Hamas, Anyar Sinwar, and The Grand Delusion
Photo by Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yahya Sinwar was killed in Gaza yesterday on a routine Israeli Defense Force patrol. It’s reported he went out throwing a stick at his enemies. His mangled body and wide-open brain cavity was promptly displayed on the internet where people set about trying to identify him using open source (OSINT) methods.
The sleuthing was mostly nervous energy because all who are in the know, knew confirmation of his death was a matter of a few phone calls within the Israeli government. Because Sinwar had been in the Israeli prison system multiple times for terrorism. And like clock work, the confirmation came.
In an instant, strong emotions were on full display from everyone with actual skin in this fight. Palestinians lamented the loss of a poet and animal lover who served his people faithfully for his entire adult life. Israelis celebrated and taunted Palestinians proudly displaying his body all over social media. They reminded the Palestinians that their fallen hero of Hamas, who demands so much of them, raped, kidnapped and murder innocent people on October 7th, 2023.
Sinwar’s justified extra judicial killing creates more questions than it answers. Who’s going to negotiate for Hamas now? Does this satisfy Israeli bloodlust caused by pain and humiliation? Does this motivate Iran to abandon its proxy strategy of eliminating the State of Israel? Whole new can of worms.
Today, if recent patters hold, will be the start of weeks of westerners imitating the raw emotions of the actual combatants in this god-awful conflict. Opportunist will use this to justify elevating tactics on college campuses while hawks on Iran will be wanting American muscle to end this even quicker.
This piece is intended to provide some context for both passionate sides who are cosigning on to a cause. It is not an endorsement of either side but the lay of the land in a world where America can’t control other nations who feel a need to act in their own best interest. This is not to convince Israel or the many Iranian elements who are in a death struggle to change course. This is for Americans who are passionate about Israel and the region.
First, for those who sign on to the Israeli side you should be ready to support measures that are brutal. They’re designed to press Palestine into complete submission. It hasn’t been labeled as such but Jerusalem is looking for unconditional surrender. It is absolutely American policy to support Israel’s right to defend herself. However, that doesn’t mean America, officially through President Biden for the time being, is without strong reservations about Israel’s preemptive strategy.
Israel’s goal is to create buffer space between Iran and her proxy elements. These elements are created, armed and directed with one unifying cause: eliminate Israel. Even with signs of dementia, Biden sent a wise and experienced message to Israel after the October 7th attacks. He said “don’t let anger get you into the same mistakes that 9/11 got the U.S. into.” That’s precisely what a good friend would say in the aftermath.
So, if you’re siding with Israel, you need to be aware of what kind of force is being brought to bear down on Palestinians. That horrifying force is what you are affirming. What is up for debate is how much America is willing to put at risk to physically defend Israel. Missile defense systems have been deployed with over 100 American boots on the ground in Israel. Increasing that aid or even sustaining it will be a hard sell the American public. You got your work cut out for you.
Next, to Free Palestine activism in the West. You’re young, you want to be passionate about injustice and you’re just super-psyched to be part of history. The allure is understandable. It’s intoxicating to feel apart of a cause, you and your friends against The Man. But you really need to know what you are signing up for in this fight.
Forget the fact that you didn’t know that Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Popular Militia Units (PMU), or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council (IRGC) even existed until 6 months ago. That’s forgivable as everyone had to learn sometimes. That said, now that you know these forces are a unified front America has been fighting since before your parents were born, reevaluating your position is most definitely in order.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s focus on Hamas. Sinwar was Israel’s Osama bin-Laden. Osama bin-Laden is why people get weird around September 11th and veterans get a free appetizer at Outback Steakhouse.
What the people inspiring you to join protests want from you is to saddle your own self identity with a conflict that pretty much gave birth to modern terrorism. These passionate people are trained and paid to recruit you precisely because you came up in the age of Justice. Your cause becomes their cause until, seamlessly, their cause is yours.
