The Cost of Kindness to the Cruel
Gazans may be glimmering their own hostage status, per the reportage of the Wall Street Journal
In a prior essay (https://nicholasbednarski.substack.com/p/a-brutal-utilitarian-view-of-gaza) I argued the culpability of the civilian population of Gaza in their own unsustainable daily horrors of modern asymmetric warfare between Hamas and Israel. Historical precedent of Allied actions and the experiences of the Axis civilians in Germany and Japan was noted. Not as justification, for war is always morally unjustified even if deemed “legally necessary”. But as a utilitarian explanation, remembering that utilitarian acts “for the greater good” may often come at the expense of a perceived evil. In the long-ago case of WWII, the leadership of the Axis powers, not their civilian subjects, eventually acquiesced to inevitable defeat by the Allies. Unconditional surrender freed their populations from a passive-aggressive solicitude to Naziism and Japanese imperialism, but not from criminal liabilities. The international judges at the Einsatzgruppen Trials in Nuremberg rejected any moral or legal equivalence of the actions of the Nazi regime and those of the Allies in war. As quoted in a June 17, 2024, WSJ editorial, those judges noted “A city is bombed for tactical purposes…It inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed…an unavoidable corollary of battle action…that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force…dragging out the men, women and children and shooting (raping, torturing, dismembering, decapitating, burning) them.” Recent reporting in the Wall Street Journal and other publications may be revealing the earliest attempts of Gazans to free themselves from their aggressively passive cooperation with Hamas’ methods of using them as the ultimate hostages of the war. Even if those Gazans cannot relieve themselves of their self-taught generational hatred of Israel and Jews.
Yahya Sinwar is the current version of Hideki Tojo and Adolph Hitler. His intentional evil is well detailed in a WSJ article by Summer Said and Rory Jones in that newspaper’s June 12, 2024, issue. He believes that Israel has more to lose than Hamas in the current war. What losses may accrue to the Palestinian population only concerns him if those losses are insufficient in mustering international outrage against Israel in that nation’s efforts of ending Hamas. That process necessitates unintended and unavoidable deaths of civilian Palestinians, who have actively and passively supported Hamas, since they elected that body, in its official stated goal of eradicating Israel and killing all Jews (a clear example of genocide). Some of those subjects, willing and unwilling, now begin to understand their role as “pawns for Hamas”. As noted by Said and Jones, Sinwar equates the death of his non-combatant civilian bystanders with the necessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Algerians who actively fought for their independence from France as “necessary sacrifices”. Those authors quote Sinwar’s view that the loss of his civilian population, for whose welfare Hamas’ government is responsible, will “infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honor.” This medieval view of the glory of death in war will reward that nation in absentia, since both they and their environs will be largely destroyed if he gains his goal.
Even he may have limits. Yahya Sinwar, a recipient of multiple life sentences for plotting many terrorist murders and committing one with his bare hands, “seemed surprised by the brutality” of his Hamas fighters and civilian volunteers in the October 7th atrocities they committed on his behalf. He is quoted as messaging “Things went out of control…people got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.” A stunning apologia from someone who, since a very young age, has sought little else.
Some degree of statecraft is found in the vicious campaign unleashed by Hamas against Israel and its own people. Israel may be bogged down for many years trying to eradicate an entunneled insurgency. Said and Jones quote Sinwar again, “For Netanyahu, a victory would be even worse than a defeat”. Gaza may be Israel’s version of our experience in Viet Nam and Afghanistan all rolled into one. Israel’s two major goals of this war could be contradictory. The more successful their efforts at destroying the military wing of Hamas, the more the diplomatic wing is strengthened by the escalating deaths of civilian Palestinians. And the more opportunity Hamas has not only to deny Israel return of what few October 7 hostages may still live, but to capture even more. Israel’s rescue of four hostages brought the potential cost of those efforts home to some in Gaza. In a review of that gunbattle in the June 11, 2024, WSJ, Carrie Keller-Lynn, Abeer Ayyoub, and Micael Amon reported, “Some Palestinians said the operation drove home again the perception that their lives mean nothing, including to Hamas. (one young man is quoted) ‘More than 200 were killed, hundreds injured, for the sake of four Israelis. I am also very angry because Hamas chose to hide these people among us. Why?’”. Why, indeed. Sinwar has openly stated that hostages, the value of one Israeli life, is the Achilles heel of the Jewish state.
What is the arithmetic value in martyrdom of a civilian Palestinian in Hamas’ war of self-attrition? A clue may be found in Yahya Sinwar’s personal experience. He was freed from life until death in an Israeli prison by being exchanged, along with 1,000 other criminally convicted Palestinian terrorists, for one Israeli. If we extend this ratio, Palestinians may come to expect 1,000 of their deaths for every Israeli death as satisfactory to “the glory and honor of their nation” as defined by Hamas. Given just the October 7th casualties, that means accepting, anticipating the need for, deaths of 1.2 million Palestinian civilians. Hamas silently intends a reverse genocide of its own people. Sinwar views himself as a return of a new almost Messianic Islamic figure, equating his own possible death in this struggle as a repeat of Karbala, when the Prophet’s grandson was slain. Gazans may now begin to realize the self-annihilating nature of his intentions.
That dawning realization is well-detailed in a June 14, 2024, WSJ article by Fatima Abdul Karim, Dov Lieber, and Abeer Ayyoub. They quote one middle-aged Gazan; “Hamas…are not negotiating for us, they are negotiating to stay in power after all this devastation.” But another young father overlooks the purposefully self-destructive activities of the military wing in favor of disapproving the inactions of the diplomatic wing of Hamas: “Our leaders, Hamas, the Arabs, they watch us on TV from their hotels, they do not know what it’s like to run for your life, hungry and barefoot.” He misses the clear connection—Hamas does know this, having caused it, are doing everything possible to continue it, and plan to reject any and all direct negotiations with their existential enemy. Hamas demonstrates hope that the evisceration of their population and razing of their city-state will force some yet unidentified international body to stop Israel’s military activity and create a state from which Hamas can continue their efforts to erase their existential enemy. That young father faces a new dual risk; inadvertent death from the actions of the IDF, or deadly retribution from Hamas for daring to question their aims and actions.
Polls have revealed marked decline in support for Hamas within Gaza. Concurrently, Hamas is more popular amongst Palestinians with no dog in the show, those of the West Bank. Yet amongst the youngest adults in Gaza, those most in doubt of any future apart from the glory and honor of death induced by Hamas, a more concrete opinion has begun to set. One young man is quoted thusly, “If Hamas and Abbas (head of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank) heard our screams they will be the ones to end this now, unite and say they surrender.” In his personal agony he does not comprehend the ultimate barrier to that outcome for his people. Another Gazan summarizes the dilemma, “People in Gaza have lost faith in Hamas, including many of the movement’s supporters. But people hate Israel more.”
This war may follow a familiar pattern. Israel’s intention and ability to completely eradicate Hamas will probably drizzle away under international “humanitarian” pressures, the desperation of Israelis to rescue hostages at any cost, and the exhaustion of Israel in a war of mutual attrition with no achievable end goal. Neither side will recognize their commonality, their ability to coexist without requiring the end of the other. That commonality is in the mutually shared desire for defined nation-states wherein the Israelis, on the one hand, and the Palestinians on the other, can live in safety and self-determination. That is the most basic need of all humans, however inhumanely they may choose to treat themselves and others. Both peoples are descendants of Abraham. Both might agree with an old proverb: Kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the kind.