Dear Israelis, you have it completely the wrong way round

My latest Op-ed in Israel National News, with minor editing.

On 19, 25 and 30 January, and on 1 and 8 February 2025, the people of Israel were subjected to major psychological attacks in the form of the drip-feed release of captives, accompanied by maximum wearing down of Israelis both during and before the “releases”. The saddest aspect of all this is not even that the Israelis are not engaging in this psychological war, but that the people of Israel seem completely unaware that this is being done to them.

Five times this happened, each time escalating, yet each time they are surprised, each time they are horrified, at what Hamas does next, as if Hamas is engaged in some kind of hostage release deal.

On October 7 2023, so many Israelis described Hamas as barbarians. What did you mean by that? Do you actually know what a barbarian is, or was that just a metaphor for how you felt? You know, I don’t expect you to take this seriously, but Ayatollah Ali Sistani once rebuked a “moderate” Muslim academic by declaring, “Civilisation and Islam are two different things.”

The Ayatollah knew what he was talking about, as do I when I tell you that these people are barbarians. They are the kind of people who need a God to instruct them on how to knock at someone’s door, how to behave in someone else’s house, and how to clean themselves after defecating, in minute detail, else each of these and everything else besides would be exercises in quotidian savagery.

They were barbarians already by 7th century standards, i.e., late-antiquity. Tabari recounts how a group of Christians who had embraced Islam were so appalled by what they found that they returned to Christianity. He quotes them as saying, “By God, our religion from which we have departed is better and more correct than that which these people follow. Their religion does not stop them from shedding blood, terrifying the roads, and seizing properties,” whereupon they returned to Christianity. For such gross ingratitude for Muslim conviviality and generosity, Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib beheaded all the men and sold the woman and children into slavery.

They are also unkillable, because they want to die (right after killing you). That means that despite all your weapons, you can never win, because you are fighting the wrong war.

The only way that you win a war against people who want to die, is if they lose before they die. They have to see you reduce them to defeat so they know that they have lost, and then you let them continue to live. Defeat, for them, is not death. Defeat, for them, is to be humiliated. You might have signed a hostage release deal, but they signed you up for a series of Victorian freak show humiliations, defeating you over and over and over again before the world's cameras while you can do nothing about it, because you will not sink so low as to break an agreement, real or fictitious, and they know that. Noticed how, for these parades, they fattened up your women and emaciated your men? Think about it.

So if you want to win, you have only two options: one, obliterate them all; or two, break their spirit. I would imagine that for you, the first is out of the question. Good. You are not barbarians. But for the second, you think you could do that, if you don’t have to violate your principles. Well, in that case, I have news for you. While you will find the first impossible, you’ll find the second even more so, because in the entire one hundred years that your barbarian enemies have been waging psychological war against you, you have consistently found it impossible to even acknowledge that this was being done to you.

And after a century of continuous, severe, psychological blows without ever striking back, you are at the point of devouring yourselves, blind to what is right before your eyes.

Three male captives—to your own detriment, you insist on calling them hostages—were released today. On the Internet, three groups of friends and family waited with baited breath to see their loved ones for the first time in over 400 days, in palpable anticipation of joy, cameras rolling to capture that special moment—and there they were—jubilant outbursts… ???? ...until that instant when the horror had seared through their eyes, up their optic nerves, into their visual cortices, registered and out from their deepest memories rudely tore skeletal prisoners released from Nazi death camps and plastered these all over their loved ones.

Dear people of Israel, it breaks my heart to say this, but you have it completely the wrong way round. Those men were not starved so badly that they now look like Holocaust survivors; they were meant to look like Holocaust survivors, which is why they were starved so badly. You called these people barbarians, but you had no idea what you were talking about. And still you do not.

You have not seen the worst of their cruelty, not by a long way, and still, you are not ready for it. If you will not fight a psychological war, how can you expect to know how to even defend yourselves in such a war. You are sitting ducks, and Hamas is picking you off.

Just this evening a woman on YouTube screamed at your Prime Minister that he is responsible for these men looking like they just survived the Holocaust. Hamas saw that video, too, as did every Palestinian Arab family, and it was sweets, smiles and Allahu-akbars all around. In their psychological war on you, they smell victory.

And still, you refuse to engage.

Picture credits:

Giulio Rosati - https://www.oilpaintingsgallery.com/disrobed/Inspection-of--New-Arrivals--big.jpg ,http://www.oilpaintingsgallery.com/pic.asp?id=_Giulio_Rosati_Inspection_of_New_Arrivals_ZEI-1163.JPG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5182598

Comments:

On 11 February 2025 at 11:17, Jalal Tagreeb wrote:

Hi Anjuli,

Thank you for this very nice article, it is well written with a clear message.

Kind regards,
Jalal.

On 11 February 2025 at 14:50, Jalal Tagreeb wrote:

Hi Anjuli,

Don't you think the hostages deal should have been done as a first action before any military action against Hamas? This way, all hostages could have been retrieved without any suffering, after that Israel has the full right to punish Hamas and no one would blame Israel. Don't you think the timing of actions was wrong?

Kind regards,
Jalal.

On 11 February 2025 at 15:29, Jalal Tagreeb wrote:

If only Mr Trump was able to finish this conflict then this means that Hamas was able to withstand the full military action that was taken against it by Israel and its friends. Don't you see this as a victory for Hamas? A counter argument against this would be that Iran and Hezbollah and Huthis were also putting pressure on the IDF, but still the U.S. and U.K. backed the IDF on Huthis attacks. However, the direct on ground clash was between Hamas (al-Qassam) and the IDF and the IDF was not able to achieve a clear victory neither freeing all hostages.

On 13 February 2025 at 16:23, Anjuli Pandavar wrote:

Hi Jalal,

Thank you for your kind words.

"Don't you think the hostages deal should have been done as a first action before any military action against Hamas?"

— ??

"This way, all hostages could have been retrieved without any suffering"

— You know as well as I do that they are not hostages.
— "Without any suffering" ??

"after that Israel has the full right to punish Hamas"

— "after that"?

"no one would blame Israel"

— ??

"Don't you think the timing of actions was wrong?"

— Yes. It was three weeks late.

"If only Mr Trump was able to finish this conflict, then this means that Hamas was able to withstand the full military action that was taken against it by Israel and its friends. Don't you see this as a victory for Hamas?"

— If Israel took on Hamas without any input from anyone, completely flattened Gaza, expelled everyone except one Hamas terrorist barely alive under the smouldering rubble, it would be a victory not only for Hamas, but for all the Arab Muslims and the entire ummah. Victory has nothing to do with who is at war with Hamas, only with whether they were stronger than Hamas to begin with and whether they managed to humiliate Hamas. If an army such as the IDF cannot manage to kill each and every single member of Hamas after fifteen months of fighting, then yes, it is a victory for Hamas.

"the IDF was not able to achieve a clear victory, neither freeing all hostages."

— Yes. The reasons for this are complex and has more to do with Israel than Hamas, and, in the final analysis, irrelevant.