An IDF officer stands guard over weapons and ammunition seized from Hamas terrorists near Ashdod in southern Israel. Photo: Reuters/Violeta Santos Moura

A top leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas pointedly refused to apologize for the group’s Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel, intimating his willingness to sacrifice vast numbers of people in the service of his cause.

“Nations are not easily liberated,” Khaled Mashal — the former chairman of Hamas and one of its leading figures based abroad — told the Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya in an interview on Thursday that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“The Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War II, in order to liberate it from Hitler’s attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrificed millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed six million martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated without sacrifices,” Mashal said.

A founder of Hamas in the late 1980s, Mashal was the undisputed leader of Hamas when it won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, leading to a civil war that resulted in the violent ejection of the rival Fatah faction from Gaza.

Hamas Leader Abroad Khaled Mashal Rejects Accusations of Transgressions against Civilians on October 7 Attack: We Have Nothing to Apologize For; Hamas Only Fights Soldiers, But Sometimes There Are Civilian Victims in War; Hizbullah, Arab Countries Should Do More to Help Us #Hamas… pic.twitter.com/x3O40CFQn8

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 20, 2023

Nearly a decade earlier, Mashal was the target of an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan. After being poisoned in a daring operation launched by Israeli agents, he was rushed to a hospital in Amman, where he eventually received an antidote supplied by the Israelis under pressure from the Jordanians and the US. Mashal was expelled from Jordan in 1999 and has been based in the Syrian capital, Damascus, since 2001.

Facing tough questioning from Al Arabiya anchor Rasha Nabil, Mashal responded with a robust defense of the violence unleashed on Israeli communities by Hamas terrorists. Asked whether he would apologize for the atrocities, Mashal answered: “With all due respect, your question … Forgive me for saying this … Apologies should be demanded from Israel. You asked me a question and I am answering it with clarity. Hamas does not kill civilians on purpose. It focuses on the soldiers. Period.”

Questioned about his statement that Hezbollah — the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon currently engaged in firefights with Israeli forces on the Jewish state’s northern border — could be doing more to assist Hamas, Mashal said that the “Lebanese front is now on fire, and we are grateful for that — whether it is done by Lebanese, by Palestinians, or by anyone. Hezbollah has an active role there.”

He continued: “Those clashes in south Lebanon are good, and support our cause, but the scope of the battle … When the title is Al-Aqsa Flood, and when such a heinous crime is perpetrated against Gaza, greater things are needed, certainly. But we should not single out Lebanon and Hezbollah.”

Mashal then called on Egypt to join the confrontation. “Let us talk about the countries bordering with Israel. The great Egypt that has waged large wars … Today, the Egyptians are boiling [with anger] … We salute the Egyptian people, and we want more. I demand a more powerful position by the Egyptian leaders,” he declared.

Asked what Hamas required in order to release the more than 200 Israeli hostages kidnapped to Gaza, Mashal compared them directly with Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli jails.

“Before talking about the prisoners held by us, there are prisoners held by the enemy. There were about 5,500 of them, and now they number 10,000. Every day, Israel arrests 100, 200, or 1,000 from the West Bank,” Mashal claimed.

“The rule we follow is that prisoners are swapped for prisoners,” he continued. “We took over 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit [an Israeli soldier kidnapped in 2011.] Today, we have in our hands dozens of soldiers and officers. Inshallah, we will use them to empty the [Israeli] prisons, and all our sons and daughters from all the factions will be released, inshallah.”