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Nearly two weeks after a troubled US Air Force employee self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy here, experts on armed conflict published an article in the journal Jane's that contrasts the hype and psychological warfare potential of faraway, impressionable, mentally ill people dousing themselves in gasoline and striking a match, with the reality on and under the ground in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues to systematically dismantle Hamas's fighting capacity.
"Certain analysts probably let their biases get in the way of their initial assessments," allowed one expert quoted in the article. "I daresay previous confrontations between Gaza's armed groups and the IDF established certain expectations for both how fighting is conducted in dense urban spaces and what pressure the international outcry against harm to civilians comes to bear against Israel amid the inevitable civilian casualty reports. People lighting themselves on fire to protest 'genocide' might not have been an important feature of previous rounds of fighting, but those episodes created framework for understanding the dynamic in way that reinforced the preconceived notions about international outcry against Israel and the impact of that outrage on the intensity and duration of the fighting."
The article explores the assumption behind numerous faulty analyses of, and predictions regarding, the conflict since October 7, that emotionally unwell people consuming too much anti-Israel propaganda thousands of miles from the conflict zone and deciding to demonstrate their displeasure by publicly killing themselves in one of the most drawn-out, painful ways possible would move the so-called international community to prevent further "genocide of Palestinians."
It attributes some of the erroneous thinking to the notorious Palestinian use of suicide attackers. "Perhaps some observers confused the offensive use of suicide with the kind intended as virtue-signaling," the authors suggested. "One way in which the mistaken approach might prove correct, however, involves a hypothetical expansion of the phenomenon: if enough supporters of 'free Palestine' follow the example of their self-immolating comrades in the movement, that would bring the end of the conflict closer, as it would remove a sizeable portion of those whose agitation prevents Western and American elected officials from facilitating a decisive Israeli victory."
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