In an EconoLog put up 10 months in the past, I commented on a Wall Avenue Journal report that Yahya Sinwar understood “the Israeli psyche” after spending almost 20 years in jail in that nation. He was the Hamas chief thought to have deliberate the operation that massacred 1200 Israelis and took greater than 200 hostages, most of them civilians, on October 7, 2023. I recommended that, if one plans to prepare one thing like that, one ought to perceive methodological individualism somewhat than concentrate on some imaginary collective psyche (“Methodological Individualism and the Hamas Ruler,” December 14, 2023). I wrote:
If Hamas ruler Yahya Sinwar had realized methodological individualism, issues can be totally different. He might need been tempted by a broader individualist philosophy and might need handled “his” individuals in Gaza higher, together with by not utilizing them as human shields and never spending public cash on tunnels. However even when he had solely identified methodological individualism, his life may not be on the road proper now.
Methodological individualism is crucial to understanding social teams (the Israeli society, for instance) and organizations (the Israeli authorities). There was a excessive likelihood that the political incentives on the opposite aspect (and in Iran) would lead to a forceful army response, which might be detrimental to the poor Gazeans and to himself. Incentives all the time boil all the way down to particular person incentives. It wasn’t certain that the response would respect correct ethical restraints vis-à-vis civilians, however that was very possible not a part of the terrorist’s considerations; it ought to be a part of an individualist’s considerations, although.
Sinwar, who later grew to become Hamas’s chief ruler, was killed by the IDF on Wednesday.
*******************************
A surreal and sarcastic imaginative and prescient of Yahya Sinwar mendacity in state
