In an interview with The New Yorker published on April 26, 2026, Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr sharply criticized Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.

Kerr didn’t stop at criticizing Israel for Gazan deaths. He went further, suggesting Israel was wrong to go to war at all after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians.

“Israel sought revenge for October 7th and now seventy-two thousand Palestinians have been killed and Israeli settlers are taking over the West Bank illegally, with the approval of Israel’s government and the U.S. Ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Kerr said. “That’s not a path to any sort of peace or security for Israel or the rest of the Middle East.”

Instead, Kerr argued that Israel should have pursued diplomacy through the Abraham Accords.

“Violence begets violence,” he said. “We’ve seen it in Israel and Lebanon as well. There was an opening for Israel to handle their business with the Palestinians diplomatically that would have solidified the Abraham Accords and allowed stronger alliances with Arab countries that would have really cornered Iran.”

What Are the Abraham Accords?

The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements signed starting in September 2020 during President Trump’s first term. They established full diplomatic relations, economic cooperation, and security ties between Israel and several Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The deals focused on trade, regional stability and, importantly, pushing back against Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

The Abraham Accords and October 7

The first absurdity in Kerr’s claim is that Israel did pursue diplomacy through the Abraham Accords—and that is precisely why Hamas attacked.

Hamas, which receives funding and support from Iran, strongly opposed the Abraham Accords. The group saw normalization between Israel and Arab countries as a betrayal. Hamas leaders warned of “divine retribution” and promised to fight any normalization efforts through armed resistance, in line with their founding 1988 charter that rejects Israel’s right to exist.

According to U.S. intelligence assessments, the October 7 massacre was an Iranian-backed operation designed to derail the Accords. By provoking a strong Israeli response, Iran hoped to turn Arab public opinion against Israel and prevent further isolation of the Islamic Republic. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated in May 2024 that the Abraham Accords “absolutely” contributed to causing the attack.

Hamas Rejects Peace on Principle

Hamas explicitly rejects diplomacy. Their 1988 Charter is clear:

“Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

The charter also includes a hadith calling for Muslims to kill Jews, stating that the Day of Judgment will not come until “Muslims fight the Jews… when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees” and the trees call out to kill them. It declares: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

You cannot pursue diplomacy when one side insists on violence and the genocide of Jews.

Gaza is proof. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, removing all 10,000 Jewish residents and handing full control to the Palestinians. Palestinians then elected Hamas to power. Over the next 18 years, Hamas fired more than 20,000 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians, carried out suicide bombings, dug attack tunnels, and fought five major wars — ending with the horrors of October 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel Is Seeking Survival, Not Revenge

Kerr described Israel’s military campaign as “revenge.” It wasn’t. If Israel had wanted revenge, it would have targeted Palestinian civilians the way Hamas deliberately targeted Israeli families, festival-goers, and kibbutz residents on October 7.

Instead, Israel focused its efforts on Hamas fighters and infrastructure. The majority of the “72,000 Palestinian deaths” Kerr cited were Hamas fighters.

The False Claim About West Bank Settlements

Kerr also repeated the false accusation that Israeli settlers are “taking over the West Bank illegally” with government backing. This claim is false. Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria — the biblical heartland of the Jewish people — uninterruptedly for nearly 4,000 years, long before the creation of “Palestine.” Settlement activity occurs in Area C of the West Bank, consistent with the framework established under the Oslo Accords signed by the Palestinian Authority. Jews remain prohibited from entering Palestinian-controlled Area A, yet critics wrongly portray Jewish communities on historic Jewish land as illegal occupation.

Kerr’s Selective View of Violence

Kerr’s broader message — “violence begets violence” — is misleading and overly simplistic. While cycles of violence are real, history shows that decisive military action can sometimes end conflicts. The U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, brought a swift end to World War II in the Pacific.

Notably, Kerr appears untroubled by violence when Jews are the victims, yet strongly objects when Israel takes action to defend itself. By implying that Israel should have avoided military action despite Hamas’s rejection of diplomacy, Kerr effectively suggests that the Jewish state “asked for” the October 7 atrocities through insufficient diplomacy — a position that is both factually wrong and morally perverse.

Takeaway

Steve Kerr’s New Yorker interview exposes him as a hypocrite who isn’t against violence — he’s only against Jews defending themselves. He condemns Israel for responding to Hamas’s savage October 7 massacre of 1,200 civilians, pushes the lie that more “diplomacy” via the Abraham Accords would have prevented it, and mourns Gazan deaths while ignoring Hamas’s explicit charter calling for the extermination of Jews.

Kerr wants Jews to absorb pogroms with quiet dignity and then return to the negotiating table with those who openly call for their extermination. He demands restraint from the victims while making excuses for the perpetrators. In Kerr’s worldview, Jewish self-defense is the real crime, and Hamas’s barbarism is just an understandable reaction to insufficient Palestinian diplomacy.

Sources

New Yorker, Ynet News, White House, Grokipedia, Washington Institute, X, National Review, Hamas charter, Washington Institute, ITN, ITN