 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.