Ater recruitment, they convince you to escalate tactics because the cause isn’t getting enough respect and exposure. That is when they hook you, like a cult. This is where good sense should tell you to bail, but there are those who double down. You will be convinced that enthusiasm and zealousness are the only currency in the cause. The more you escalate the closer you come to a machine that is designed to catch bad people with evil intentions.
Poof, you’re on a radar. Now it is no longer seen as a protests and you will be monitored and assessed by the national security community. This is what you’re signing up for when you make Palestine your cause. It’s not deep state surveillance; it is standard operating procedure.
When you cross into this world the stakes become incredibly high. American federal law enforcement does not pretend. They are not playing games to make their step-dad mad. How they operate is not political theater. They don’t investigate things because their college boyfriend is way into it. And this is all the precursor to what terrifying force will come crashing down around you. It will absolutely change your life forever, if you make it out alive.
Through your actions you will been seen as collaborators with religious nut jobs who believe with every fiber of their being that God wants them to wage war in his name. You’ve become de facto holy warriors. That’s not what you planned when you started but that is where you will you end up.
The reality is you’re signing on to a lost cause. Diving into actively changing American policy by any means necessary on Palestine is a waste of your young life. You should abandon being little drones for Iran, but some of you won’t. So be prepared to pay a price for your cause. Obliging martyrs has been America’s business for 23 years, and business is booming.
Proceed at your own risk.
There needs to exist a territory of supporting the Israeli people without supporting the government of Israel, of sympathizing with the Palestinian people while condemning the leaders of them.
But such a territory exists only in our imagination. There isn’t a large enough political entity within the Palestinian faction that can envision a Palestinian state which allows the existence of Jews either within or anywhere near it. There isn’t a political entity in Israel that can lay out a plausible vision of a one or two state solution.
It isn’t possible to “side” with Israel or the Palestinians without collapsing the distinction between “liberation and self-determination” and wanton slaughter, without equating “securing peace” with ethnic cleansing.
The best we can do is imagine that territory where both states are existing in a state of peace however wary, where each allows a degree of tolerance and multi-cultural co-existence, and support that instead, even while acknowledging that this territory isn’t wanted by anyone actually involved and in power to change things on the actually existing terrain.Report
There isn’t a political entity in Israel that can lay out a plausible vision of a one or two state solution.
One pops up every now and then. They give formal offers every decade or so. If there were a partner for peace then we’d see a lot more momentum for them to take power.
If we count the various American plans then the last one was the “Trump” peace plan… shot down because of a lack of RoR.
Having said that, I fully agree that the current Israeli leadership has no (and has never had any) willingness for the Palestinians to have a state, and yes, it’s because their fanatic fringe wants all the land.Report
I don’t think the far right fringe holds the the sway you think it does. Israel’s detractors inside Israel don’t like Bibi for many reasons but him leaving won’t change Israeli policy on defending their right to exist.
I feel too much agency is put in him specifically like he can make one decision and this all goes away. Some think he allows this to happen just to let the war to continue so he can tell Israeli voters “I’m the only one who can protect you.” I think that’s nuts.
The only decision israel could make that appeases their enemies is to lay down their arms and leave their country. I don’t see Israel surrenderingReport
Sure. An Israeli “peace” leader would be doing the same things he is doing now after 10-7. No Israeli leader from any side would agree to a serious RoR.
That doesn’t change that Bibi was funding Hamas in order to prevent any movement towards peace.Report
How can you support the Israeli people without supporting the government they elected in a democratic process?
Not a single vote was contest in the election. It is the voice of Israel. A two state solution is a tall order, but in the immediate Israel will not be pawed at to show restraint. We cannot compel restraint from Israel in creating space between them and Iran by diplomatic means.
We cannot compel Iran through diplomatic means to stop their mission to topple Israel into the sea.
All we are left with is to play the hand we dealt. We are the house like a casino. We armed and backed Israel for decades and have tried to minimize Iran without actually hitting them since 1979.
Thank you for reading.Report
The same way you can support a friend who is behaving in self-destructive ways.
