The Frog and the Scorpion

Back on October 7, 2023 the Hamas terror group in Gaza unexpectedly burst across the border into Israel and killed some 1,200 Israelis. Others were reportedly raped, and 250 Israelis were kidnapped back to the Gaza Strip where most of them perished. I wrote about it a week later here.

That was over fifteen months ago. Last weekend Hamas and Israel finally signed a ceasefire to the full-scale war which resulted from that attack. The time has been a stretch of misery for the people in Gaza. Hamas, unable to fight the Israelis in the open, has hidden behind the civilian population in a guerrilla struggle. Hamas has lost a huge chunk of their fighting force in the violence, but plenty of Palestinian non-combatants have been caught up, too. Misery, misery, misery, I have often thought to myself. “Another day in the Middle East.” It has been painful to watch.

I read where Defense Dept. head hopeful Pete Hegseth recently claimed the following: “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.” I would agree with Hegseth, at least in theory. In my previous essay I spoke about how after seeing extensive interviews with Hamas fighters more than a decade ago, these were gunmen who had no real goal in life but to fight and kill Israelis. These militants were almost illiterate and had no employable skills. They were stunted man-children — many had hardly ever been on a date, or had nothing much to offer the world but their blood (and the blood of others) for Hamas. It is pure religious fanaticism, combined with ethnostate nationalism. Below in a photo a few of the gunmen of Hamas from before this latest fighting –

– most of the above are probably dead now. Hamas got the apocalyptic war it wanted and started, and most of their fighters have been “martyred.” But here we are fifteen months later. What to do now? Where to go?

Hamas is personified well by its leader in the Gaza Yahya Sinwar, who stated that it was a good idea to hide near civilians and get them killed in the fighting – they would be “necessary sacrifices” in the struggle against the Zionist invader/occupier. (An estimated 47,000 Palestinians from Gaza Strip have been killed in the fighting.) Here Sinwar is, in the end, just moments before the Israelis finished him off –

– and good riddance to him.

But here is the problem: now Yahya’s younger brother Mohammed is reportedly in charge of Hamas. He is probably not too much different from his older brother. So what will have changed? You kill the old crop of fanatics, and they are replaced by new ones. You mow the lawn to control it, but the grass grows back higher than ever. Rinse and repeat. Forever?

The problem now seems to me this: the Israelis have done next to nothing to create some new governing organization in the Gaza Strip. Who is in charge there? Who will run the schools? Who is responsible for the delivery of food and water? Who will oversee the re-building? If Hamas is gone – and they need to be gone – who will take their place? This would be an important question.

The Israelis seem to have little else as a policy than to destroy Hamas as a terror organization. Fine. But what will replace the vacuum Hamas leaves behind? As I wrote in my first essay: “Killing semi-illiterate Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip might be much easier than dealing with what happens in that place afterwards. Is there a plan? Israel must act decisively and wisely. There needs to be a military response, and a political one, to try and build some sort of lasting peace.” That is as true now as it was when I wrote it nearly fifteen months ago – more so! There needs to be a new group in charge. Build a basis, however imperfect, for a new era in Gaza. The Israelis have done almost nothing in that area. And that is a huge need, if there is to be any basis for a stable future in Gaza. Maybe it is just easier to kill up the Hamas militants forever, and to put off the political questions indefinitely? If you are a hammer, everything is a nail.

And this war started by Hamas has moved well beyond Gaza. The Israelis have dealt powerful blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to the masterminds of this entire “Axis of Resistance” in Iran. Good! The Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran connection in the Middle East has long been a malignant and menacing force. The Mullahs in Iran have their military and political connections with Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation and Chairman Xi’s Communist China, and so you have the dividing lines which make up current geopolitical rivalries. I know on which side of that line I wish the United States of America to be.

So two cheers for the Israelis dismantling their enemies in this fashion. But whatever the hell happened to trying to build some new stable civic organization to help run Gaza? Destroying and killing only gets you so far in the world, even if that is often necessary. What about re-building from the rubble? The Israelis can wage war well enough. But can they make peace?

And does Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran even want peace?

So those are my rational thoughts on the matter, fifteen months after the start of this latest war, using my prefrontal cortex.

These are my irrational thoughts about it, emerging from my gut and life experience:

The Middle East is a place dominated by ancient hatreds and religious passion. It is a place of cruelty and martyrdom, in the present and the past. Spasms of violence erupt there every couple of years, and then it finally calms down for a bit – for my whole life it has been this way, and I am far from a young man. Israel and the Arabs, Jew vs. Muslim. Iran and Iraq, Sunni vs. Shia. Wars. Dictators. Oppression. Oil. Fanaticism. Nothing really changes; nobody can stop it. Everybody is a victim and nobody is a hero. It has been this way for almost a century with respect to the current nation-state of Israel – and way further, if you look at it broadly going back to the Israelites (or the Crusaders). ”Zealot” is a word which was born in the Middle East, after all. The best you can do is keep the hatred and violence from spiraling out of control. Or try to do so.

So I am hoping for this latest round of violence which erupted 15 months ago to come to its natural end. Are we there now with the recent Hamas-Israel ceasefire? Give everyone a break? If so, I will hope for a significant period of relative quiet, before the violence starts up again, as it inevitably will.

Is there any evidence that it will be otherwise? I don’t see it.

Why are they all such assholes? Why is there seemingly no possibility of gaining a peaceful end to these conflicts? Everyone so ready to slit each other’s throat, and nobody much willing to reach an accommodation? Sure, there are the Jordanians and others who are far from fanatics. There are plenty of reasonable people in the region. But still.

Maybe it goes back to the old story of the frog and the scorpion:

“A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: ‘I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.'”