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Sinwar's March of Folly
(Atlantic) Jeffrey Goldberg - Yahya Sinwar, until recently the leader of Hamas in Gaza, overestimated his own capabilities and those of the Iranian-led "Axis of Resistance." Like the leaders of Iran, he spoke violently and with great confidence. He allowed his reasoning capabilities to be overwhelmed by conspiracism and supremacist Muslim Brotherhood theology. He also underestimated the desire of Israelis to live in their ancestral homeland, basing his conclusion on an incorrect understanding of how Israel sees itself. Hamas and other Palestinian groups believe that Israelis see themselves as foreign implants, and therefore can easily be brought to defeat. Sinwar's misplaced confidence in theories of settler colonialism and Jewish perfidy undermined his strategic effectiveness. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, explained the root of this misapprehension. "The problem with Sinwar is that he believed his own propaganda. He believed that we ourselves believe that we don't belong here. Our enemies in the Arab and Muslim worlds don't understand that their perception of Israel and of Jews is based on a lie." Sinwar, Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saw Israel as they wished it was, not as it actually is.