The Israeli government doesn’t seem to have any coherent idea of what victory over Hamas looks like or what a lasting peace would involve.
And this lack of vision is itself the biggest threat to its existence.Report
The Palestinians alleged allies have spent decades fueling Palestinian delusions. They have been steadily taught that Jewish self-determination is totally illegitimate, that they can get a reversal of everything they want, and they don’t need to negotiate on even the most minor issue. Israelis allies in both government circles and among ordinary people have generally, not always successfully obviously, encouraged a more moderate path. So unless the Palestinians get hit with a clue stick, I don’t see much improvement.Report
Agreed in full.Report
We see it on this blog and the other blog when some Pro-Palestinian people argue for an immediate and full right of return for all the Palestinians, still alive, who left Greenline Israel in 1948 and their kids, grandkids, and great grand-kids. Obviously Israel isn’t going to commit demographic suicide like that and such a right of return is basically a back way into a one Palestinian state solution. Lots of Pro-Palestinian people still insist on this as a matter of absolute justice despite the fact that no Israeli government would agree to it.Report
There’s an unasked question in the discussion.
What is the position of these Palestinians with regard to the state of Israel?
Are they friendly and accepting that Israel is an officially religious state where Judaism is the state religion, even if it tolerates all others?
Or are they just waiting for the opportunity to win power and ethnically cleanse the territory?
Which is the same question I already asked- What is the vision of what “Peace” and “Victory” look like?
Most people in these sorts of discussions seem very, very, adamant about not answering that.Report
The Further Leftists who see Israel as a settler-colonial entity are perfectly willing to allow the Palestinians to cleanse the entire MENA region of the Jews. They see it as a just destruction a la Algeria even though Israeli Jews don’t have a place they can go to like the Pied-Noirs do. Further Leftists tend to not have the most accurate information about Israel’s demographics or Jewish history and perceptions.
The more liberal rather than leftist Pro-Palestinian people in the West tend to really ignore what real actual Palestinians and Muslims are saying because it goes against what Western liberals are acceptable. They might be aware of what the hardline Israelis say but they tend to create Fantasy Palestinians in their headspace that use ANC type rhetoric rather than what they are saying.
From what I’ve observed the allegedly moderate Palestinians sound just as bad as the Israeli extremists. They really view the entire area as their place. They might be willing to deal with a small to medium sized Jewish community that they can manage and be treated as pets but it has to be known that the Arab Palestinians are the real true inhabitants. A Jewish population big enough that can press on these issues is too much for them.Report
Thank you for this. My friends who have boarded the pro-Palestine train have zero experience in that part of the world. They’re like MAGA and have no interest in learning anything. It’s mystifying and sad.Report
My theory is that Pro-Palestinian liberals in the West are unwilling to deal with this because if most Muslims really do see Israel as a theocratic blot on all of Islam than that is both alien and unsolvable problem. Many Western liberals are also deeply afraid of saying anything that could be interpreted as racist or Islamophobic and that includes telling the Palestinians to be sensible. So they create sensible Palestinians in their headspace.Report
Sorry for the triple response but it is darkly funny that liberals who believe that their own reactionaries or Israeli extremists are serious look at the Palestinians and go “oh, they don’t really believe this and are just saying it as a negotiating tactic.”Report
Ahem. “Not *ALL* Palestinians believe that!”
Now we can argue whether you’re engaging in a conspiracy theory.Report
We can certainly argue with our own abstractions and straw men all we like. Or we can consider that something like 40k dead Gazans and 100k injured, many grievously and in permanent, life altering ways, renders it a virtual certainty that the entirety of the population has very personal reasons to hate Israel forever.Report
So what does Reconstruction look like?
If we learned anything from the Civil War, it’s that maybe we’d have Universal Health Care if the North kept going for another few decades instead of wimping out.Report
Heh yea I mean, that, or Ted Kennedy could have just agreed to Nixon’s proposal in ’74. Of course who could’ve predicted the paradigm shift?Report
a virtual certainty that the entirety of the population has very personal reasons to hate Israel forever.
