Hamas’ Gunpowder Plot

DISCLAIMER

I wrote this blog in the wake of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. In the intervening year, a lot of things happened on the ground. I will post it as is and let you draw your own conclusions.

Back in the early years of the 17^th century there was – an inept then but interesting to us – Catholic conspiracy to overthrow the protestant Stuart dynasty. The doers planned to assassinate James I of England and replace him with a suitable monarch who would eventually restore the Papists to their rightful preordained place in the realm’s pecking order.

The conspirators, a bunch of noble hotheads, veterans of the Dutch Wars, decided to purchase a lot of gunpowder, haul it into the London underground and place it right under the Parliament building. Their plan: to light the fuse from a safe distance and see the English Monarchy and Parliament go up in smoke.

Their plan was betrayed by the moronesque figure of Guy Fawkes who took it upon himself to reveal the plan to one of his relatives. You see, the gentleman in question planned to attend the Parliament session targeted by the plot.

The man, took aback by such a cavalier revelation, decided to dispense with any family-ties, placing the safety of the King and brethren above any misplaced feelings he had previously entertained for Guy. He went to the authorities, who quickly rounded up the conspirators, put them to torture, and extracted the truth out of them the hard way.

In the end, there were victims in the wake of this plot, only these were the conspirators themselves who were sacrificed on the altar of public outcry.

I dispense you of the full account of the horrid trial and executions, but it is safe to say it made treason a very dangerous undertaking under British law.

By the way, the Brits are also historically known for their utter lack of sympathy for traitors, would-be traitors, and blundering military men. Just think of what they did to poor Admiral Byng.

There is a gulf of difference between the English or Russians, who have zero tolerance for treason and ineptitude, and the French who have fountains of patience for their heroes turned turncoats like Pétain. The former get results. The latter get to justify their failures in thousands upon thousands of nonsensical pages of idiotic dribble.

Two different schools of thought, I guess.

Coming back to the Gunpowder Plot, it is safe to say the plot failed miserably: its objectives were not reached, and the people involved were apprehended and punished.

400 years later, Hamas managed to do just the opposite. By their dastardly October 2023 attack that killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and military, they blew up the lid of pseudo-normality that was threatening their grip on power. They managed to derail the normalization of relations between Israel and most of the Arab world, via the famous Abraham Accords.

In one fell swoop, Hamas destroyed the fragile balance of peace in the region, throwing it back at its lowest ebb. The Middle East today is in the same state of disarray it was 50 years ago, in October 1973.

The plot thickens: Hamas is ready to sacrifice millions of Arabs just to destroy Israel.

Sorry but I don’t buy that. Right off the bat, I see a bunch of problems with Hamas’ logic.

Israel won’t stand idle while Hamas puts its plans into motion. In fact, as the last 75 years will attest, Israel will make sure its enemies develop a bad case of lead poisoning long before they endanger its existence.

Most people don’t realize this. But Israel uses Lex tallionis like it was meant to be used. Not literally, but extremely figuratively, with maximum prejudice.

Because if they’d used literally, Israel wouldn’t be a thing anymore. An eye for an eye would have turned Israel blind a long time ago. The Arab world can afford to trade a man for a man, without blinking an eye. Excuse the pun.

Harsh words, you may say. Agreed. But nonetheless arithmetically true.

For every slayed Jew, 10 to 100 Muslim Arabs were annihilated. That’s the measure of Israeli resolve.

The State of Israel is not a weak Western country that thinks revenge is something that happens in the spur of the moment and 20 years later, that’s it, they are done exacting it.

The State of Israel knows that winning a war doesn’t guarantee its survival in the Middle East as a Judaic country. In fact, they won all the military encounters they had with their neighbors in the past 75 years. Or more precisely, Israel didn’t lose any on its territory.

And yet the War is still going stronger than ever.

Can one imagine what would happen if Israel lost a single battle with the Muslim Arab world?

Do you really think Israel would think twice before pushing the nuclear button as a last resort when the entire country is smaller than Switzerland and their territorial margin for safety is literally tens of kilometers’ thin?!

