The Sophie’s Choice Strategy of Hamas
William Styron couldn’t have lucked out on a greater actress than Meryl Streep to inhabit the role of Sophie Zawistowska in the film of his novel Sophie’s Choice. She plays a Polish immigrant who comes to America after World War Two and falls for Stingo, an aspiring writer but hides a terrible secret. Years earlier she was sent to Auschwitz where the guards gave her a choice: she could keep one of her two children, the other would be murdered. If she chose neither, both would be killed. Streep magnificently captures the expression of shock, horror and guilt at the moment she chooses her son over the daughter.
As with the Nazis, our imagination has consistently failed to fathom the depths of Hamas’s depravity. Murder was never the only goal of what Hamas had in store for Israel on October 7. The torture and sexual assaults which served no other purpose than humiliation was already acknowledged years earlier as one of the features of Nazi sadism by Primo Levi in “Useless Violence,” one of the chapters in his Holocaust memoir The Drowned and the Saved.
Torment is the next chapter in Hamas’s war against Israel. Along with their benefactors in Qatar, the terror organization has used the hostage negotiations to divide Israel, manipulating the country into believing that the fate of the kidnapped is something they should have full agency over and of which they must shoulder guilt. I once heard Rabbi Riskin comment that we spend so much time blaming everyone else for the Holocaust that the Nazis seem to get away with it. It seems odd that after the despicable murders of the hostages at the weekend, blame was immediately piled on to Netanyahu for not doing enough to secure their release. He of course should be held accountable for his mistakes but surely we should have the moral clarity to know that there are degrees of guilt with the perpetrators at the top?
It is the fatal flaw of the liberal Jewish and Western mindset that when it comes to Israel, it’s preferable to admonish the single democratic Jewish state in the Middle East based on ease of influence and higher expectation than the country’s enemies. We want to believe that Israel has within its gift the ability to negotiate both the release of the kidnapped and neutralize the threat of Hamas. Those who argue Israel’s moral obligation never to leave hostages behind ignore the current trap – this is not Entebbe. Israel freed Gilad Shalit but in doing so exchanged him for Sinwar and the other architects of October 7th. In retrospect what would have been the best decision? There is no outcome free from consequence. Many Israelis are rightly protesting against the government to do more to free the hostages because, while I believe their efforts are futile, who wouldn’t want to show solidarity with the hostage families given we would expect the same if we were in their shoes? But even if you loath Netanyahu and believe he’s not acting in the country’s best interest, it’s hard to overlook his concern that acceding to Hamas’s demands on access to the Philadelphi crossing would enable them to quickly rearm and even drag hostages back to Egypt or Iran. This is the cruel predicament Hamas has placed Israel in. You decide, Sophie’s choice.
Until Hamas is defeated, no matter how difficult that is to achieve, Israel will find itself in this spiral of impossible decisions, aided and abetted by a weak and morally indifferent American government that has treated Hamas like an equal negotiating partner instead of the terror organization they are. None of America’s overwhelming military, economic and political power has been brought to bear to strong arm Hamas via Qatar to accept a deal and there’s been no penalty for their intransigence.
The terror organization’s game plan will be to continue to divide Israel and turn the country against itself instead of their common foe. Only when Hamas is destroyed will Israel be free from the torment of its Sophie’s choice.
