By Seth Mandel
Sunday, January 19, 2025
As the Israel-Hamas ceasefire went into effect on Sunday,
one image stood out: a picture of the Israeli women surrounded by Hamas gunmen
and a rabid mob of Gazans maniacally taunting them as they were handed over to
the Red Cross.
Meanwhile the images from the Israeli side showed people
in the streets hugging and crying and cheering and comforting and expressing
gratitude and hope.
The incongruity brought to mind a specific tactic of
Hamas’s online army of rapid-response spin doctors whose craft we might call
“Hamasbara.” For example, hawkish comments by a settler figure would be
portrayed as proof the Israelis were going to re-settle the Gaza Strip. Or a
video of an IDF soldier acting goofy in an abandoned home in Gaza or Lebanon
was, we were told, proof of Israeli national callousness. Of course, the IDF
does investigate misbehavior: It is looking
into claims made about 100 soldiers out of the 300,000 serving in this war.
Those numbers prove the opposite point from the one the
Hamasbarists were trying to make, but it was curious to see how many people
fell for this kind of thing. These folks wanted, they needed, to believe
the worse about Israelis.
On Sunday, this trend was no longer puzzling. If you were
going to support Hamas in the war against the IDF, you had to perform the
following mental gymnastics: The worse Hamas behaved, the worse you thought of
Israel—or you’d be forced to face your own twisted depravity for instinctively
siding with Hamas.
Hamas soldiers changed out of their civilian clothes and
into their uniforms and swarmed out around hospitals along with gleeful
civilians and “journalists” who’d taken off their media vests to join the
celebrations—none of which were taking place among rubble and famine, despite
al Jazeera’s claim
that Israel destroyed about three out of every four homes in the strip.
The world got to see a very different Gaza on Sunday.
“Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahood” they chanted, a popular refrain commemorating a
famous Muslim massacre of Jews.
So Hamas sent back to their families Romi Gonen, Emily
Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher. Who is Israel releasing in return, as demanded
by Hamas? There’s
Zakaria Zubeidi, who was involved in a terror attack in which six people were
killed. There’s Mohammad Abu Warda, in prison for his role in bombings that
killed 45. Mohammed Naifeh was serving consecutive life sentences for attacks
that killed five. Three members of a Hamas cell responsible for the deaths of
30 innocents are
reportedly on the list. And on it goes.
To be sure, not every Palestinian inmate has this much
blood on his hands. But more than enough do to make one cringe at the clash of
values between the two armies.
Israelis are going into this deal with eyes open; they
are not naïve. They just believe that life is valuable, though their enemy does
not. The asymmetry has clearly inspired some in the pro-Hamas camp to
manufacture a false equivalence. The cease-fire has made fools of those who
believed it.
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