Hamas’s armed wing issues AI-generated video to mark its bloody invasion of southern Israel two years ago. It vows to fight on.
A defiant and technically advanced video, issued at a time Hamas is under intense pressure to end its own ‘resistance’, contains various elements that Hamas considers heroic. It shows a group of fighters apparently being briefed beforehand by their leader Yahya Sinwar, then armed uniformed fighters walking through a tunnel, then a squad of motorbike-riding fighters, guns slung over their left shoulders. The video also displays five parachutists soaring over an Israeli flag inside southern Israel.
Significantly, it also shows a supposed photo of the late Hamas ‘spiritual leader’ Sheikh Ahmed Yassin reading a Koran in front of a map showing Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza, treating all of it as one entity ‘from the River [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] Sea’. Then comes an animation showing the invasion mastermind Yahya Sinwar sitting in an orange armchair among the rubble inside a ruined house, with stick in left hand, ready to try to fend off the depicted Israeli drone that killed him a year after the October 7 attack. It cuts to a boy clutching a similar stick in his fist, then conducting chanting in front of an AI-generated crowd. The boy then turns and raises both arms. The commentary calls on Allah to “humiliate” Israel, and says there will be no surrender. Whatever the symbolism, it does appear to demonstrate that Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, despite the military pressure they are facing, retains the technology to work efficiently on the propaganda front. It also indicates that the armed wing of Hamas wants to continue to fight, rather than ‘surrender’ to the terms which President Trump is demanding they must accept.
In the latest Al-Qassam communique, it says it is “inflicting heavy casualties on enemy forces”. It continues:
“Al-Qassam — Exclusive: For the 723rd consecutive day, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades continue to confront the Zionist forces advancing along several fronts in the Gaza Strip. This offensive has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of enemy officers and soldiers, the wounding of tens of thousands, and the complete or partial destruction of hundreds of vehicles.”