War in Gaza: The Frog and the Scorpion

The war is over. Hamas says it now likes Jews, no longer wants to obliterate Israel and is very sorry about October 7.

Only kidding.

As I write this there is a ceasefire in place and the prospect, in the coming hours, that the remaining hostages will finally be freed after two years of incarceration.

Credit to Donald Trump for squaring what had, for so long, seemed like an impossible circle.
But this does not feel like a time for dancing in the streets or holding parades.

I share my nation’s joy and immense relief for the hostages, their families and friends. Albeit tinged with profound anxiety over the damage they’ve suffered.

But the victory, sadly, belongs to Hamas.

Israel’s military might may have brought the jihadi terror group to its knees on the battlefield.
But every single day of the war has been a propaganda victory for the hate-crazed death cult started this war.

It has told repeated and outrageous lies about Israel, aided and abetted by the global media and it has legitimised Jew hatred everywhere. That is its victory.

Sinwar, the evil (dead) genius who masterminded 7 October, forfeited a short-term PR hit (rape, mutilation, massacre, depravity) for a long-term win.

Only today (12 October) we learned of his direct instructions to Hamas commanders ahead of 7 October: to broadcast images that would provoke a frenzy among Palestinians and terror among Israelis – “stepping on soldiers’ heads, point-blank shootings, slashing a few with knives, blowing up tanks, soldiers kneeling with their hands on their heads, and so on”.
He knew there’d be no shortage of dead babies in the coming weeks and months to turn the tide of public opinion 180 degrees.

He knew a gullible media would be overwhelmed by a flood of Palestinian suffering, and would quickly forget the horrors of a single day in October 2023.

Ditto the clueless wokes and the rebels without a cause.

He knew that a powerful and relentless story of Palestinian suffering, regardless of the truth, would prove irresistible.

He knew he could callously engineer the deaths of tens of thousands of his own people for propaganda purposes.

He knew the mothers of Hamas fighters would celebrate the martyrdom of their own flesh and blood, and enthusiastically breed replacements.

There’s a low flame of Jew hatred that has forever burned. Stoke it with the oxygen of fake news reports, fake casualty numbers, fake photos, fake video, and a fake “famine” and you suddenly have a Molotov cocktail of Jew hatred.

It becomes mainstream, acceptable, the default position of “right-minded” people. It legitimises the hate marches, the attacks, the synagogue stabbings, the firebombings, the Nazi slurs, the campus protests, the flotillas of the feeble-minded, the boycotts and much more besides.

It justifies the unjustifiable – nations rewarding a reign of terror by recognising an imaginary, borderless state of Palestine. An empty gesture, but one that’s loaded with symbolism and that panders to their powerful Muslim populations.

Hamas has brought this devastation upon itself. It is nothing if not long-suffering. It considers the death and the suffering (some of it real, some fake) as a small price to pay for the global defamation of Jews and Israel.

The war is not over. The Hamas charter still calls for the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

Remember the frog and the scorpion? The scorpion can’t swim but wants to cross the river on the frog’s back. The frog is hesitant. “You’ll sting me,” he says. “No I won’t, the scorpion counters. “If I did that then we’d both drown.”

So the frog agrees. And sure enough, halfway across the river, the scorpion stings him.
“Now we’re both going to drown,” says the frog. “Why did you do that?”
And the scorpion replies: “I can’t help it. I’m a scorpion.”