You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘hamas’ tag.
The Politics of Hatred
By Shlomo Maital
Consider the ‘new populist politics’ now prevalent in Israel, the US, and other countries.
It is the politics of V. Not “V” for values and vision. V for vengeance, vindictiveness, vitriol, violence. It is the politics of hatred. Hate those who do not agree with you. And…worse, yet, act on that hatred.
This week, Jews everywhere are reading a key chapter in the book of Deuteronomy. And it counsels hatred (?). Remember “Amalek” (an enemy leader who attacked the Israelites from behind, on their way to the Holy Land), we are told.
UK Chief Rabbi, explains: The intent is the opposite. Remember, in order NOT to let hatred dominate your thinking and your emotions. Battle your enemies. Defeat them. And – do not hate them. This is stated clearly in this chapter of the Bible: do not hate the Edomites, do not hate the Egyptians, even though Egypt enslaved you and Edom fought you.
Some 20 years ago, Israel extracted settlers from Gaza. Members of the current Israeli government have vowed vengeance – and two decades later, seek to destroy the democratic system that led to the withdrawal from Gaza. It is driven by deep burning hatred.
The Hamas leader, imprisoned for two decades in Israel, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed many women and children and elderly, often brutally. The result led to a huge disaster for the people of Gaza – death and destruction. The UN Secretary General Gutierres asks Israel, ‘what did you expect?’, referring to the Hamas attack. We ask him, and supporters of Hamas – what did YOU expect? Give them expensive presents?
Now, it is time for efforts at conciliation. Not hatred. Athletes know that competing on the basis of burning hatred addles the brain and prevents it from properly strategizing and winning. Rattle you opponent, get them ‘emotional’ – and you are on your way to winning.
Same for nations. Nations with leaders who leverage hate will ruin their followers and their nations. It is happening before our eyes.
Alas.
Strategic Empathy Is Missing in Action, in the US and Israel: And the Price is Terrible
By Shlomo Maital
Consider ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’. Sympathy — you offer it to those bereaved. Empathy? Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another, in our actions.
Empathy is good, right? The foundation of community and brotherhood. The glue that binds us together as human beings. “And you shall love your brothers and sisters as yourself”.
Not according to the world’s richest man. Direct quote from Elon Musk: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy – the empathy exploit.” He said this on Joe Rogan’s podcast – same podcast that refused to host candidate Kamala Harris.
Empathy is Western civilizzation’s fundamental weakness! And why? Because the United States, through AID and other organizations, helps those abroad who are poor, ill, uneducated. This is, by Musk, a weakness. It invests resources in others, who exploit our compassion, when we could be buying more $100,000 Tesla cars. This, from the person now dominating US government (and destroying it), who, as far as I know, was never elected by anyone.
LACK of empathy causes wars. Here is the analysis of MIT Professor Barry Posen: “Vladimir Putin likely viewed Russia’s strategic situation through a preventive war frame. NATO membership for Ukraine would shift the balance of power against Russia, and U.S. and NATO military cooperation with Ukraine intensified during the Joe Biden administration. These developments likely convinced Putin that he did not have much time to forestall Ukraine’s NATO membership.”
The US lacked what Posen calls “strategic empathy”. Understanding how foes feel and think.
“The United States is an enormously powerful actor in international politics. But U.S. leaders often fail to consider the knock-on effects of their own policies. U.S. foreign policymakers are always alert to how the United States’ behavior affects the confidence of its allies. They are attentive to how U.S. behavior does or does not strengthen deterrence of its potential adversaries. But U.S. leaders are often oblivious that U.S. power and behavior might feel threatening to other states.” [1]
Posen shows that Russia’s Putin for years, dating to 2014 and before, felt threatened by Ukraine’s avowed desire to be part of NATO. He felt in February 2023 that if he did not occupy Ukraine now, Ukraine would join NATO – and that would bring, by force of law, the entire military might of NATO on him. His invasion of Ukraine was predictable – with a bit of strategic empathy.
Consider Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons. Enough time to get inside his head? And he made no bones about it. His goal was to destroy Israel. He attacked on October 7, because he saw Saudi Arabia close to normalizing its relations with Israel – and that would forever marginalize the Palestinian cause and leave the ‘occupation’ permanent. The October 7 attack led to over 50,000 Palestinians’ death. But it has delayed, maybe for years, Saudi normalization. Or maybe forever.
And Israeli intelligence? And government? That fed Qatari billions into Gaza, even when it became clear that the money was going to Hamas tunnels and weapons, not to food and water for Gazans. The total lack of strategic empathy, to understand what Posen calls the ‘preventive war’ (you go to war to keep a worse war or event from happening), was rampant. Especially in the Netanyahu government, in power since March 2009, with only a short break.
The Netanyahu government is culpable, directly, including its head, because it lacked strategic empathy. And we, the people, paid a terrible price.
The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, wrote this some 2,500 years ago: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
On October 7, we learned that Israel neither knew the enemy, nor knew itself. Despite having imprisoned Yihya Sinwar for over two decades, we failed to learn, understand, and pay attention to his intentions –- even though he declared them openly.
