 Spain's King Alfonso XIII (r. 1886-1931). |
The king's response typifies dictators through history, who see troops as expendable. The lives of human drones matter little, more can always be conscripted. Russia's use of Wagner prison recruits in the Battle of Bakhmut typified this casual use of cheap manpower. It hardly mattered to Vladimir Putin how many of his cannon fodder perished, so long as the front line moved forward. Battlefield gains justify any loss of life.
Then there is Hamas, the jihadi organization that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and which became the focus on global attention after massacring around 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7. For fifteen years, it has implemented an opposite and historically unique purpose in tormenting its subject population. Rather than sacrifice soldiers for battlefield gains, it sacrifices civilians for public relations purposes.
The more misery endured by Gazans, the more convincingly Hamas can accuse Israel of aggression and the wider and more vehement the support it wins from antisemites of all persuasions – Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, far-leftists, and far-rightists.
Hamas actively wants Gazans to be bombed, hungry, suffering, homeless, injured and dead. It bases troops and missiles in mosques, churches, schools, hospitals, and private homes. An Emirati political figure, Dirar Belhoul al-Falasi, explains that "Hamas fired a rocket from the hospital's roof, so that Israel would bomb this hospital." It calls on Gazans to serve as human shields. It parks vehicles in the roads to block civilians to move southwards and out of harm's way. It even shoots would-be refugees.
 An aerial picture of Shifa Hospial in Gaza, with Israeli markings in red of military installations. |
The U.S. government has long noted this pattern of behavior, In 2014, the diplomat Dennis Ross commented that Gazans paid a "staggering" price for Hamas' aggression but its leaders "have never been concerned about that. For them, Palestinians' pain and suffering are tools to exploit, not conditions to end." Douglas Feith, a former high-ranking Pentagon official, correctly finds it "unprecedented for a party to adopt a war strategy to maximize civilian deaths on its own side." He dubs this "not a human shield strategy [but] a human sacrifice strategy."
Of course, Hamas digs into its Islamist ideology to justify this practice. One official blithely explains how Palestinians "sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah, defending his land." Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a founding Hamas leader, puts it another way: "I was born at the heart of Hamas leadership... and I know them very well. They don't care for the Palestinian people. They do not regard the human life. I saw their brutality firsthand."
 Mosab Hassan Yousef (R), a moderator, and Daniel Pipes, at a conference in Budapest, March 2019. |
Hamas' brutal logic brings multiple benefits. First, it benefits Hamas tactically, because Israel, which tries to avoid harming civilians, avoids attacking those mosques and schools. Second, if Israel does hit such vulnerable targets, Hamas crows about the victims. Third, should Hamas misfire, as in the Ahli Hospital incident, and kill Gazans, it can anyway blame Israel, convincing many. Fourth, campuses and streets worldwide erupt with anti-Israel demonstrations.
Fifth, Hamas chieftains enjoy the good life, whether in Turkey, Qatar, or Gaza itself, where only its members have access to vast reserves of fuel, food, water and medicine. They even steal fuel from hospitals. The Saudi weekly Al-Majalla found that control over Gaza's smuggling routes made 1,700 Hamas officials into millionaires; the Israeli government estimates that its top three leaders (Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal) are worth $11 billion.
This inversion of logic and morality raises two questions: Why does it work? Can Israel find an antidote?
It works because victimization has become the currency of dictators and totalitarians. From Putin to Iran's Ali Khamene'i, they divide the world between oppressors and oppressed, then claim the mantle of the world's wretched. Hamas may be a jihadi organization, forwarding a medieval Islamic code, but it capably learned the modern language of discrimination.
As for an antidote: that requires Israel to extirpate Hamas and its foul works, then set up a decent administration in Gaza that will not continue deploying such degrading tactics. This will not be easy, but it can be done.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum and author of the just published Islamism vs. The West: 35 Years of Geopolitical Struggle (Wicked Son). © 2023 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Nov. 8, 2023 addendum: I lacked space to mention that the Palestinian Authority encourages the Hamas attitude, hoping to gain from it. Here is Khaled Abu Toameh on the subject:
Hamas's rivals in the Palestinian Authority (PA) are also opposed to any plan to solve the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip. The PA leaders want to see the people in the Gaza Strip suffer, with the hope that they would one day revolt against Hamas. The PA leaders will never forgive Hamas for humiliating them and expelling them from the Gaza Strip in 2007. ...
In this regard, the PA and Hamas agree on the need to deprive their people of a better life until a political solution is reached to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dec. 7, 2023 update: Ghazi Hamed of Hamas asserted that "we are proud to sacrifice Martyrs."
Dec. 9, 2023 update: Nice to see the New York Times agrees with this analysis today at "While Gazans Suffer, Hamas Reaps the Benefits."
Dec. 11, 2023 update: Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh said that "The blood of children, women, and elderly" must be spilled to defeat Israel.
Feb. 14, 2024 update: Mohammed Dahlan represents the PLO-PA mentality, which is one degree less radical than the Hamas one. He says that "Relying on people suffering isn't leadership. The Palestinian people want to live."
"humanitarian pier" off the coast of Gaza, Hamas attacked it with mortar shells, damaging several pieces of American engineering equipment and injuring one person.
June 10, 2024 update: In an exclusive, based on "Yahya Sinwar's correspondence with compatriots and mediators," a Wall Street Journal investigation finds that "Gaza Chief's Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas," confirming the argument made here.
In one message to Hamas leaders in Doha, Sinwar cited civilian losses in national-liberation conflicts in places such as Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people died fighting for independence from France, saying, "these are necessary sacrifices."
In an April 11 letter to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh after three of Haniyeh's adult sons were killed by an Israeli airstrike, Sinwar wrote that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would "infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honor."
June 13, 2024 update: The Wall Street Journal quotes Mkhaimar Abusada, an associate professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, now based in Cairo: "Maybe 80 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and diaspora love Hamas, something that gave them honor or dignity, but for someone who lives in Gaza and is paying the price, it's a totally different story."
July 24, 2024 update: Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the U.S. Congress:
For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, it's a strategy. They actually want Palestinian civilians to die, so that Israel will be smeared in the international media and be pressured to end the war before it's won.
