The killing of Sinwar, his predictable martyrdom and the consequences

The killing of Sinwar, the sadistic mass murderer who rose to become leader of Hamas, has inevitably evoked fears of his elevation to martyrdom by Islamic fundamentalists. No doubt the sheer brutality, cowardice and wanton cruelty of the man will be eclipsed by apologists for his ideology and he will be resurrected as a hero of his people who sacrificed his life for his cause.

The OED gives two definitions of the word ‘martyr’: “a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs”, and “a person who displays or exaggerates their discomfort in order to obtain sympathy or admiration”. Neither definition, quite rightly, references the morality of the beliefs held by the so-called martyr. What is clear, however, is that martyrdom only emerges ‘in extremis’, when conflict has become a matter of life or death and when a mentality of ‘kill or be killed’ has seized the minds of the adversaries.

I know nothing about Sinwar’s personal life or how he came into his obsessive hatred of Jews, something which he shared with millions of his co-religionists. I can only surmise that, like that other arch Jew-hater, Adolf Hitler, he must have been brutalized from his youth, drilled into a hatred endemic in his culture and grown into a maniacal belief that it was the Jews, now become ‘the Zionist enemy’, who were responsible for his suffering and that of his people. It would be his life’s task to murder and torture as many Jews as possible, clad in the mantle of a savior.

The combination of cunning and ruthlessness which brought Sinwar into a position of leadership also made him into a hero. The image he presented of a tormented soul (the years of imprisonment, the haunted look, the sunken eyes, the joyless expression) fitted him admirably for the role of martyr and he is already being proclaimed as such by those who believe that they have lost a savior.

Israel’s relief at the killing of Sinwar is understandable but I find myself unable to share the note of jubilation now being sounded in every corner of the land as if victory is already in sight. Israelis who support the government would do well to reflect on the genesis of Sinwar’s journey from fighter to leader to hero, savior and martyr and take a long hard look at their own leaders.

The policies of Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet colleagues, not to mention the unbridled violence of the settlers directed at Palestinian communities in the West Bank, are taking the country further away from the law which once underpinned the Jewish nation and bringing it closer to the barbarism of its enemies. Cruelty only begets cruelty and creates fertile soil for a fresh crop of heroes, who in turn will welcome martyrdom for their cause in a war without an end in sight.