This is the best articulation of the Hamas tragedy I’ve read in a long time. It’s a classic example of the sunk costs fallacy. If Israel is not actually removable, then the safety and happiness of generations of Palestinians were sacrificed to a vast and foolish miscalculation by ruthless and incompetent ideologues. Since that’s too painful to contemplate, every time they fail to destroy the Jews, they double down on the claim that it’s nevertheless possible. And thus are another generation’s safety and prosperity sacrificed yet again on the crumbling old altar of Israel’s destruction. If they knew the first thing about us, if they saw us as real people with a real story rather than ideological constructs and cartoon villains shrunk to the needs of a racist ideology, they could pivot, repair and rebuild. But that would require a whole new Palestinian elite, a new willingness to learn about us, and a new capacity to think unromantically about their strategic options. People often say Palestinians need a nonviolent unifier and mobilizer like Mandela or King. They actually need a wise and unsentimental strategist, a Herzl.
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