Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood.
The phrase Israel's most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza strip on Saturday signaled the attack was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque.
It was in May 2021, after a raid on Islam's third holiest site that enraged the Arab and Muslim worlds, when Deif began planning the operation that has killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, according to a source close to Hamas in Gaza.