The culture of death

 

Giovanni De Sio Cesari

www.giovannidesio.it

 

The statements of Sinwar, the military leader of HAMAS , which claims that the Israeli army is exactly where HAMAS   wanted it to be, have had little to no resonance in the West. But how is it possible: supporters and opponents of Israel worldwide are moved by the terrible condition in which the inhabitants of Gaza find themselves, amidst extreme ruin, incessant bombardments, hunger, and terror everywhere, and yet those who govern and lead them say that all this is fine?

Sinwar actually explains this himself shortly afterward, saying that this is the situation that HAMAS   desired because in this way Israel can lose Western support, thus beginning the liberation of Palestine "from the Jordan to the sea," meaning the destruction of the state of Israel. It's not a delusion as it might appear but rather a widespread mindset today throughout the Middle East. As bin Laden proclaimed to the West, "We will win because our youth love death, whereas your youth love life": meaning they would win because true believers do not fear death, while Western unbelievers do.

In other words, it's the idea that those who do not fear death, who do not count their fallen as long as they achieve victory, are the ones who triumph. In the Middle East, such a death-oriented ideology, an exaltation of death as a necessary and glorious means to achieve victory, identified then with goodness and justice, is deeply connected to a strongly felt religious creed. According to it, those who die as shahids, martyrs, will receive an eternal reward according to the will of the Almighty and merciful God, who is the one who decides victory and defeat, not tied to the might of weapons but to His omnipotent will.

I recall that some years ago, a letter from a girl in Gaza was published, stating her desire for marriage and motherhood, a common aspiration for all girls worldwide. But then she said that this way she could generate shahids who would sacrifice themselves in the name of Allah in the struggle against the Jews for the liberation of Palestine. How can one desire to be a mother only to see one's own children die? Yet, the environment, the school, and everything else led an innocent girl to dream of such enormity: the ultimate aspiration for a woman is to be the mother of martyrs.

To us modern Westerners, such a mindset, such glorification of death, appears incomprehensible and indeed is not perceived, but in reality, it has been present among us too, extensively. And we're not just referring to ancient times, the Middle Ages, the Crusades, the religious wars, but it arguably peaked last century with fascism and Nazism. In these ideologies, symbols of death were everywhere, a disdain, almost a desire for death, considered the primary means for the exaltation of the homeland and especially of oneself.

For example, we remember the cry of the Spanish Falangists, "Down with intelligence, long live death," in the sense that one shouldn't calculate forces but be ready to die for victory.

If we look at the Second World War, we see that in reality, the war for the Axis was irretrievably lost by '43 when Italy, albeit confusedly, surrendered on September 8th. However, the Germans, fanatized by Nazism, fought on all fronts for two more years, causing most of the casualties, with the idea that if they were ready to die, they would still win.

But then we ask ourselves: is it really true that those willing to disregard losses eventually win? In the Second World War, the battles of Cassino, Normandy, the Ardennes, and the endless, bloodiest battles on the Eastern Front were still German defeats and could not be otherwise. So why resist for 8 months at Cassino if the outcome of the battle was already decided by the overwhelming superiority of the Allies? Because it was better to die gloriously than to be defeated?

Even more tragic was the war in the Pacific, where the Japanese preferred suicide to surrender, where in Okinawa, mothers were seen throwing themselves into the sea with their children. It took the atomic bomb to finally convince them of the futility of the fight, and even after Hiroshima, there were those who attempted a military coup to prevent surrender, preferring annihilation to it.

It's true that in the Middle East, at a certain point, Westerners preferred to withdraw rather than suffer further, albeit minimal, losses compared to those of the opponents, but still losses: a typical case is Afghanistan.

But in these cases, they were wars considered unnecessary, almost useless, and no more losses were tolerated. However, where the need was truly felt, American and European armies have always won with extreme ease. And if we think about Israel, no one can seriously think that Palestinians can destroy Israel because, in any case, Israel is supported and guaranteed by the power of the West as well as by the possession of nuclear weapons.

The idea of a Sinwar sacrificing his own people, with so many deaths, devastations, and destruction, to then bring about the liberation of Palestine with the disappearance of the Zionist entity from the Jordan to the sea is clearly an illusion, beyond any reality. The possible solution to pursue would only be the division into two states.

However, this mindset fuels a futile war that has now lasted for three generations because Israelis still cannot definitively win. Netanyahu's current idea of ​​destroying HAMAS   is just an illusion: resistance will continue as before and more than before despite the disasters suffered by the population. Above all, a policy of death and destruction pursued at this moment by Israel cannot be pushed to the extreme consequences because it clashes with the humanitarian motivations of the West that support Israel.

Unfortunately, everything will end, in our opinion, in the useless slaughter, and things will remain as they were before, or rather worse than before. The only hope is that the currently minority Arab part that rejects the glorification of death as the only means for victory and realistically accepts the two-state solution may ultimately prevail. The Abraham Accords seemed to be a start on this long and difficult path but were lost with HAMAS  's action on October 7th.

We hope it will reopen.