[extropy-chat] Middle East

[David Lubkin]

At 06:20 PM 1/12/2004 -0500, Matthew Gingell wrote:

>  "Palestine is largely inhabited by unreasonable people."
>
>     -- William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech,
>        Undersecretary of State for the Colonies. (circa 1925(?), in
>        the context of trying to impose Wilsonian principles of
>        ethnic/national self-determination on the British Mandate.)

Certainly.

You know the old fable about the fox and the scorpion? The Israeli version 
is --

A scorpion was walking along the bank of the Jordan River, wondering how to 
get to the other side. Suddenly he saw a fox.

He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river.

The fox said, "No. If I do that, you'll sting me and I'll drown."

The scorpion assured him, "If I did that we'd both drown."

The fox thought about it and finally agreed. The scorpion climbed up on his 
back, and the fox began to swim. Halfway across the Jordan, the scorpion 
stung him.

As the poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, 
"Why did you do that? Now you'll drown too."

"What do you expect?" retorted the scorpion, "This is the Middle East."


-- David Lubkin.