Anything Hamas says must be judged against the track record of its past falsehoods and distortions, this is their norm, not the exception. If someone still takes their words at face value, no fact or evidence will change how they see them.

Before October 2023, several high-profile Hamas claims were later undermined by evidence: after denying involvement in the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri publicly acknowledged the group’s role; while Hamas framed the 2018 “Great March of Return” as largely civilian, its own official Salah al-Bardawil said 50 of the 62 people killed on May 14, 2018 were Hamas members; despite Hamas’s insistence that it did not use civilian sites, the U.N. agency UNRWA repeatedly found rockets stored in its Gaza schools in 2014; and although Hamas dismissed allegations of abuses against Palestinian rivals, Amnesty International documented a 2014 campaign of abductions, torture and summary executions in Gaza.

Sources: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelg... https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-politburo-member-bardawil-fif... https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestin...