The face of Jesus Christ in agony on his way to martyrdom. Catedral basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Zaragoza, Spain (Source: own photo).
A martyr is an individual or group of individuals, who lays down his or her life - willingly or unwillingly - at the hands of an enemy for a cause or a belief widely shared by the group to which the martyr belongs.
Martyrdom can arise when four pre-conditions are satisfied. There has to be a martyr, a group of people with whom the martyr is associated, a defined enemy, and a live conflict between the martyr's group and the external enemy.
The conflicts that produce martyrs are usually along cultural lines, for example religion. Cultural differences are easily exploited for political purposes due to the fundamental asymmetry between people's intimate understanding of their own culture and their almost total ignorance of other cultures (see here). This is why some of the worst genocides in human history are rooted in culture (for examples see here).
Martyrdom is just one of many manifestations of conflict along cultural lines for political gain, but it has some unique and interesting features. Hence, this note, which explains martyrdom and its political underpinnings, illustrating the main points with reference to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
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Martyrs are extremely useful from a political perspective because martyrdom creates sharply contrasting perceptions of the martyr and the enemy. Governments and churches recognise this, which is why they tend to actively glorify martyrs as role models.
The words "The Glorious Dead" adorn the side of the Cenotaph Wall Memorial in Whitehall, London (Source: here)
Martyrs attain heroic status posthumously by paying the ultimate price for defending or advancing the interests of his or her group. Posthumous heroism is maximised when the enemy is superior in strength and brutish in nature. The greater the strength and brutishness of the enemy, the greater the impression of its cowardice and moral and intellectual inferiority. By contrast, the martyr - through self-sacrifice - attains attributes of bravery and moral and intellectual superiority, which elevates the cause by conferring greater moral legitimacy. Among other things, this makes the cause more worth aspiring to for lesser (younger) members of the group. This is why governments glorify those who die for their country ("Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”) and churches worship saints, who die for the faith (for a list of Catholic martyrs see here).
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Not all martyrs are born equal. The effectiveness of martyrdom from a political perspective depends on several factors of which the following three are the most important:
First, voluntary deaths are generally preferable to involuntary deaths, although martyrdom is still possible when deaths are involuntary. The Martyrs of Cordoba - 48 Christians who declared their faith knowing they would be executed for doing so - spring to mind. Still, involuntary deaths can also be hugely politically advantageous when the victims are innocent. The victims of 9/11 did not volunteer to die, but they almost immediately became a useful 'justification' for the subsequent invasion of Iraq in which US and its allies killed more than 500,000 people even though Iraq was not even involved in 9/11. The unwilling victims of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar in 1919, who died at the hands of the British, also became important martyrs for the cause of Indian independence. Gordon’s death in Khartoum on 26 January 1885 made him an instant martyr for the British Empire. It does not really matter whether he volunteered to die or not.
Even New Yorkers took to flag waving in the immediate aftermath of the martyrdom of 9/11 (Source: here)
Second, the political usefulness of martyrdom is maximised when martyrs die the most harrowing deaths possible. The worse the horror the more powerful the emotional response. Extreme violence induces traumas that are difficult to erase from the memory and challenging to rationalise. Hence, such traumas can be relied upon by politicians to deliver distorted reactions to subsequent events when the right triggers are pulled, even long after martyrs have perished.
Sicilian Saint Agatha looks to the heavens as she is martyred and has both her breasts cut off (Source: here)
Third, martyrdom is best weaponised for political purposes when the trauma is experienced by a large group. When very large numbers of people are traumatised by an episode of martyrdom, the trauma becomes a collective trauma. Collective traumas are especially susceptible to exploitation for political purposes, because they invoke powerful reactions in many people at the same time. As such, they can be used to corral people for or against certain causes.
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Let me now illustrate these ideas with reference to Israel's actions in Gaza. Jews, a cultural group, obviously suffered an enormous trauma at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Today, the Israeli government exploits the trauma experienced by Jews in the Holocaust to manage reactions to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Let us begin by reviewing the original trauma. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe. Due to the extreme barbarity of the Nazis, the trauma of the Holocaust has survived long after the atrocity itself. The dwindling number of survivors of the Holocaust still suffer from their direct exposure to the trauma, but every other Jewish person alive today also suffers by association. In fact, the extreme horrors of the Holocaust are so widely disseminated in schools, the media, museums, and elsewhere that millions of people - even non-Israelis and non-Jews - can claim to have been traumatised to various degrees [1].
Institutions like the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. have done much to spread awareness about the genocide committed by Nazis against European jews during World War II (Source: See here).
The Netanyahu is acutely aware of the political usefulness of the collective trauma of the Holocaust. He regularly refreshes associations between the Holocaust and Hamas' attack on 7 October 2023 in order to: (a) vilify Palestinians and (b) minimise the fallout from Israel's ongoing genocide against civilians in Gaza.
The deliberate association between the Holocaust and anyone who attacks Israel makes it almost impossible for anyone opposed to Israel not instantly and on a deep emotional level to be associated with the Nazis, or, at a minimum, be associated with some form of anti-Semitism. Needless to say, this association works against the Palestinian cause.
Yet, take a step back and try to abstract from Netanyahu's rhetoric. The truth is that there is zero association between Nazism/anti-Semitism and Palestinians. Not a single Palestinian alive today had anything to do with the Holocaust. Nazism ended in 1945 and those who were actively involved in perpetrating the Holocaust are for the most part dead.