This is true. However it was also true before.
The only change is we, the West, understand this.Report
Israel itself is facing the hard decision over what sort of nation it wants to be.
The same question all of the First World democracies are facing, that of how to face demographic shifts.
What happens when the majority of French citizens have ancestry from North Africa or the Middle East?
In America the official position is that nothing happens, it is how our nation was founded as a heterogenous mix where no one ethnic group or religion is established.
But…the actual truth is a very large minority of Americans are losing their sh!t over the prospect.Report
Eh this is where the Israelis have a point. Poor Muslims from war zones don’t assimilate. They knife people who draw cartoons that hurt their feelings. All the more reason for Israel to secure territory with as few of them in it as possible. If the Europeans are smart they’ll lock that door and throw away the key as well.
There’s no comparison to what’s going on here, where the chaos creates a lot of disorder and social backlash but there’s no reason to believe our immigrants from Central America or wherever can’t assimilate, provided the flow is kept reasonably under control.Report
Have you thought this through?
How exactly does a modern liberal democracy “lock the door and throw away the key” when the unwanted people are already citizens?
Like, even if no one immigrated ever, the domestic born people with foreign ancestry can easily become a majority, in France, America, Israel and other nations as well.
The only way to actually put your thought into practice is to have the government control the reproductive rates of its citizens.
I’m assuming you don’t really mean that, which is why I asked, have you thought this through?Report
The Israelis, for whatever reason, seem to have concluded “It’s US or THEM!”
What is the moral choice when given the option between “Us” or “Them”?Report
That you make this comment, only moments after the comment about the Civil War, is….well, its something.Report
Is it as “something” as your distaste at answering the question?Report
Remember how I was talking about how fascism is an aesthetic movement, whose adherents reject the possibility of peace and justice, but instead prefer endless war where they get to star as the heroic defenders of civilization against the barbarian horde?
They always try to object and insist that no, they are simply cold eyed realists telling us how things really are. And then they usually go on to give some Col. Jessup speech.
But no, they are fantasists, cosplaying a role.
Now to be clear- this cosplaying has murderous outcomes- the Third Reich, the Klan, the Al Qaeda network, ISIS, Hamas- these groups are all cosplayers engaged in a murderous fantasy of Us or Them.
If some Israeli wants to drink the koolaid and join in the fantasy, well, that’s their choice.Report
You seem to be using the future tense in your last sentence, there.
Is that the correct tense to be using?Report
I don’t know- I don’t have a good grasp on Israeli politics. But you seem to think they already have.
Is this where you tell us that you are simply a cold eyed realist telling us how things really are?Report
Is there any way to get a good grasp of Israeli politics?
Like, is that possible, even in theory? Could you do it by reading, for example, news articles and editorials and reports from people on the ground?
Or is that something that is out of reach of every American?Report
I certainly could. But I don’t really have the interest.Report
Well, just so long as you don’t extrapolate out from yourself to everybody else.Report
There’s lots of data showing that immigrants quickly match the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the country they emigrate to.
The US TFR is about 1.6 and that includes everyone, not just native-born folks. France’s TFR is about 2.0 (the highest in the EU) and Germany’s is about 1.3. They both have large Muslim populations.
BTW Turkey’s TFR is about 1.8, 2.1 is what is needed to maintain a stable population.Report
The problem is less “these immigrants don’t assimilate” and more “most countries aren’t good at assimilation.”
Historically most countries are ethnostates and their traditions and culture reflect that.Report
Out of all the world’s religions, Islam seems the one most immune to liberalization. I have various theories why this is true* but I also think that creating Liberal Islam is very important.
*One of which is that more traditional Muslims will have no issues using violence against anybody that sets up a Muslim equivalent of Reform Judaism to get them to conform. Another related reason is that they have more opportunities to do this, mainly the Hajj. A Muslim community in the United States might set up a Liberal Mosque but they are going to conform when they go on Hajj if they want to come back alive.Report
Never forget oil.
