Hamas is taking issue with statements by Secretary of State John Kerry, who said that Israel has the right to defend itself from the current wave of Arab terrorism.

In fact, several Hamas officials who responded angrily to Kerry’s comments said that the current wave of knife attacks against Israelis should not even be called terrorism.

Ahmed Bahar, the first deputy chairman of the Palestinian parliament and a senior member of the Hamas leadership, said that Kerry’s remarks were “a green light for the continued Zionist aggression against our people (the Palestinians)” and that “the American justification for the Zionist crimes proves again the extent of the moral and inhumane deterioration of the American administration in its policy toward the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, strongly denounced Kerry’s remarks, and declared that Hamas will not agree to having the “Palestinian struggle” be referred to as “terrorism”.

The Center for Democracy and Human Rights also condemned Kerry, saying his remarks “encourage the occupation to kill Palestinians.”

The remarks by Hamas’s leaders are puzzling if not ironic, since Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has repeatedly called the current wave of attacks an “intifada”. The latest terror wave has been referred to by Hamas as the “Al-Quds Intifada” over a false claim that the Al-Quds Mosque on the Temple Mount is being harmed by Israel and Palestinian Arabs must respond.

Haniyeh recently released a call for all Palestinian Arabs to continue this “intifada”, saying in a speech that was recorded and played at a conference in Istanbul that “the knife of the intifada” defends the name of the Palestinian people and the Arab Islamic nation at its holy places, among them Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Hamas terror leader emphasized that the wave of terrorism will only escalate in force.

22 Israelis have been killed and hundreds wounded since October 1, on the heels of the PA’s and Hamas’s ramped-up incitement campaign against Jews and Israelis.

In October alone, Israel Security Agency (ISA or Shin Bet) data shows 602 attacks in 30 days – more than during Operation Protective Edge (2014), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), or Operation Cast Lead (2009). 

And of the 1,703 attacks in 2015, a staggering 778 attacks had been launched against Israelis since Rosh Hashanah until mid-October.