In fact, most Palestinians in Gaza didn't even have anything to do with the attack on Israel on 7 October. Their only “crime” is to live in a territory that happens to contain within it an organisation (Hamas) that attacked and killed 1,200 Israelis.
Besides, Israel is by no means the victim here. Israel has by far the strongest military in the Middle East and it is heavily backed by the United States. By contrast, the Palestinians are extremely vulnerable. They are poor and badly armed. Their only moral support comes from pariah nations like Iran and rebel groups such as the Houthis in Yemen. Palestinians are a very small and marginalised stateless people.
In addition to painting innocent Palestinians in a bad light, Netanyahu’s references to the Holocaust also help lessen blame for Israeli war crimes. By casting Israelis as victims, he immediately evokes an emotional association between Israelis and the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The association amplifies indignity at the Hamas attack, which enables Netanyahu to stretch the interpretation of Israel’s “right to defend itself” far beyond what would otherwise be possible. The vicious but limited attack by Hamas on Israel has now become accepted justification in many quarters for Israel to attack the entire population of Gaza (as opposed to just Hamas) - and to do so with extreme prejudice.
Tolerance for Israeli atrocities is particularly strong in the United States, the most powerful nation in the world. Meanwhile, Europeans, who tend to be more sympathetic to Palestinians, have so far been unwilling to jeopardise bilateral relations with the US over Gaza. Result: Israel's atrocities continue with impunity.
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Martyrdom can cut both ways, though. The Israeli atrocities in Gaza have now become so grotesque that Palestinian leaders are beginning to eye martyrdom opportunities of their own! Remember the three conditions for effective martyrdom; innocent victims, horrible deaths, and population-level trauma. All these conditions are satisfied in Gaza. In fact, extremist zionists are even calling for Gaza to be entirely annexed by Israel and US President Donald Trump has called for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. This is the stuff of dreams for martyr merchants.
In my mind, Israel has by now created sufficiently many fresh Palestinian martyrs for the conflict between Israel and Palestine to continue for many more decades. This means that Israel will continue to be viewed as a pariah nation in large part of the world, and Israelis will continue to be persona non grata in many countries.
Well-founded charges of genocide have also been levelled against Israel in the International Court of Justice (see here). South Africa, which has a special moral authority on these types of issues due to its dark history of Apartheid, leads the prosecution, although so far only few others have shown enthusiasm to join. This shows the lingering strength of Israel's deliberately strategy to link criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
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Martyrdom tends to manifest in different ways depending on levels of income and education as well as the importance of religion. Israel prefers martyrs hail from the past (mainly Holocaust victims), while the martyrs of Islamic fundamentalist groups tend to be 'fresh', that is, people who sacrifice themselves in real time. The reason for this difference: It tends to get more difficult to convince people to martyr themselves the wealthier, more democratic, and less religious society gets [2].
Hamas fighters in Gaza - some of them will blow themselves up to become martyrs (Source: see here)
Islamic fundamentalist groups also make greater use of contemporary (living) martyrs, because Islamic fundamentalist groups tend to operate in societies with many oppressed, badly educated, very religious, and poor people.
That is not to say Israel does not have its fair share of fanatical religious extremists, who, in fact, form a critical part of Netanyahu's government coalition. Yet, even these superstitious zealots tend not to be willingly martyr themselves, because they are too rich, so the opportunity cost of death is simply too high.
Orthodox Israelis with guns - none of them will blow themselves up to become martyrs (Source: see here).
In fact, the unwillingness of Israelis to die for Israel is so strong that Israel must go a very long way to avoid its soldiers dying or becoming prisoners. And when it occasionally happens anyway Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to get its people back, including agreeing to prisoner swaps in which hundreds of Palestinians are freed for very small numbers of Israelis.
Fear of martyrdom also explains why Israel deploys such extreme and indiscriminate violence in its war against Hamas. It bombs densely built-up areas with many civilians to avoid risking its own soldiers' lives. Most Israelis would simply not accept a military strategy that require Israelis to die in large numbers on the streets of Gaza.
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It is not just Islamic fundamentalists, the Netanyahu government, and other actively warring parties, who exploit martyrdom for political purposes. Martyrdom is ubiquitous in Western culture, but many of us barely notice. How many Danes, for example, realise that the image on the inner sleeve of their passports is that of a martyr being tortured to death on the cross (picture below)?
The inner sleeve of a Danish passport shows a martyr being tortured to death. (Source: own photo).
The cross is Christianity’s most potent symbol. Many of the finest paintings in the world were financed by churches and therefore frequently depict martyrdom, including Caravaggio's painting below. There is probably not a single church in the US or Europe, which does not glorify the cross, ideally with a writhing Jesus nailed to the wooden beams.
The crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio (Source: see here)
Perhaps you, the reader, are wearing a crucifix pendant around your neck as you read these words? If so, remember the jewellery with which you adorn yourself is in fact an instrument of torture. Few, if any, can truly claim not to be under the spell of martyrdom, free from one of the darkest sides of culture.
The End
Endnotes:
[1]: The Nazis attempted to portray Jews as a race. In fact, there is no such thing as a Jewish race. Rather, Jews are members of a specific culture, which, like all other cultures, has created myths about its own origin, including religious versions. For more information about Jewish culture see here).
[2]: The link between income/ignorance/powerlessness and proclivity towards contemporary martyrdom is entirely universal. For example, young men from poor and badly educated backgrounds in the United States and the United Kingdom are far more likely than young men from richer and educated communities to join the army and potentially sacrifice themselves martyrs on the altar of patriotism in some foreign war.
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