A response to Richard Hanania on Arab militants
In honour cultures, a desire for “blood revenge” is one of the main motives for joining militant groups.
Written by Noah Carl.
In a widely shared piece published at the end of last year, Richard Hanania sought to refute the common argument that, by reacting to October 7 in the way it has, Israel is simply creating more militants. Thousands of people have died in Israel’s bombing campaign, and each of those people has friends and relatives who now hate Israel even more than they did before. So through its actions, Israel is increasing the total number of militants it will have to face in the future, thereby jeopardising its long-term security.
Yet as Hanania noted, there’s another possibility, namely that Palestinians already hated Israel to the maximum possible extent before October 7, so there really isn’t any trade-off between keeping Israel secure in the short term and keeping Israel secure in the long term. Or in other words, since Palestinian hatred of Israel is already “maxed out”, Israel might as well prioritise destroying Hamas, even if that means killing a lot of civilians too.
Hanania then went further and argued that, through its actions, Israel might actually be reducing the total number of militants it will have to face in the future. How so? If the scale of devastation Israel wreaks on Gaza and on Hamas in particular is sufficiently great, Palestinians might just lose hope and give up. As a consequence, they might start to hate Israel less and become disinclined to join militant groups.
In his article, Hanania includes a chart that plots “hatred of Israel” on the y-axis against “oppression level” on the x-axis. His claim is that it’s far from obvious the two have a positive, linear relationship. It could be that there is some point after which Palestinian “hatred of Israel” remains constant or even declines as Israel’s “oppression level” increases.1 While conceding that a linear model might have been true in the past, he suggests it is no longer an accurate description of reality, and that either a logarithmic model or the “lose hope” model provides a better fit to the data.
Hanania cites several pieces of evidence to support his claim that Palestinians already hated Israel to the maximum possible extent before October 7:
Opinion polls showing high levels of support for October 7, and for Hamas and other militant groups, among Palestinians.
Individual incidents in the Palestinian territories, such as one where ordinary Gazans spat on the dead body of Shani Louk.
Observations on Palestinian society, such as the fact that they have kids’ TV shows about the glories of martyrdom.
And he invokes two case studies to bolster his claim that the “lose hope” model is a realistic alternative to the linear model:
Muslims’ lack of response to Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs (which he interprets as showing that they consider the situation hopeless).
Arab states’ re-embrace of Bashar al-Assad in 2023 after his government regained control over most of Syria (which he interprets as showing that they considered the rebels’ cause hopeless).
Hanania summarised his position as follows:
I think that we’re in a world of the Logarithmic Model right now, which means that Israel should just keep killing terrorists and trying to destroy Hamas because the increase in hatred among the Palestinians will be small. This war will probably end with Palestinians hating Israel a little bit more than before but having their ability to hurt the Jewish state degraded to an even larger degree, leading to a net gain in Israeli security.
In this article, I do not wish to adjudicate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or say precisely which course of action will best promote Israel’s long-term security. What I do wish to do is argue that Hanania’s arguments, as outlined above, are wrong. Before getting to my main bone of contention, I will quibble with some of the evidence he cites to buttress his claims.
Polls, individual incidents and observations on Palestinian society don’t seem like particularly strong evidence concerning the extent of Palestinian hatred for Israel. For example, Hanania mentions a poll that found 75% of Palestinians supported the October 7 attack (which we know involved atrocities such as intentional killing of civilians). Yet later in the article he writes, “I have seen some say that Palestinians actually deny that civilians were killed on purpose in the operation”. Indeed, a poll in late November found that only 7% of Palestinians believed Hamas killed civilians on purpose. So if the vast majority of Palestinians believed the attack did not involve atrocities, the fact that 75% of them supported it can’t be taken as strong evidence that their hatred of Israel was already maxed out.
Likewise, there are many reasons Muslims care more about Israel/Palestine than about Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs aside from the alleged hopelessness of the latter situation:
Arabs are the same ethnicity and speak the same language as Palestinians.
Arabs have lost several wars to Israel and consider this a “humiliation”.
Israel is located at the heart of “Dar al-Islam”, the region of the world Muslims have traditionally ruled.
Israel maintains control over the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, generally considered the third holiest site in Islam.2
China prevents incriminating videos coming out of Xinjang, whereas we regularly see footage of Palestinian victims.
And there are good reasons Arab states re-embraced Bashar al-Assad other than the alleged hopelessness of the rebels’ cause. For example, they were concerned about growing Iranian and Turkish influence in the region, as well as the possibility of another refugee crisis.
Which brings me to my main bone of contention with Hanania. Even if he’s right that Palestinians already hated Israel to the maximum possible extent when Israel began “waging total war” (his words), Israel may still be creating many more militants through its actions.
The reason is obvious: just because someone really hates a country, doesn’t mean he will join a militant group and take up arms against that country. After all, he may have a lot to lose: he may have a wife, children, friends or neighbours who rely on him. On the other hand, if everyone who relied on him is dead, the costs of joining a militant group are vastly lower. What’s more, the matter is now “personal”. The enemy has not only humiliated his people but has killed the specific individuals he cared about most.
