The Martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar and the Concept of the 'Freier' in 'Israeli' Culture

The Martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was martyred yesterday. Contrary to the propaganda put forth by the 'Israeli' government, he was not cowering in a tunnel, nor was he disguised as a woman, or living in Qatar with billions of dollars. He was instead leading troops into battle, armed with nothing but a rifle and some hand grenades. According to 'Israeli' media (via the Middle East Spectator):

...an IDF force spotted 5 Hamas fighters in Rafah while carrying out their 'duties.' Then, their tanks were ordered to open fire on these fighters.
All the fighters died, except one, who was Yahya Sinwar. So, the IDF fired a shoulder-launched explosive missile at the building with Sinwar, which also did not kill him.
After this, the IDF launched an FPV drone in Sinwar's direction, who stood up, gathered some stones, and tried to hit the drone.
Then, eventually, after more than 15 minutes, it was an IDF sniper who shot Sinwar in the head while he was out of cover, engaging the drone. This explains the bullet wound seen in the images.
He fought until the very end.

Other accounts claim that, missing a hand, he fought off several IOF soldiers who were searching for him, by throwing his remaining grenades down the stairs–hence them sending a drone in to search for him. Since this is being written so close to his martyrdom, and the fog of war in Gaza is so thick, it's hard to know exactly what the truth is, but the drone footage certainly does not lie:

The 'Israeli' government also willingly claimed that he died with nothing but his rifle, identification, Tasbih prayer beads, a book of supplications, nail clippers, a flashlight, some 'Israeli' shekels (worth perhaps $400USD), a packet of tissues, and a pack of mint Mentos:

The fact that 'Israel' was not only willing to release photos of Sinwar's corpse, wearing simple military fatigues and a keffiyeh–clearly just another soldier among soldiers–but also released drone footage that shows a mortally wounded Sinwar, missing a hand, throwing a stick in pure defiance of the 'Israeli' occupation, was puzzling to many. While it was at first attributed to a breach of confidentiality, or hastiness on the part of the soldiers who killed him, it seems that every level of the 'Israeli' armed forces were somehow unaware that showing Sinwar's last moments like this would cement him as one of the most heroic martyrs in the history of the Palestinian people, perhaps even the world. Why on earth would they do such a thing? How could they not see what effect this would have in further galvanizing the Palestinian people against them, giving them an incredibly powerful symbol to rally around?

The Concept of the Freier in 'Israeli' Society

After this footage was released, a TikTok video was posted to X (The Everything Site, formerly Twitter) briefly explaining the 'Israeli' concept of the frayer or freier:

According to Luis Roniger and Michael Feige in the paper From Pioneer to Freier: The Changing Models of Generalized Exchange in Israel:

The word freier is primarily used in contemporary daily discourse to denote losers swindled by others. At a first glance it is not unlike its American counterpart, the sucker. A more careful consideration brings up some intriguing issues, as the term denotes not merely a sucker who loses in market transactions–and becomes a 'mark' in Goffman's terms (36)–but mainly the one who mistakenly and even grotesquely contributes to collective efforts and the public good. (293)

The general thrust of Roniger and Feige's work is that, early on in 'Israel's' history, the prominent paradigm in 'Israeli' society was the 'halutz' or plurally 'halutzim,' the early settlers who emigrated to Palestine and took on the so-called important work of clearing the land (be it of flora or fauna or people), planting trees, and in general doing hard labor simply because the future existence of their 'new' country depended on them doing so. However, following the 1973 war, and the "political turnover of 1977 that ended over forty years of Labor political hegemony in Israel (298)," people at first became much less willing to sacrifice their time or labor for the government, and society became much more cynical, less willing to do anything for anyone:

During the heyday of the halutz model, there was a sense of dedication to a national project. Confidence and a sense of meaning made it possible for the elite to demand sacrifices from the population. The crystallization of the freier syndrome indicates a loss of unitary voice, a more pluralistic conception of the collective project and reflexivity towards the ultimate values of society. (299)

Thus, those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the people around them became seen as freier, as suckers. Why would you bother to help your fellow citizen when you get nothing out of it? Roniger and Feige point to the way that immigrants in the 1950s were treated–they were willingly de-socialized and re-socialized as the "new Israeli woman/man" (299) by the population at large, whereas, by the 1990s, immigrants to 'Israel,' such as those from the recently-fallen Soviet Union, were largely left to their own devices, with the mere hope that they would become this "new Israeli woman/man" through "housing and employment policies and budgeting," (299) but not through direct influence from the state or their fellow 'Israeli' citizens. Essentially, the halutzim became freier, and the national view of what it meant to be 'Israeli' changed so fundamentally that it became unrecognizable.

