Opinion | If Sinwar Was a Devil, What Does It Make Israel?

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, attends the opening of a new mosque in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip on February 24, 2017.Credit: AFP/SAID KHATIB

The main headline in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth called him "the devil from Gaza." TV newscasters competed in their use of foul language, calling him the arch-enemy, the despicable murderer, the arch-murderer. They compared him to Adolf Hitler and called him a rat.

Presenting the enemy as the devil without looking in the mirror
enables us to justify the continuation of this war forever.

This is also what makes many Israelis fail to understand
why the world is against us.

It's hard to know where to begin when talking about the devil.

… evidence of deliberate firing at children,
each testimony harsher than the other?

Is it the sight of children burned to death last week
outside the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah?

Their photos were shown around the world.

Is it the 12 days in which no aid was brought into Gaza?

Perhaps it's the displacement of an additional 50,000 people from Jabalya last week or the killing of 379 more Palestinians that week?
Or the 3 million people displaced from their homes in Gaza and Lebanon, moving back and forth in fear and without any possessions?

Israel does not see any of this. The world doesn't stop seeing it.

If Sinwar were the devil, how would the world define Israel?

And how would we describe ourselves?

There is no point in adding words to the displaying of his shattered body and smashed head, with his mouth open and teeth examined as if he were a beast, or to the scorn at his trying to defend himself with a stick with the one hand that wasn't severed. That was the man and this is Israel; we won't try to stop its joy.

But there is one thing we should not ignore: our lack of self-awareness and our blindness. If Yahya Sinwar was the devil, how would we define Israel's actions over the last year? And how are they perceived around the world? If the voice of Israel's masses, Channel 12's anchor Dany Cushmaro quotes the hackneyed Bialik poem "Vengeance like this, for the blood of a child, Satan has yet to devise," after the killing of 22 children by a Hezbollah rocket on July 27, what can we say about the 17,000 dead children in Gaza and vengeance for their blood? We won't say anything. The 22 were ours, the 17,000 were theirs, and how could you possibly compare them? No vengeance, no compassion, it's not even reported.

Sinwar deserves all the epithets affixed to his name, but it's not Israel that has the right to do so. A state that is so deeply immersed in the blood of Gaza and its ruins does not have moral permission to define its cruel and bitter enemy as the devil, before it examines its own deeds. How can Israel complain about Sinwar's cruelty without batting an eye? Without stammering. Without feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed.

The fact that Israel does not report the mass bloodshed and destruction in Gaza does not make these less cruel. On the contrary, it makes these acts crueller. If Israel was at least aware of its deeds, facing them directly while claiming its right to defend itself, a right which permits it to do anything it pleases, one could perhaps understand it, certainly more than the notion that if we don't face reality it doesn't exist; that if we don't show our cruelty, it can be apportioned only to the devil from Gaza. In our eyes, Sinwar is the devil, and we are angels of peace and mercy.

Girls walk past destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 17, 2024.Credit: Bashar Taleb/ AFP

This isn't just whataboutism. Israel's blindness is now one of the greatest obstacles on the road to ending this terrible and insatiable war. Presenting the enemy as the devil without looking in the mirror enables us to justify the continuation of this war forever.

If this a war between absolute Good and absolute Evil, one cannot let up, we are all in favor of it. There is self-satisfaction, a sense of total justification and a lack of choice which motivates many Israelis to continue supporting the war. This is also what makes many Israelis fail to understand why the world is against us.

When talking about the devil, it's hard to know where to begin. Is it from last week's investigative report in the New York Times, which brought the testimonies of 65 medical staff working in Gaza, including evidence of deliberate firing at children, each testimony harsher than the other? Is it the sight of children burned to death last week outside the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah? Their photos were shown around the world.

Is it the 12 days in which no aid was brought into Gaza? Perhaps it's the displacement of an additional 50,000 people from Jabalya last week or the killing of 379 more Palestinians that week? Or the 3 million people displaced from their homes in Gaza and Lebanon, moving back and forth in fear and without any possessions? Israel does not see any of this. The world doesn't stop seeing it.

If Sinwar was the devil, how will the world define Israel? And how would we describe ourselves?