A Tinderbox

Hamas, Middle East, & Lighter Fare

Image generated by Bing Artificial Intelligence in response to the query: “A small tinderbox and matches lying on top of a map”

Dear Friends,

This political cartoon appeared almost ten years ago:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here is a video of Hamas’s official spokesman being interviewed on October 24th. DO NOT SCROLL BY. Click on it and watch.

There are people in this world who want to talk about “nuance,” “complexity,” and “context.” There is none to be found here. Hamas, the terrorist organization governing Gaza, promises to perform the atrocities of October 7, 2023, “again and again.” Their aims are not subtle: the annihilation of the State of Israel and the eradication of the Jewish people. There is no reasoning with with this kind of hatred and terrorism. The man glories in “martyrdom” (well, for other people, for now—he lives in Qatar—but he will get his wish).

“Can’t you meet them halfway?” That has been the mantra for my entire lifetime. I am constantly amazed at how gullible people are. This has been the playbook for decades upon decades. Hamas militants commit some atrocity (like, say, blowing up an Sbarro pizza parlor full of innocent civilians), and the ones who didn’t blow themselves up crawl back into their tunnels in Gaza waiting for Israel to respond, as they must and inevitably do. And then the international community punishes Israel for their supposed “lack of proportionality” and creating a “humanitarian catastrophe,” and so forth. I have no other explanation for why people fall for this obvious propaganda other than they have an underlying streak of antisemitism.