09/30/2024
IT'S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY
In 'Casablanca', the classic Humphrey Bogart vehicle – a tale of love, betrayal, morality, and the ways of the world – when there is a need for the appearance of justice being served, Captain Renault, a natty dresser who moonlights as a French police captain, famously says 'Round up the usual suspects'.
The answer to the question What will become of them? was left on the cutting room floor, but in an instance of life imitating art, the fate of the usual suspects – one of the few actual masterminds of the crime still alive – is in the news again.
In the last few days, rumors have circulated, Angel-of-Death-like, of the long-awaited demise of the leader of Hamas, who reportedly hides underground, constantly surrounded by hostages, communicating only via handwritten notes. Someone noticed that the notes had stopped coming; then, someone thought to doubt the authenticity of the last few weeks' worth of notes. Could Yahya Sinwar be dead?
Back in December, a confidential document developed by a Riyadh think tank outlined a plan to “end the crisis in Gaza” by transferring Hamas military leaders to Algiers, which, as it happens, is just a hop and a skip by plane from the real Casablanca. The document posited that one way to stop the hostilities in Gaza and “stabilize the situation there” was to evacuate to Algiers "the military and security leaders of Hamas", which meant Sinwar and others (most of them since dispatched to a locale infinitely more hellish than the worst of Algiers).
The only problem with that plan, which proposed to round up the usual suspects only to give them a round of applause, was that these masterminds and perpetrators of the October 7 massacre were dead men walking – as made clear by Israel's Mossad.
The reason Algeria was floated as a possible exile destination for the terrorists was due to its good relations with Qatar and Iran, the sponsors of the terrorism. Indeed, with good relations in such ready supply, the plan seemed to be based on highlights of the script for 'Casablanca', as we imagine Saudi Arabia whispering to Hamas 'With the whole world crumbling, we pick this time to fall in love', only to hear the reflexive rejoinder 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship', while Sinwar winks at Mohammed Deif (the now-late Hamas commander) 'Here's looking at you, kid'.
On the other side of levity, there is a universal truth this puts us in mind of.
All great works of art transcend their genre to tell the world something at once old and new: something it’s always known yet needs to hear once more. A rich fount of evocative quotes, 'Casablanca' comes through time and again. When justice finally does catch up to Yahya Sinwar in a warren of half-collapsed tunnels built using pilfered aid money, if he has any style, he might utter an immortal line before joining the ranks of the mortal damned, 'Go ahead and shoot. You'll be doing me a favor'.