There’s a famous video of Soviet General Alexander Lebed, who served in Afghanistan and several other military campaigns, talking about this:
The greatest soldiers are made from people who hadn’t even thought about war going out one morning and, then, returning in the evening, found craters instead of their houses, in which the wives, children and parents had evaporated. And this is no longer a man, but a wolf, who will tear as long as he lives. And he will live long because he does not value his own life – he does not need it. He does not need money. He does not need medals. He does not need anything at all. He has only one thing: revenge. This is precisely why he will live long.
Another military leader who identified vengeance as a key motive for soldiers was US General Stanley McChrystal, leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan. In 2009, he gave a speech where he introduced the concept of “counterinsurgency mathematics”.
Intelligence will normally tell us how many insurgents are operating in an area. Let us say that there are 10 in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, “This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.” There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter – you killed them.
Note that before October 7, relatively few Gazans were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups. The usual high-ball estimate is about 50,000, which represents 2.4% of the pre-war population.3 According to the Gaza Media Office, there are now over 1,300 families with only one member left and over 3,400 families with only two members left.4 According to the UN, there could be up to 17,000 orphans. This would seem to provide fertile recruiting ground for militant groups. And the same will increasingly apply to Lebanon as the death toll rises there. Of course, some people argue that Hamas is to blame for all the deaths in Gaza because they picked a fight with a much more powerful adversary, but I’m betting most Palestinians don’t see it that way.
In any case, we don’t have to rely on intuition, or on speeches by deceased or retired generals, to know that killing a large number of people is likely to beget more militants. Academic research indicates that in many conflict zones, a desire for “blood revenge” is the primary reason individuals join militant groups. Indeed, the promise of exacting “blood revenge” often attracts the most committed individuals, making it a highly effective recruiting tool for such groups. This is particularly true in Arab countries like Palestine and Lebanon, where a long-standing “culture of honour” prescribes that individuals must avenge the deaths of their family members.5
Now, although Israel’s actions are almost certainly increasing the total number of people willing to take up arms against it, that doesn’t necessarily mean the country is jeopardising its long-term security. Why not? As Hanania correctly noted, Israel could be degrading the infrastructure and fighting ability of Hamas and Hezbollah to such an extent that this outweighs any increase in prospective militants (at least in the medium term). For example, if Israel manages to completely destroy the tunnel networks beneath Gaza and southern Lebanon, Hamas and Hezbollah won’t be able to seriously threaten Israel for some time.
Hanania could therefore be right that Israel’s actions will lead to a net gain in Israeli security, even if, as I have argued, he’s wrong about their effect on prospective militants. It remains to be seen whether Israel can sufficiently degrade the infrastructure and fighting ability of Hamas and Hezbollah before the costs (in the form of casualties and economic damage) become too onerous.
Hanania maintains that Palestinians already hated Israel to the maximum (or close to the maximum) possible extent before October 7, so any increase in hatred as result of Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion is likely to be small. As a result, Israel can best promote its long-term security by prioritising the destruction of Hamas. I have argued that the premise of this argument is questionable, but even if it’s true, Israel may still be creating many more militants through its actions.
Noah Carl is Editor at Aporia.
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The article is titled 'Israel Must Crush Palestinian Hopes’.
The October 7 attack was called the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’.
It is of course a higher percentage of the pre-war male population of fighting age.
I realise that the Gaza Media Office is subject to criticism and not necessarily reliable.
One study found that domestic terror attacks are substantially more lethal in the southern US states, which the authors interpret in line with the “culture of honour” thesis. Another study found that a desire for “blood revenge” has motivated many Chechens to fight on Ukraine’s side in the ongoing war.
Many decdes ago at university, I did a module on the 'social science' of revolutions. Fifty+ years later, I remember almost nothing of it except this: the contention that - when revolutionaries perceive their enemy as weak and accommodating - they (counterintuitively) actually hate it more than when they perceive it as strong and intransigent. Human psychology is a funny business.
Quoting other generals about how Muslim haters of Israel are created by Israel's military response to the October 7 attack and to Hizbollah's year-long bombardment of Israeli cities is of no relevance to the situation where Muslim Palestinians live in Gaza or even in Judea and Samaria. Hanania is quite correct that Muslim hatred of Israel there is maxed out. Indeed, it is part of Musllm culture and Muslim practice against the "Zionist entity" for over a hundred years now. Muslim doctrine, reinforced by weekly sermons from Mosques, hateful educational material in schools, glorification of martyrs in sports venues, etc, etc, has created a climate of hatred of Israel among those who consider themselves Palestinians that have now reached down into their sexual pores, as witnessed by the depraved sexual cruelty perpetrated by the participants in the Gaza October 7 invasion of Israel. Your essay only whitewashed this situation by suggesting that Israel's retaliation might have created even more Israel-haters among the Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. The latter may not all be Hamas or PLO members, but they all subscribe to the doctrines preached by these groups and continue to elect them when given a chance to vote. Indeed, one even hears them spout the party line when interviewed for television about how they feel: "again a Naqba," they say, blithely ignorant of the fact that the first so-called naqba was self-induced as the historical record shows. But this deeply ingrained attitude has been adopted by the intellectual classes of the western world, spearheading the explosion of antisemitic sentiment and acts on western university campuses and the streets of western capitals, including in my Canadian province where teacher unions have called for the inclusion of naqba education in the high school curriculum. This would make western intellectuals haters of Israel without even having their loved ones or houses destroyed by the war which Hamas unleashed. Little wonder western society is collapsing from within.