In this video, Professor John Mearsheimer examines the deeper historical and political causes of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. He traces the story from Israel’s founding, Palestinian displacement and early Zionist debates to the blockade of Gaza and recurring Israeli military operations before 2023.
Which of these developments does Mearsheimer consider essential to understanding October 7? And how does he assess Hamas’s motives and the question of armed resistance under international law?
This video was produced by John Mearsheimer and published on their YouTube channel on the 13th of October, 2026. We have translated it into German and are republishing it today to help build opinion on this issue in Germany and beyond.
To read the transcript of the interview: Prof. Mearsheimer – The Roots of Hamas’s October 7 Attack
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John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
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