One of the more interesting arguments I’ve been seeing a lot on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is: “Hamas undoubtedly predicted Israel’s massive retaliation, that makes them all the more guilty for sacrificing Palestinian lives”.

What people don’t realize is that the fact this reaction – the massive collective punishment – was indeed immensely predictable says just as much about Israel than it does about Hamas.

It says a lot about Israel for 3 reasons. 1) It says a lot about Israel’s image that it was expected to react with massive collective punishment, violating international law. 2) It also says a lot about Israel’s inability to think strategically that it would react in exactly the way its adversary predicted it to. Revenge is not a strategy, in fact it is the opposite of strategic. And, lastly 3) it says a lot that Israel doesn’t seem to have learned a thing from the US’s immense mistakes in its post 9-11 response.

Yes, of course, it also says a lot about Hamas, because they knew their actions would undoubtedly cause untold suffering on their own people (on top of the suffering they caused with the attacks). No question there.

This looks to be, unfortunately, a competition for whom can gain the most sympathy from the outside world for their suffering. And from where I am standing, Israel is losing big time by playing into the hand of its adversary. Even Europe – Europe! – is on the verge today of breaking ranks with a full-on revolt at the highest levels of the bureaucracy against von der Leyen for her unqualified support for Israel. This is on top of renewed support for the Palestinian cause by the Muslim world, and generally the entire global South (with the notable exception of India, who pretty much runs on Islamophobia today under Modi).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and hypothesize that this was Hamas, as an organization, committing suicide for the Palestinian cause. Hamas undoubtedly won’t survive this, it’s pretty clear. And sadly thousands of innocent lives will be lost. But they’ve focused the entire global conversation on their topic and Israel’s reaction is making Palestinians win the sympathy war.

What should Israel have done instead? Well, they should have recognized which war Hamas was baiting them into. Not a war against them per se, but a war for hearts and minds. They missed the forest for the trees. Which is stunning because they started with the upper hand, by far. They could have used the initial attacks to rally immense support, declare a period of mourning, unify much of the world around the just cause of not killing innocent civilians. Instead, they started doing so in turn, on an even grander scale: so far they’ve killed 614 children and 370 women. It’s an unfathomable and immensely consequential mistake.

This war also reveals something interesting, and I’ll end with this. It reveals how much power and influence the wider West has lost in driving the global conversation. Remember post 9-11, when the US had much the same overaction as Israel today by invading Afghanistan? At the time we didn’t hear any significant opposition. It was there for sure but it was inaudible. Today by contrast it is so overwhelming that even Europe – Europe! – feels compelled to dissent. Which of course they’d never do out of pure morality, they do so because they have their back against the wall, in their words they “don’t want to lose the global South”, which wasn’t even remotely a factor back in 2001.

Heck we just saw that the US asked China – China! – to “use its influence to push for calm in the Middle-East”: this would have been absolutely unthinkable 22 years ago, what better proof that they themselves lost their influence? Influence ironically lost for the very reason that they overreacted 22 years ago: how ironical that they’d ask for China’s help today in supporting yet another overaction, they really can’t help themselves …

Vir: Arnaud Bertrand