips,” a recent Wall Street Journal commentary noted, “that condemn the region’s tyrants, terrorists and two-faced intellectuals with their own words.”

Such is the case with Mr. Mashal. He tells his interviewer that Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution that would require Palestinians to live in peace alongside Israel. Moreover, the institute reports, he stated that “taking control of the Gaza Strip following the 2006 elections was necessary in order to build up the resistance, its weapons production and tunnels, without any hindrance from the Palestinian Authority.”

Mr. Mashal left no doubt about the Hamas outlook. “First, we have nothing to do with the two-state solution,” he said during the interview. “We reject this notion, because it means you would get a promise for a state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity. This is unacceptable.”

He also acknowledged that the useful idiots who have taken to the streets in Europe and the United States in support of Hamas terrorists give sustenance to the forces of death and destruction. “Following Oct. 7,” Mr. Mashal said, “I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea, and from the north to the south, has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S., and in western capital cities, by the American and western public.”

It is against this backdrop that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under fire for arguing that a two-state solution to the conflict won’t solve his nation’s security concerns if Palestinian terrorists remain committed to destroying Israel. Among his critics was U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said over the weekend that “the refusal to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people, are unacceptable.”

What did Mr. Guterres have to say about Mr. Mashal’s comments? Not a thing.