It is interesting to note how deep this concept runs, and how unashamed the 'Israeli' people are of it, as a whole. A Jerusalem Post article opens with:

“Be a mensch” is a phrase one will likely hear frequently growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in the United States. Striving for compassion, honesty, tikkun olam (“fixing the world”) and general goodness is such a quintessential feature of Judaism in America that wanting to be a mensch, which means “a good person” in Yiddish and connotes a person of compassion, morality and integrity, seems a natural outgrowth of this.

This may constitute a cause for dismay for American Jews who come to Israel and find that Israeli Jews live by a completely different dictum: “don’t be a freier,” or a sucker in Yiddish. The main feature of a freier is proneness to exploitation, and it is something of which Israelis are perpetually afraid. In Israel, you should not be nice, compassionate, generous or even scrupulous since these traits will leave you open to exploitation.

This attitude runs as deep as 'Israeli' driving culture, which makes the roads of 'Israel' sound absolutely terrifying, if I may editorialize a tiny bit here. You must not be a sucker and let anyone merge, that makes you a freier because you'll get to your destination a few seconds later, and that person won't. How a society built around this concept can function is frankly beyond me. The Jerusalem Post article quoted above mentions two other national paradigms, "soldiership" and "sabrahood," the former being an attitude that everyone must be "hard" and "aggressive," while the later implies that everyone must strive to be like a native-born 'Israeli,' however these don't seem to bring much to the table. Again, to editorialize: it just seems miserable.

The Impact of the Freier on the Current Wars in Gaza and Lebanon

Now that we have a solid conception of what it means to be a freier, and why 'Israelis' are so avoidant of being the one left holding the bag, how does this reflect on the wars that 'Israel' is engaged in? For a start, when we compare the behavior of 'Israeli' troops to that of Hezbollah or the Al-Qassam Brigades, we see a very stark difference in the conduct of the troops. The videos from Hezbollah and the Al-Qassam Brigades show soldiers engaged in hard work, setting up ambushes, and in many cases carrying out acts of incredible bravery, running right up to 'Israeli' tanks and placing explosive devices directly on them:

Compare and contrast this with the footage of the 'Israeli' soldiers, who have spent the war:

• defiling Palestinian's homes
• wearing Palestinian's clothes/underwear
• demolishing entire blocks of housing at a time
• shooting unarmed civilians, including children
• sneaking into Gaza inside of aid trucks, and carrying out "surprise raids," murdering Gazan civilians
• shelling refugee camps
• and many other war crimes

...but certainly not engaging in any heroics on the level of the Al-Qassam brigades. Al Jazeera, the Qatari news outlet, put together a documentary that exposed thousands of war crimes committed by 'Israeli' soldiers over the last year, which shows the priorities they have:

Ultimately, it seems that the concept of freier applies first and foremost to the ground troops of the 'Israeli' Occupation Force. Rather than go into the tunnels and/or actually face Al-Qassam in firefights, it is much safer to send in Merkava tanks (without escort of course – who would be the freier that would do that job?), set up a perimeter, and begin blowing up houses with explosive charges while (editorializing once again) dancing to the world's worst EDM.

Tying This All Back Around to Yahya Sinwar's Martyrdom

So, now that we have a good idea of where 'Israel' stands on the idea of giving up anything for one's country, land, or countrymen, we can very easily see why the 'Israeli' military thought nothing of releasing the details and footage of Sinwar's martyrdom. To your average 'Israeli,' he is the ultimate freier. He could have used his position as the leader of Hamas to avoid his fate, he could have done the things that 'Israel' claimed he was doing– dressing as a woman, using hostages as human shields, or sneaking out of the country (likely all things that the 'Israeli' leadership would do in his place, if they want to avoid being a freier), but instead he was killed entirely on accident because he has been personally leading troops on the front lines of combat for the last year, and just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Only a nation that sees this as the behavior of a total rube would release this footage, as we can see from the international reaction to his death. 'Israel' has made sure that Yahya Sinwar will be seen as a heroic martyr of the highest order for decades to come, perhaps centuries.

Sources:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231928564_From_Pioneer_to_Freier_The_Changing_Models_of_Generalized_Exchange_in_Israel
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israeli-identity-and-the-anti-freier-504928
https://x.com/dancohen3000/status/1847012848423104833
https://x.com/lolGhostAgain/status/1716646323238433185
https://x.com/danceswitbears/status/1847144313722945804
https://x.com/AlKharidie/status/1847051842162696296
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMZuy9x4Zc
I'm almost certainly missing some, will update as I find them. I got lazy here, my bad lol.