While talking on the phone this week with a member of Hamas, I heard a very simple but accurate description of the enormous dilemma faced by that movement. “What’s it like?” asked the man at the other end of the line, and he offered me the following example: “Like a brother who sees his whole family slaughtered right in front of him. If he as much as looks up, he’ll draw fire. He’ll become another target and definitely get killed. But if he keeps his head down and stays low, he’ll be haunted by his conscience for the rest of his life, because he didn’t do anything.”

Ever since it was founded, the Hamas movement has described itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Given what is happening in Egypt now, the Palestinian branch is absolutely terrified. Its leaders are consulting over how and even if they can help their brothers, who are being slaughtered in the streets of Cairo, but at the same time they are talking about how to stay alive. It is a conundrum with no easy answer that occupies the entire Hamas leadership — political and military alike — since without them even dipping a finger into the molten lava they are loathed and despised by the acting leadership of the Land of the Nile. They are considered collaborators and a terrorist organization in every which way imaginable.

And so, while the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is counting its dead by the hundreds, and the campaign being waged by the Egyptian army against them is far from over, the path chosen by Hamas is a lot like that of the metaphorical brother, who watched while his family was slaughtered right in front of him. Worried that he would be next, he decided to save himself by keeping a low profile and staying out of sight.

For years, when describing the jihad against Israel, Hamas leaders chose the motto Hatta al-shahada! (“Onward to martyrdom!”). Today, however, the Hamas movement has decided to choose life, even if it means letting their Egyptian brothers bleed to death in the streets. It would hardly be excessive to conclude that once the real scope of casualties in Egypt’s ongoing struggle is learned — and once the Muslim Brotherhood has finished counting its dead and licking its wounds — the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood will undoubtedly ask their brothers in Gaza: “Where were you and what did you do, when we needed you so badly?”