For Pete’s sake, they used to train their Air Force in Turkey back in the day and right now the IDF trains in Cyprus. There’s not enough land for their Armed Forces to train on, you see.

What Hamas is hoping to achieve with its brutal tactics is perhaps stir into action the only nuclear Muslim nation around: Pakistan. But if Islamabad ever moves a nuclear muscle, India is right next door to follow suit. And guess who’s next door to India? China. So on and so forth.

I personally don’t think Pakistan will chance it. Not for Hamas, most definitely not for Iran.

Speaking of which, most people think Iran had something to do with the attack on Israel. Perhaps they did. Although, if Iran did something of the sort, they didn’t do it on account of Palestinians. You see Tehran may hate Israel and America. But they despise Palestinians, and despite their common faith, they hold all Arab nations in disregard.

Persians are not Arab. And they aren’t Sunni like most Arab nations are. They are Shia. Persians were a Thing back when Arabs were just a bunch of outliers on the margins of the known world.

According to Iran, if the Muslim world was like a big family sitting around the table, Palestinians would be the moron child with a lame leg always begging for help.

Iraq would be the stepbrother who tried to stab you in the back with a dagger supplied by your enemies.

Saudi Arabia would be the rich distant relative who is loaded with $ but indolent, cruel, and dumb.

The Gulf States are even richer relatives who only show up after Ramadan, to tell you that there’s a mint of money to be made with the Yehudi, which is how the Arabs call the Jews.

Turkey would be the smart cousin who was looking at your wife and trying to cop a feel.

Pakistan would be the maniacal gun nut packing a loaded .45 in his waist.

Jordan would be the sycophantic apathetic old brother, and Lebanon the youngest brother who follows you like a pilot fish.

In this family portrait of Islam, Syria would be the pumped-up boxer who’s taken a blow but is trying to get back up to the table.

And Iran of course sees itself as the reigning sovereign patriarch who must put up with all his unruly, dissonant family, while maintaining the appearances of a benevolent monarch. He’s got a lot on his plate, he ain’t too rich, but affluent enough to afford to flex a lot. But he also must keep an eye on the other side of his wife’s family, the Gulf States and the Saudi, who are two-faced enough to deal with the Yehudi and the Great Shaitan/Satan – America.

So, you see Iran has got a lot of things on his mind. Why would he want to put Hamas to attacking Israel like that? Now, are they supporting it? Of course, they are. But instigate something that big? I do not think so. I can see a lot of issues with this line of reasoning.

On the other side of the War, we have Israel.

First off, Israel may have started as a socialist’s wet dream with kibbutz’s springing out in the dessert as if they were mushrooms in Eastern Europe after the rainy season.

But Israel did not evolve into the materialist state Ben-Gurion wanted it to be. The man had predicted a future without religion for Israel to the alarm and dismay of many a rabbi. But look at what his utopian pipedream actually turned into. A right of centre government run by a staunch conservative, Bibi Netanyahu, who is in cahoots with the far-right parties, meaning the ultra-religious Jews. And those people couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Ben-Gurion’s Marxist-Leninist ideals.

And this bodes bad for the Islamic Family led by Iran. Because an ultranationalist government in Jerusalem means Jewish settlers will soon take over the West Bank completely. And if the current state of the war in Gaza is an indication of things to come, Gaza will soon join the West Bank as part of Israel.

As you can see, there are some in Israel who would like nothing less than just that.

But before you jump in, outraged and all, watch Bibi’s 1978 intervention on a panel in America.

He’s right too, you know. For 20 years, Palestinians had their state, and could have learned to live side by side, with the Jews. But no, they didn’t. Instead, they chose to attack them time and again, conventionally, and later on, asymmetrically, until one day in 2023, the Jews who are not so innocent themselves, decided to break the booboo and get it over with.

So, right now, Israel is finishing what the Arabs have started long ago.

There are consequences to our actions, people. And the quicker we understand this physics principle, the better we will get to learn to coexist.