Military conflict demands constant innovations. Swords and knives brought shields and body armor. Body armor, in turn, was defeated by infantry armed with rifles, and centuries later in WWI, the machine gun rendered obsolete the mass infantry assault. The tank then proved to be the answer to the machine gun, and while it may appear that victory depends on physical resources and technology, innovative tactics can be decisive.
The Israel/Hamas war in Gaza illustrates how technological superiority cannot guarantee military victory. In fact, if technological superiority were the only element in this war, the Gaza war would have lasted a week or two. But it has not, and the vastly superior Israeli army (IDF) has struggled for over a year and a half against the far weaker Hamas. What can explain Israel’s lack of success, an outcome in sharp contrast to when it defeated Iran in a mere twelve days?
Hamas has successfully resisted Israel thanks to skillfully playing the victimhood card. Yes, Hamas is a terrorist group that brutalizes its own people, it is guilty of terrible atrocities and corruption, it openly calls for killing every Israeli Jew and regularly violates international law, yet it has managed to convince much of the world that it -- not Israel -- is the “real” victim in the conflict.
Securing the “victim” label is not usually considered a military asset but it clearly has been Hama’s chief advantage. Conceivably, future West Point military strategy seminars will include “self-victimization” as they currently teach soldiers how to seize the high ground.
Hamas has achieved victimhood by demonizing Israel. It has ensured that Israelis military actions “needlessly” kill scores of children, women, the elderly and similar “innocent victims,” a strategy achieved by putting Hamas military assets close to schools, daycare centers, hospitals, mosques, and, more generally, crowded urban neighborhoods. This is a simple, conscious policy making it impossible for the Israeli army to avoid killing blameless civilians regardless of advance warning or care exercised by Israeli soldiers. Maximizing, not minimizing collateral damage sharply contrasts to what occurred in WW II when belligerents relocated children to the countryside to avoid air raids.
Reinforcing this intentional collateral damage are “official” casualty figures supplied by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that refuses to distinguish between combatants and genuinely innocent civilians along with the documented reality that Hamas often uses civilians as human shields. Nor do these figures distinguish between “normal” deaths, e.g., from old age, and war-related casualties. More significantly, and never mentioned, these likely inflated numbers are relatively low compared to the death rate in similar wars involving urban populations. Indeed, they are comparable to figures from the Vietnam War and notably lower than the conflicts in Korea and the Iraqi war. Moreover, contrary to what Hamas (and its allies) claim, this collateral carnage fails to constitute “genocide” according to the official UN definition.
Meanwhile, Hamas has done everything possible to manufacture “a humanitarian” crisis with lurid tales of starvation, and lack of medicines and hospital care. Given the journalists depend on Hamas' cooperation to operate in Gaza, photographs are often staged. Though an official UN report does not cite Hamas by name, it is clear that this terrorist group is behind the vast looting of trucks delivering foreign aid or the gangs that steal this food to resell it on the black market. Everything is about Israeli-imposed “genocidal” human misery as if the entire population is entirely dependent on handouts. Never mentioned is that Gaza residents might alleviate their own misery, as did millions of Germans and Japanese experiencing horrific urban destruction of WW II. It is just assumed, as per the victimhood narrative, that the people in Gaza are inherently dependent on outside help.
Fueling this victimhood scenario is the coverage from journalists plus what appears on social media. Now, left-leaning TV stations like the BBC almost daily feature graphic coverage of Gaza women shrieking over their dead children (apparently killed by the IDF) and civilians picking through rubble searching for dead relatives. Add stomach-turning staged pictures of emaciated children while their mothers join desperate mobs for a bowl of soup. That some of these lurid tales are fake is almost never admitted. No wonder millions worldwide are outraged by “evil” Israel.
The media-made reality represents only a fraction of such catastrophes worldwide. If the media apportioned coverage according to misery levels, Gaza would barely get noticed. According to one report, in 2024 between June and August, 49.5 million people in Africa faced starvation, an increase of 4% from the previous year, and foreign assistance is minimal. Moreover, war in these nations is far more brutal than what the IDF inflicts, and endemic in Africa, while casualties far exceed Gaza numbers. One headline even spoke of the top 10 wars in Africa, and genuine genocide is commonplace.
This disproportionate media attention at least in part simply reflects ease of covering Gaza. A journalist can fly into Ben Gurion Airport, check into a luxury hotel, take a swim, have a drink, hire a car and guide for a quick excursion to Gaza, and return to Tel Aviv for dinner. Compare that trip with visiting an African conflict hundreds of miles from civilization where, if the bandits don’t get you, disease might. And nobody back home knows one country from another.
A more credible explanation is that much of the media hates Israel. Jews killing Arab children is newsworthy; African blacks killing other African blacks is not. The Gaza victimhood narrative has become part of the broader anti-West, anti-colonial agenda, and its success can be seen in on U.S. college campuses along with British and France calls for recognizing “a Palestinian state.” The Irish prime minister just demanded that the UN militarily intervene in Gaza. The U.S. Senate recently debated cutting off arms shipments to Israel while public opinion is now shifting away from Israel. Most recently, Germany ceased all military shipments to Israel. Being a “victim” obviously pays.
A great irony in the victimhood narrative is that by all objective standards Israel is the real victim. Lacking any provocation, Hamas killed 1200 innocent Israelis (including infants) kidnapped 251 hostages, raped women and it has repeatedly rejected ceasefires. Alas, in today’s world, objective weighing of evidence does not dictate how the “victim” label is bestowed. Judged by who currently owns the “victim” label, it seems that a “genuine victim” must be weak, belong to an “oppressed group,” feels especially aggrieved and be driven by intense hatreds. According to these rules, a rich white male CEO thus cannot be a “victim” even if shot in cold blood. Successful people like the Israelis are thus disqualified from victimhood.
Hama’s victimhood narrative is not intended to defeat Israel militarily. Rather, like the colonial wars of liberation that once defeated the militarily stronger European powers, Hamas can “win” simply by just surviving until an exhausted Israeli public force the government to exit a hopeless quagmire. This strategy thus resembles the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam -- we left rather than fight a futile war. The mighty IDF, conqueror of countless Arab nations is now being defeated by creating a nation of victims. Dead Arab but not dead Jewish children are now a potent military weapon.
Image: Tasnim News Agency