Let the theologians answer, if they can, why evil must work, well, its evil before the evildoers, or at least some of them, realize their folly.
With utter disdain for humanity, Hamas on Oct. 7 set out to slaughter, rape, mutilate and kidnap. Certainty reigned. It was absolutely the right thing to do, and it would work. It would end Israel. But 14 months later, a realization dawned, definitely not a moral one, but a realization nonetheless. It dawned on at last one unnamed “senior Hamas official based in Turkey speaking to Saudi Arabian media”:
“Hamas is suffering from a genuine leadership crisis. The Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’ nomenclature for its acts on Oct. 7, 2023] backfired on us, submerging us in a sea of blood and crises. . . . Gaza has been completely destroyed.”
No one wants to be a Nazi — after the Nazis lose. No one in Hamas wants to counsel caution — before they lose. Where does the myopic, moral and tactical depravity leave the victims?
Nice to know that today in Germany no one wants — for free — to take possession of the plush estate of the chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels — he who dehumanized the Jews in word and image — but where does that leave the innocent man, woman and child gassed in Auschwitz?
The “Al-Aqsa Flood” — so proudly proclaimed everywhere from Gaza to a University of Denver classroom —has failed miserably, but of what comfort is this to the father and the mother of a fallen Israeli soldier, whose life came to an end at age 22? For that matter, of what comfort is the Hamas failure to Arab citizens of Gaza who have watched their own children and homes bombed and their livelihoods and hope eviscerated for one reason, and one reason only: Hamas’ launch of the “Al-Aqsa Flood?”
What is the answer for the victims — the truncated lives, the broken families, the eternal pain — when the perpetrators finally come to the realization that a sea of blood and crises was not such a great idea?
Not that we believe for a moment that a genuine, internal, profound, moral repentance has now stirred the Hamas murderers. At best, Israel has reestablished its deterrence by making only too painfully clear — in Hamas lives taken, in the wrenching but inevitable collateral damage that “human shields” precipitate, in the massive destruction of property — that an “Al Aqsa Flood” will not soon be contemplated again, if ever. But where does this leave the innocent victims? What does this do for their kith and kin?
Sinwar did not learn from bin Laden’s end who did not learn from Saddam Hussein’s end who did not learn from Pol Pot’s end who did not learn from Hitler’s end . . . every mass murderer thinks that he, with his evil, is the one who can change the world forever. He is never right. But o so many innocent human beings must suffer before his vision and power are buried.
Who can explain this?
The defeat of Hamas, when it is final; the decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership, which we hope is final; the end of Assad’s rule, which is final, as we hope will be the nuclear program in Iran and the irrational hatred of Israel’s other enemies — are absolutely necessary. But they provide no relief for the suffering they wreak and no answer to the delusions of evil grandeur. Victory is one thing. Relief — and answers — are something else entirely.
© IJN 2025
