In an EconoLog post 10 months ago, I commented on a Wall Street Journal report that Yahya Sinwar understood “the Israeli psyche” after spending nearly two decades in jail in that country. He was the Hamas leader thought to have planned the operation that massacred 1200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages, most of them civilians, on October 7, 2023. I suggested that, if one plans to organize something like that, one should understand methodological individualism rather than focus on some imaginary collective psyche (“Methodological Individualism and the Hamas Ruler,” December 14, 2023). I wrote:
If Hamas ruler Yahya Sinwar had learned methodological individualism, things would be different. He might have been tempted by a broader individualist philosophy and might have treated “his” people in Gaza better, including by not using them as human shields and not spending public money on tunnels. But even if he had only known methodological individualism, his life might not be on the line right now.
Methodological individualism is essential to understanding social groups (the Israeli society, for example) and organizations (the Israeli government). There was a high probability that the political incentives on the other side (and in Iran) would result in a forceful military response, which would be detrimental to the poor Gazeans and to himself. Incentives always boil down to individual incentives. It wasn’t sure that the response would respect proper moral restraints vis-à-vis civilians, but that was very likely not part of the terrorist’s concerns; it should be part of an individualist’s concerns, though.
Sinwar, who later became Hamas’s chief ruler, was killed by the IDF on Wednesday.
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A surreal and sarcastic vision of Yahya Sinwar lying in state
