The recent terrorist attack on Israeli territory resulted in the bombing of the Gaza Strip, causing thousands of deaths and providing the Israeli army with the opportunity to come and hunt down members of Hamas on the ground. Benyamin Netanyahu declared it: the goal of the war is now to eradicate the terrorist group. If this project were brought to fruition, Hamas will have been the first agent of its destruction. And, in any case, he turned the first wheel of a mechanism which resulted in the death of thousands of people from a people he claims to defend.
The whole terrible story unfolding before our eyes was perfectly predictable, so we cannot even assume that it is the consequence of stupid ideological-religious improvidence. Therefore, we can ask ourselves if there is any practical rationality in this type of terrorist action. Not that these actions do not have their reasons – individuals, even when they commit the worst, always have motivations -, but what about their result? This question is valid for rationality taken in its classical sense which, since Aristotle, has enjoined the individual to use appropriate means to pursue their ends. If Hamas’ goal is to serve the cause of the Palestinians and protect them, we can only be doubtful here. We could argue that the purpose of the terrorist group was not there: it was rather a question of establishing its authority internally or even breaking the links that were being established between Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example…
But if we unfold the recent history of groups which have resorted to terrorism to wage their battle, we come back to questioning their instrumental rationality. What was the conclusion of the attacks of September 11, 2001, if not a massive counter-offensive by the United States in Afghanistan or Iraq and, ultimately, the tracking down and death of Osama bin Laden? How did Daesh’s international terrorist attacks bring about the caliphate? Did they not rather provoke responses which resulted in territorial retreat and, finally, the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Sociologist Robert Brym, from the University of Toronto, analyzed 138 suicide attacks committed during the second intifada. By studying 128 variables, he arrives at a conclusion which contradicts psychiatric hypotheses or even that of an instrumental logic to be linked to distant objectives deemed desirable. In reality, these attacks were overwhelmingly motivated by short-term revenge: a sacrifice to punish the assassination of a close relative, for example.
These results bring to mind a situation structure that has inspired hundreds of scientific articles: the ultimatum game. This is a negotiation game which offers two individuals to distribute a property according to the following rules: the first imposes a distribution on the second (he can choose, for example, 99% for himself and 1% for the other) , but the latter has the power to refuse. If he does, both lose everything. The exercise has been of great interest to economists, because it is easy to show experimentally that individuals hardly respect the strict rationality which should lead the second player to accept any sum provided that it is greater than or equal to 1. But that’s not what’s happening. In the vast majority of cases, he prefers to lose everything rather than accept a too inequitable distribution of property. In other words, he is willing to fall, provided he can punish the other.
It is the terrible logic – which seems very unrational in terms of strategic objectives – which often motivates the terrorist, explains Robert Brym: to punish the other at the risk of harming everyone, including oneself. He also recalls that retaliatory measures to punish a terrorist and/or his family are based on the same short-term reasoning. Under these conditions, the ultimatum game can continue indefinitely, sowing in its path a cohort of deaths which will not help any cause.
Gérald Bronner is a sociologist and professor at Sorbonne University