In most cultures, reforming the religion so it conforms to modern ideals and the modern economic needs results in increased prosperity. Increased prosperity means the church gets more money.Report
Chip: the actual truth is a very large minority of Americans are losing their sh!t over the prospect.
Sure. Just like what happened with the Polish, the Germans, the Mexicans, the Asians, and so on.
We go through this with every group, and we always find American culture is aggressively assimilative. We’re the Borg, we should be using/abusing that ability a lot more than we do.Report
I don’t think that any European country is going to become permanently non-White any time soon if ever. Since they refuse to get proper information on ethnic demographics for reasons that make sense to them, it is very hard to determine how many French people are “ethnic French” or at least “white” but I think it is still a comfortable majority.
51% say they have no religion and another 29% report Roman Catholicism. Only 10% say their religion is Islam. Using this as a rough proximate of race, “white” French people are still around 80% of the population. Everybody’s birthrate is going down.Report
I mean, the French’s refusal to collect ethnic or religious data is unusual, but they have very good reasons.Report
I think that not collecting ethnic data is common across European countries. Wikipedia’s article on the Nordic countries also state that they don’t collect ethnic data in their census. It is sort of like creating a multicultural society by engaging in a lot of denial at the same time and powering through the issues.Report
In the absence of that data we do have extensive numbers on national Total Fertility Rate (TFR). No EU nation has a TFR at or above 2.1, the number needed to maintain a stable population. France’s is around 2.0 (the highest in the EU); Germany’s is 1.3. Turkey’s is 1.8. US: 1.6. India: 2.0. China: 1.2. Mexico and Central America are all below 2.0.
There’s this widely held belief in exploding populations in the Global South that is now a historic artifact.Report
Calling a commanding officer being killed in a war an extra-judicial killing seems a bit much. If Sinwar as a meeting or something than it would count but Sinwar was killed in battle and was acting as an officer and soldier.Report
He was indeed killed on the front line, even by soldiers who thought he was a normal combatant.
However if he were in a meeting it still wouldn’t count. Hamas and Israel are at war. Sinwar was fair game just like every other member of Hamas is fair game.Report
Fair enough. That framing comes from watching the Israelis hitting target after target. You’re absolutely right he was armed and an engaged in a fight.
On a personal note: I really appreciate the discourse you and others created. That’s my goal with everything I write. Generate understanding and hope that if I’m lucky enough to have people read my stuff the conversation is constructive.Report
My theory and it is mine is that losing to Jews repeatedly has basically cost a big psychological shock among Muslims that they are still recovering from. The Facebook algorithm gave me a political cartoon yesterday of a dignified Muslim man with a robe, turban, and beard standing on books titled poetry, philosophy, etc.; looking down with contempt on a boy in a kippah dancing cluelessly on a smaller stack of US dollars.
I don’t know if this was created by a Muslim or non-Muslim more sympathetic to them than Jews/Israelis but it speaks volumes. The Muslims are men and heirs to a a great intellectual tradition while the Jews are clueless spoiled brat boys. Despite all the Nobel Prizes we won and the fact that Israel’s GDP exceeds that of all it’s neighbors combined. They seem to be jealous.Report
Sure. They’re Religion 3.0, they and they alone have the TRUTH, a direct line to God-made-book. It’s their source of strength and superiority.
And Israel is this massive F.U. to that idea.Report
Losing to Monotheism 1.0, and a group that didn’t have an army or country of their own for nearly 2000 years at this point, really messed them up psychology. Some seem to be slowly recovering but not enough.Report
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-live/israel-reportedly-strikes-beirut-after-idf-warns-of-attacks-on-hezbollah-economic-assets/00000192-acd0-d049-a3db-bff6ed0d0000?liveBlogItemId=992052909#992052909
Israeli government officials giving Hamas a little bulletin board material.Report