It’s been nearly a month since Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel’s civilians, during which the terror organization raped women, killed children, brutalized the elderly and took hostages. In other words, they took the exact page from the terrorist handbook of al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and the Islamic State group.

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Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization with roots in radical Sunni Jihadist movements, notably the Muslim Brotherhood. It has strong support from Iran and its Lebanese Shia proxy, Hezbollah. Since it took control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas has invested heavily in building its capacity for terrorism by using billions of dollars worth of international aid to build weapons and terrorist infrastructure instead of spending that money on its own citizens.

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Hamas operates from the underground tunnel network of Gaza and uses the population living on the surface as human shields. As part of this strategy, the terrorists hide ammunition in schools and base their fighters under hospitals.

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Hamas unleashed an unprovoked act of aggression upon Israel on Oct. 7, and that is a fact. Now, Gaza is undergoing a ground operation by the Israeli army. What did Hamas leaders expect? That the world should react kindly to them? That Israel would remain quiet and allow such brutality to go unchecked? The atrocities committed by Hamas are inhuman by any standard. Israel, which has the right to defend itself, reacted with force, and very quickly, the narrative changed, making Hamas the victim.

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Now that the Israelis have entered Gaza, Hamas’s public relations machinery is in overdrive, attempting to change the narrative into one of victimhood. Instead of Israel vs. Hamas, as it first was, it is now Israel vs. the Palestinians. Soon, it will be Muslims vs. Jews.

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The truth is that Hamas is not only disliked by Israel but equally shunned and detested by almost all Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. One of the few exceptions is Qatar, which is playing a double game and has now taken on a mediator role in the conflict.

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Hamas should be treated as a terrorist organization by all Muslims. This should be reflected in intergovernmental relations: the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 Muslim countries as members, should unequivocally condemn the terror group and support its disbandment as soon as possible.

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In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda was never legitimized as “Afghan resistance.” Hamas should be viewed with a similar lens.

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However, because Hamas’s public relations machine has somewhat succeeded in crafting a narrative into a sympathetic one of “resistance,” the conflict is now playing out in Western countries with huge pro-Palestinian rallies that terrorize small businesses, as well as Jewish students on university campuses. There has been a marked rise in antisemitic incidents in the past month, and it’s getting worse.

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Examples of recent antisemitism in other parts of the world are now easy to find, too. Pakistani Senator Afnan Ullah Khan, for example, posted an image of Adolf Hitler to X (formerly Twitter) with the caption, “At least now the world knows why he did what he did #Gaza_Genicide.” The post caused outrage on the website and has since been removed for violating the rules.

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And over the weekend in Russia, hundreds of people stormed an airport in Dagestan while chanting antisemitic slogans. They were looking for passengers who had taken a flight from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, according to Russian news agencies.

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It’s not just Israelis who are harmed by the violence and the public relations strategy used by Hamas. According to a 2010 report by the BBC about the experiences of Palestinian women in Gaza, Hamas “destroyed the reputation of Islam” by attributing its actions to religion.

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Hamas needs to be defeated not only because of the suffering it causes Jews but because of the suffering it forces upon Muslims in Gaza and the rest of the world. Every civilian, especially women and children, that are killed during this war, no matter where they are, is a stab at the heart of humanity.