The Resistance That Devours Its Own

In Iran’s proxy wars, Arab suffering is leveraged, not mourned

When Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, much of the Arab world did not respond with mourning or even caution. Instead, there were scenes of jubilation. Civilian deaths were minimized, reframed, or ignored entirely. The vulnerability of Gaza’s population, who would inevitably face the brunt of retaliation, was a footnote. What mattered was the spectacle.

In Cairo and Tunis, commentators praised the “humiliation” of Israel. Egyptian state broadcasters heralded an “awakening.” Music and poetry circulated within hours—some of it officially produced, some from individuals who seemed to have been waiting for a moment of symbolic catharsis. The celebration was less about strategy than about narrative. In this telling, the violence was reinterpreted instantly as a form of collective victory, regardless of its cost or consequences.

This response didn’t arise in a vacuum. It reflects a deeply ingrained political culture in large parts of the Arab and Muslim world, where the metric of progress has become the ability to resist, not to build. Institutional development, scientific achievement, and intellectual output have faded as sources of pride. In their place: a politics of spectacle, of resistance-for-its-own-sake, where even the most ruinous blow is interpreted as victory—so long as it can be broadcast, repeated, and mythologized.

Today’s crisis cannot be traced to a single ideology. Rather, it’s the product of two once-dominant political projects that promised a new Arab future—pan-Arabism and political Islam—and failed to deliver.

Both offered sweeping visions: a common language, a shared historical mission, a dignified place in the world. But neither produced enduring institutions, and neither met the demands of modern governance. As their promises collapsed, Arab regimes shifted from visionary leadership to mere security management. Reform never came. Meaning drained from public life. And into that void stepped Iran.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution did not present itself as merely a national moment. It was a call to the entire Muslim world. It offered no roadmap for pluralism or development. What it did offer was clarity: one enemy, one cause, and one path: resistance. It promised not prosperity, but dignity through struggle. That promise proved persuasive precisely because many Arab regimes had little left to offer.

Tehran’s genius was not persuasion. It was exploitation. And it extended its reach by cultivating dependency, turning fragmented Arab states into operational arms of its regional strategy in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza.

Over time, Iran’s goals supplanted Arab ones. What had begun as Arab political aspiration became Iranian ideological projection. And with this shift came a strange inversion: Arabs came to adopt Tehran’s narratives as their own. The defeat of an Iranian proxy became a regional tragedy. The punishment of a militant group, however reckless, was framed as an assault on Arab dignity itself.

In this new landscape, “resistance” is no longer judged by outcomes. It is judged by how it looks and feels, especially to those watching from afar.

October 7 was catastrophic for Palestinians. It achieved no tactical advantage. It triggered a brutal assault on Gaza, left thousands dead, and reduced vital infrastructure to rubble. And yet, across much of the Arab and Muslim world, it was hailed as a moral triumph. Not because it changed facts on the ground, but because it briefly restored a sense of relevance to a region haunted by impotence.

This moral inversion has been brewing for years. We saw it during the 2006 war in Lebanon, when Hezbollah’s reckless provocation brought ruin to Beirut, but was nonetheless hailed as heroic. In this worldview, sacrifice blurs into spectacle, tactical failure becomes symbolic success, and civilian death becomes proof of authenticity.

The Gaza Strip, in this context, is no longer seen as a place with human beings who dream, suffer, and desire peace. It is a canvas for projection. A site of ritual sacrifice. As one Hamas leader put it, Gaza is the “korban”—the offering. Its people are not asked to live. They are asked to die for the cause.

This is voyeurism masquerading as solidarity. And the more distant the viewer, the more exhilarating the explosion.

None of this would be sustainable without a moral double standard.

When Israel violates international norms—raids mosques, expands settlements, strikes civilian infrastructure—the reaction is swift. Governments condemn, clerics denounce, and civil society mobilizes. These responses are often justified and grounded in real principles: the sanctity of life, the protection of holy sites, and the rules of war.

But when Iran or its proxies commit the same acts, that moral vocabulary evaporates.

When Iranian missiles targeted the Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva—a hospital that treats both Jews and Arabs, including Bedouins—there was silence. When a mosque in an Arab neighborhood of Haifa was hit in the same barrage, not a single government official spoke up. No fatwa. No headline. No outrage.

All of this reveals a deeper truth: that principle, in much of the region’s discourse, has become contingent not on what is done, but on who does it. A mosque matters if Israel strikes it. Not if Iran does. Palestinian suffering matters if inflicted by the IDF. Not if inflicted by Hamas or Hezbollah.

This moral asymmetry corrodes the very foundation of ethical discourse. It renders solidarity meaningless. When our outrage is selective, our conscience becomes a performance.

That’s why Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” is not a defense of Palestinian rights; it is a betrayal of them. It demands silence when Palestinians are killed by allies and outcry only when it is politically useful. In that bargain, Palestinian blood is not sacred—it is a form of currency. And the price is always paid by the people, never by the patrons.

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