Hamas confirm Gazan civilian bloodshed is their strategic advantage

Very interesting & chilling article in the WSJ today by Summer Said and Rory Jones (see below).

The WSJ analysed dozens of private messages from Yahya Sinwar (Hamas Chief terrorist in Gaza) to Hamas negotiators in Qatar.

The greater the Gazan civilian deaths; then for Hamas, the more that calculated human sacrifice can be leveraged to Hamas’ strategic advantage. Those not warped by antisemitism knew this: Hamas wants Palestinians to be killed, knowing that more civilian casualties means increased world pressure on Israel.

Despite evidence of their “strategy”, many in the media and so many protesters play their part in Hamas’ drama: turning a blind eye to the evidence and continue to do exactly what Hamas wants. Various wings of the Left begin with the proposition that Israel is a “colonial state” with no inherent right to exist, black-and-white, and then reason backwards from there. So predictable. Then, there is the propaganda operation for Muslims in Western countries  who see this as a religious war. 

The problem is that the terrorist strategy seems to be working: people criticise Israel as being unreasonable entering a refugee camp to rescue hostages. As opposed to it being unreasonable to hide hostages in a refugee camp! Or, for example, that Hamas strategy was to count death of Hamas combatants as civilian casualties. The UN then quietly released a report that drastically reduced the number of purported casualties in Gaza. Etc.

✲✲✲

Most interesting points in the article:

• “We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar said in a recent message to Hamas officials seeking to broker an agreement with Qatari and Egyptian officials.
• In one message to Hamas leaders in Doha, Sinwar cited civilian losses in national-liberation conflicts in places such as Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people died fighting for independence from France, saying, “these are necessary sacrifices.”
• In an April 11 letter to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh after three of Haniyeh’s adult sons were killed by an Israeli airstrike, Sinwar wrote that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would “infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honor.”
• His ultimate goal appears to be to win a permanent cease-fire that allows Hamas to declare a historic victory by outlasting Israel and claim leadership of the Palestinian national cause.
• Even without a lasting truce, Sinwar believes Netanyahu has few options other than occupying Gaza and getting bogged down fighting a Hamas-led insurgency for months or years. It is an outcome that Sinwar foreshadowed six years ago when he first became leader in the Gaza Strip. Hamas might lose a war with Israel, but it would cause an Israeli occupation of more than two million Palestinians. “For Netanyahu, a victory would be even worse than a defeat,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist writing in 2018 in an Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.
• “We make the headlines only with blood,” Sinwar said in the interview at the time with an Italian journalist. “No blood, no news.”
• Though Sinwar planned and greenlighted the deadly Oct. 7 attacks, early messages to cease-fire negotiators show he seemed surprised by the brutality of Hamas’s armed wing and other Palestinians, and how easily they committed civilian atrocities. “Things went out of control,” Sinwar said in one of his messages, referring to gangs taking civilian women and children as hostages. “People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.” This became a talking point for Hamas to explain away the Oct. 7 civilian toll.
• Israel has since launched its Rafah operation. But as Sinwar predicted, it has come at a humanitarian and diplomatic cost. 
• Sinwar’s messages, meanwhile, indicate he’s willing to die in the fighting. In a recent message to allies, the Hamas leader likened the war to a 7th-century battle in Karbala, Iraq, where the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad was controversially slain. “We have to move forward on the same path we started,” Sinwar wrote. “Or let it be a new Karbala.”

✲✲✲

Click to enlarge & read: