Martyrdom and misery

Hamas has established in Gaza a culture of death and martyrdom offering welfare in Heaven to the „martyrs“ and money to their families as consolation price to cover the brutal social crisis that extends all around Gaza. In 10 years of dictatorship it has invested millions of dollars of international donations in terror tunnels and bunkers instead of supplying hospitals, sewage systems and other vital services. And now comes the „March of return“ as a way to push desperate people armed with bombs and wire cutters against the border fence because they know that the Israeli troops will shoot at them. In that way Hamas uses the Israeli army to „produce“ new „martyrs“, diverting the social anger against a foreign enemy. The production of dead militants is a central part of the politic economy of Hamas and its fundamentalist companions. They build their political legitimacy among the ultrareligious population on a mountain of dead bodies, because that helps them to hide their responsibility for the calamitous situation that they have provoked after 10 years of dictatorship, corruption and terror in Gaza. On May 15, 2018, The Guardian reported:

“At 14 years old, Wesal Sheikh Khalil had already made plans for her funeral. If Israeli troops were to shoot her during protests on the Gaza border, the Palestinian teenager had told her mother, she should be buried at the spot where she died or in the plot next to her grandfather’s grave.

“She thought death was better than this life,” said Reem Abu Irmana a day after she lost her youngest daughter. “Every time she went to the demonstrations she prayed to God that she would be martyred.”
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Wesal, who turned 14 in December, had been inspired by the marches and started to think intensely about “martyrdom”, her mother said.
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Wesal’s 11-year-old brother Mohammed was with her when she was killed. He said she had been given wire cutters by other protesters and was shot in the head near the fence.“