And despite some 15 major operations and wars against Gaza since 1948, Israel and IDF did not come to know themselves — applying strategies that repeatedly failed, while building blindly on assumptions (the enemy is deterred) that were visibly and obviously false.
No, Elon Musk. Strategic empathy is not a weakness. The total lack of it is. And the price we pay is truly terrible.
[1] Barry Posen. Putin’s Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. International Security, February 2025.
How Israel Lost America
By Shlomo Maital
OK, I admit it – I’m a numbers guy. Like, an economist who says the obvious in words and numbers that are incomprehensible.
So, how about this. A February Gallup Poll shows that only 46% of Americans sympathize more with Israel than Palestinians. Among independents: 42%. Among Democrats: 21 per cent! And this, after Hamas (who are also Palestinians) murder, rape and burn Israeli civilians, including babies.
A decade ago, 62% of Americans sympathized more with Israel than with the Palestinians.
Ouch. Israel lost America.
Correction: Prime Minister Netanyahu did.
Why?
More numbers. Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel from March 31, 2009 to now, March 8, 2025 (the date I am writing this) — that is 5,821 days — except for a short period, June 31 2021 – Dec. 29 2022, 564 days, less than two years, when “Yamina’ (Naftali Bennett) and “Yesh Atid” (Yair Lapid) formed the government.
Since March 31, 2009, Netanya has been in power for 90% of the time. He has 90% of the blame for the disasters that befell Israel in that time – including the dramatic loss of support among Americans. During that time, Hamas built its military forces and the network of tunnels. On Netanyahu’s watch.
OK, Trump likes Israel. For now.
To rehash an old Nixon saw: Would you buy a used car from Trump? Or a new car? Greenland? Canada? Panama?
After the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir accepted responsibility and resigned in six months. The Agranat State Judicial Investigatory Committee was formed and made sweeping recommendations.
Netanyahu doggedly blocks forming such a committee, knowing it will find him deeply complicit in the October 7 disaster. He has acted in a manner that has alienated many Democratic voters — and when President Biden supported Bibi, he lost many of his Democratic voters. Perhaps enough to lose the 2024 election.
Netanyahu got Israel Trump — and maybe, got America Trump. But he lost Israel, Americans. And much of the world.
For people who love freedom, democracy, justice, honesty, truth and humanity – a really really bad deal.
Hamas Tunnels: An Expert’s Analysis
By Shlomo Maital
For five months, Israel has been battling Hamas, and its network of tunnels. No army has faced such an extensive array of underground tunnels, comprising hundreds of kilometers, in a strip of land only 40 kms. long.
As an Israeli, I have a rather biased view of the tunnels. So, instead of my views, here is the analysis of a fairly objective expert, John Spencer *. His essay was published in Modern Warfare on January 18.
On the massive extent of the tunnels: “New estimates also indicate the construction of this subterranean network could have cost Hamas as much as a billion dollars. The group has poured resources over fifteen years not just into constructing tunnel passages, but for blast doors, workshops, sleeping quarters, toilets, kitchens, and all the ventilation, electricity, and phone lines to support what amount to underground cities. As much as 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metals have been used in this subterranean construction. The sheer size of Hamas’s underground networks may, once fully discovered, be beyond anything a modern military has ever faced. The new estimates say the network may include between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels, with close to 5,700 separate shafts descending into hell.”
On the political function of the tunnels: “For the first time in the history of tunnel warfare, however, Hamas has built a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well. Its underground world serves all of the military functions described above, but also an entirely different one. Hamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface. Destroying the tunnels is virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza. Consequently, they put the modern laws of war at the center of the conflict’s conduct. These laws restrict the use of military force and methods or tactics that a military can use against protected populations and sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, and United Nations facilities.
Civilian Deaths and Buying Time: “Almost all of Hamas’s tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations—if not rendering it entirely impossible—because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites. Hamas’s strategy is also not to hold terrain or defeat an attacking force. Its strategy is about time. It is about creating time for international pressure on Israel to stop its military operation to mount.
The Huge Challenge for Israel Defense Forces: “The tactical challenges Hamas tunnels present to Israel are thereby compounded by strategic challenges. To deal with tunnels at the tactical level, Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign. Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.”
“We Are Proud to Sacrifice Martyrs”. “Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israeli military action—as one of its officials put it, “We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” It wants the world’s attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels.”
– – – – – – – –
And my own view: The Hamas strategy is working. The US has lost patience with Israel, as Israel’s self-centered Prime Minister plays in Hamas hands by refusing to define a clear end-of-war strategy. Biden is losing the Muslim vote in Michigan. The world has lost patience. Israel is ending up facing two billion Muslims, and a Western world that is increasingly hostile to the Gaza operation by IDF.
The young Israeli generation that many of us seniors felt was hopeless, unpatriotic, selfish, has shown incredible sacrifice, motivation and heroism, fighting to save our country. When they return from months of combat, they find a gaggle of incompetent politicians maneuvering to escape the popular judgment, that they bear responsibility for the October 7 disaster and must leave office at once. Experts believe we are headed for a new civil conflict, as popular demands for the government’s resignation face the Prime Minister’s stubborn desperate efforts to stay in power and thus perhaps avoid jail.
* John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
TIMnovate 