Is Hamas the scorpion?
“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known." (From Matthew 10, Today's Evening Prayer)
Social ethics invites us to draw on our understanding of what God is doing in human life and history and connect that understanding to the possibilities and challenges we face now. So, we seek human dignity, social justice, and stewardship of creation. In that work we analyze situations and systems trying to discernment what is happening. For us Anglicans we do that analysis grounded in scripture, tradition and reason.
Another part of this Anglican thing is an understanding that the integrity of a Christian’s political beliefs and actions depends on the extent to which they are, over a long period of time, engaged in the worship of God. One of Anglicanism’s greatest ethicists, Kenneth Kirk wrote in The Vision of God, “the doctrine…has throughout been interpreted by Christian thought at its best as implying in practice that the highest prerogative of the Christian, in this life and the next, is worship; and that nowhere except in this activity will he find the key to his ethical problems.” Kirk wrote, “The first practical question for Christian ethics is, therefore, how is this interestedness, unselfishness, to be attained? Once grant that moralism, or formalism, cannot bring the soul nearer to it, and there remains only one way – the way of worship. Worship lifts the soul out of its preoccupation with itself and his activities and centers its aspirations on God.”
Is this a time to love or a time to hate; a time of war or a time of peace. Or is it a bit of each? One of the assessments to be made in the coming days, weeks, months is — what do we make of Hamas? Is in a national liberation movement that can be negotiated with or is it a death cult?
What is Hamas?
There is an American 20 point peace plan on the table. Here’s my paraphrasing of some segments related to Hamas.
Amnesty for Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and disarmament. Hamas members wanting to leave Gaza will be given safe passage out.
No Hamas role in the governance of Gaza the destruction of all military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities. And a process of demilitarization.
The creation of a Gaza that poses no threat to Israel, Egypt, Jordan or the Palestinian people.
Read the text of the 20 point peace plan
The assumption in all of it is that Hamas will agree to and live with such conditions. That it might be willing and able to do these things.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim. It asks a frog to carry it across. The frog is uncertain, fearing that the scorpion might sting it The scorpion promises not to sting the frog. “I would drown if it killed the you in the middle of the river.” The frog agrees to take the scorpion across. Midway across, the scorpion stings the frog. Both are doomed. The dying frog asks the scorpion, “Why did you sting me knowing the consequence?” The scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.
What is the character, the nature, of Hamas?
The faithfulness of our social ethics task depends in part on our answer to that question. Is Hamas the scorpion?
Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organization that governed the Gaza Strip beginning in 2007. Ten nations including US, UK, Israel, and the European Union have designated as a terrorist organization. There are other nations, including Iran, Turkey, and Qatar that have supported Hamas in some manner.
For our purposes here, lets look at two ways of seeing Hamas. You may want to consider how each of those ways would have very different consequences for the 20 point peace plan.
Hamas as a national liberation and resistance movement
In Hamas’s 2017 charter it calls itself a “Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement.” Broadly speaking, a national liberation movement is an effort by a people which understands itself to be colonized or oppressed and is seeking political independence and sovereignty. Such movements are commonly motivated by nationalism and hope to establish a nation-state reflecting a people’s cultural and historical identity. In this case the nature of Hamas also depends in part on its stance toward Israel. The typical national liberation movement has been along the lines of the Algerian movement that forced France to allow independence. French military forces and most civilians returned to France to live. There is not a similar place for Jews of Israel to return to and the Jews claimed this land as their ancestral home, that they are the indigenous people.
Hamas’s official position is opposed to the existence of Israel as a Jewish homeland and insists on the liberation of all of what they see as historic Palestine, i.e., from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Hamas rejects the legitimacy of what it calls the “Zionist entity”. Hamas has accepted the possibility of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders as an interim step toward the full “liberation of Palestine”. There was a shift in rhetoric in 2017 when Hamas attempted to soften its international image by stating that its conflict was with the “Zionist project,” not with Jews because of their religion. The updated document removed the explicitly antisemitic language found in its 1988 charter.
It would seem that Hamas might negotiate for changes in the 20 point piece plan that would allow it a possible pathway to achieve its goal over the long-term. Maybe some interim arrangement that allowed it to be a continuing force in Gaza.
A ruinous jihadist death cult
John Aziz is a British Palestinian writer and peace activist. He offered a take in a Free Press article Hamas Doesn’t Believe in Peace.
Aziz notes that since the cease-fire took affect Hamas has engaged in public executions of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel. “There were no trials, no evidence, not even a pretense of due process—just a crude display of terror meant to remind everyone who was still in charge. Soon after, Hamas gunmen turned their weapons on powerful clan militias that had filled the vacuum during the war, sparking running battles in Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and beyond.’
“These actions exposed a critical truth: Hamas never viewed the Trump deal as a real step toward peace or coexistence, because that is just not how their framework for understanding the world works. Peace is not their aspiration. For their purposes, the ceasefire is a temporary reprieve: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting, which could start in five days, five years, or 50 years. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it—hudna—a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad against the Jews and other non-Muslims will arrive again.’
Therefore
What do you think? Over time might Hamas settle into an acceptance of a two state solution that allows the existence of Israel as a Jewish homeland? After all, they are human, they have families they love, and they must also be tired of war.
Should those-in-the-room, those making decisions about all this, take a chance on that pathway and give Hamas more of what it wants?
Or do you find yourself thinking Aziz has it right, “The movement’s ideology is incompatible with the peace plan, or any peace plan. A vision of Gaza as a peaceful, prosperous, and modern society is incompatible with a group devoted to endless war and the imposition of theocratic rule.”
In which case, those-in-the-room, might find themselves having to return to the use of military force.
Or maybe you have another view of Hamas’s nature and what those-in-the-room could do.
O Lord, watch over us *
and save us from this generation for ever.
Ps 12:7
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
The Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic & Monastic Reformer, 1582