But Why?
Published at 22:10 on 8 November 2023
Why did Hamas stage their attacks on the 7th of last month?
What first comes to mind are the standard reasons for any Palestinian attack on Israel. They lost their homeland, resent having lost it, and Israel is a huge part of the reason they lost it. Pretty much any people in their situation would contain at least a few individuals who feel motivated to launch attacks. But that’s unsatisfactory, as it fails to explain the exceptional viciousness of the attacks. So perhaps a better question would be: why did Hamas just take their attacks on Israel to an entirely new level?
Three main reasons come to mind:
- Hatred. It’s the obvious one, and it’s hard to rule it out when all the best available evidence now indicates that they did in fact plan to butcher civilians.
- Delusion, much of it faith-based. Not thinking through the likely consequences. Perhaps expecting divine intervention from a deity believed to be on their side. I would execute caution about this one, however. Hamas definitely was competent enough in planning and executing last month’s invasion. Such competence is not the hallmark of seriously deluded minds.
- Emotion (which includes the aforementioned hatred, plus frustration, anger, etc.) They really wanted to do something big, to strike at the despised enemy, and this desire trumped a lot of rational thinking through about likely consequences. Probably a big one.
What’s interesting is that the final one applies to Israel as well. The October attacks have been called Israel’s 9/11, and Israel has invaded Gaza without much of a firm plan for what happens next, much like the USA charged into Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11. Not much reason to expect things to go much better for Israel than they did for the USA, either. Or, for that matter, much better than they did when Israel pulverized Lebanon in July 2006. When the dust settled, Hezbollah, the enemy being retaliated against, was stronger than ever.
As to what to do about the current situation, that comes in the next post.