In the months following the October 7 massacre of Israelis, I have not been able to stop thinking about how much spite and hate it must have taken for Hamas's leaders and militants to convince themselves that beheading, raping, and kidnapping civilians was something their God asked them to do as a kind of worship. It's the only way to explain what at the end of the day remains a mystery: How could a person convince himself that kidnapping women in their 80s and little children is some kind of noble "resistance"?

Then I remembered a horrifying scene that took place 16 years ago, when I was a little child in Gaza. Hamas supporters were celebrating the victory of taking control of Gaza from Fatah—the "decontamination" of Gaza, as they called it. I still remember detainees being dragged by Hamas members on motorcycles to Al-Saraya Street in Al-Remal neighborhood with obvious signs of torture on their bodies. I remembered Hamas members firing dozens of bullets into their bodies from their AK-47s. I remembered Bahaa Balousha's three children who were under the age of 10, who were killed by masked men because their dad was a Fatah member.

These memories helped........

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