I believe many of your readers will not have liked Gwynne Dyer’s The frog, the scorpion and Hamas column because it is an accurate treatise on the factors governing the Gaza conflict, yet like all good analysis it is pragmatic in the examination of the factors — putting emotions such as compassion, sadness and anger aside.
Dyer’s article should be read in its entirety, and even if I had a column of sufficient space to do so, I doubt I could do justice to the whole article. I will, however, reiterate a couple of the pivotal points he makes:
“Hamas needed a big war to derail the process: one that ‘martyred’ enough Palestinians to shame the rest of the Arab world out of betraying the sacred cause” (being the total removal of the Zionist Jews).
Dyer further explains, “Dying for the cause, even getting other Muslims killed for the cause, is neither a crime nor a tragedy in the eyes of Islamists. It is a morally praiseworthy act.”
Dyer tells us that the basic, seemingly vengeful force being used by the Israelis, goaded by Hamas, is the stuff that is taught in the introductory courses on “guerilla and terrorist tactics in every military staff college in the world”.
Of course, the side trying to bomb the terrorists but also killing civilians and children must know when enough is enough, and clearly neither Hamas nor Israel realises that they are well past that point.
And then in WW2, when the Nazis were the enemy, the Allies bombed Dresden into a fireball, killing thousands of old men, women, and children — but not so many Nazis or soldiers . . . .
Dennis Pennefather
