There is a telling detail in Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades website where it brags about the 2014 Gaza war.
The Brigades of the Martyr Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the military wing of the Hamas movement, , is celebrating the victory against the Zionist enemy during the [2014 Gaza war], and the enemy soldiers are still talking about the courage of fighters in the fierce battles on the threshold of Gaza, and of the fear chasing usurpers because of the rockets.I doubt that any Israeli soldiers are talking about what fantastic fighters Hamas had.
But Hamas needs to believe that this is true.
When you live in an honor/shame society, the worst thing that can happen is to be publicly shamed. But the second-worst thing is to be irrelevant.
Hamas wants to be respected by Israel. It loves its rockets because Israel cannot ignore them. It causes Israelis to run to shelters, and Gaza terror groups love publishing pictures of Israelis running to shelter.
It makes them feel less irrelevant. Important, even. They have managed to make an impact in Israelis' lives!
Hamas' videos make their soldiers look as menacing as possible, because they want to be feared. The IDF doesn't fear them, and this drives them crazy. They threaten "new weapons" in order to get any sort of reaction from Israel. Every few weeks they'll issue a new threat to see if Israeli newspapers report on them.
In so many ways, Hamas acts like a spoiled kid who will do anything to get attention.