You're going to get fired by Harvard.
I think Hamas is deliberately trying to keep the war going because they don't like Pepsi and because they know they will lose the long, slow war they were in before. Except for everyone being dead, they stand some chance of winning this way (e.g. a bigger, regional war, possibly where Israel has less international support because of all the ethnic cleansing/ civilian killing).
Hamas could have avoided Israel's entirely predictable response in the first place -- and in fact had to go to a great deal of trouble to bring it about. Israel could have avoided this level of radicalization of their Palestinian adversaries prior to Oct. 7. The relevant players are acting rationally in accordance with their goals.
The next horror will spring inevitably from the current, ongoing nightmare. The people who launched the invasion, and the people who provoked it, know this.
Assigning agency in this circumstance is paradoxical. The flip side of your old friend's assertion is equally true: "If Israel wanted its hostages back, it could get them by halting the invasion."
The flip side of your old friend's assertion is equally true: "If Israel wanted its hostages back, it could get them by halting the invasion."
Is this true? Or would Hamas pop some popcorn and watch Israel descend into internal fighting?
Probably the later, but I don't think Isreal would stop if the hostages were all released either.
6 is true. Israel's stated goals are to destroy Hamas and recover the hostages.
Maybe that's enough to resolve the mental conversation for me! I'll have to stew on it a bit.
I don't think it would. Maybe two and a half months ago? But Netanyahu seems to me not to want to waste a crisis or a unity government.
As Yggles quipped, this is a lot easier to solve if we assume rational actors with reasonable preferences.
I think the actors are rational. The preferences are the problem.
I think Hamas is deliberately trying to keep the war going because they don't like Pepsi and because they know they will lose the long, slow war they were in before.
It's important to distinguish between Hamas and the population of Palestine. Before 7 October, Hamas wasn't very popular. 52% of Palestinians said they had "no trust at all" in Hamas.https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/12/05/palestinians-views-oct-7/
But after the attacks their popularity went sky-high. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palestinians-back-oct-7-attack-israel-support-hamas-rises-2023-12-14/
72% of Palestinians said in December last year that "the Hamas decision to launch the cross-border rampage in southern Israel was "correct" given its outcome so far".
This may seem like a weird thing for them to believe, given all this (waves hand generally at endless fields of rubble) but it seems that the Palestinians attach huge importance specifically to Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners in hostage exchanges: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67695861
And Hamas' attack succeeded in achieving this.
I really don't have anything to add to what Matthew Yglesias said:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1740133021913948394
Both sides are to varying degrees bad and wrong, and there's not a lot that the US can actually do to change things significantly at the moment. There are more tractable problems elsewhere in the world that should take up more of our cultural attention (but don't because everyone has a special attachment to Jerusalem specifically).
The obvious thing to do would be for Israel to take a load of hostages itself, and then do a swap. They would need a lot, because Hamas does not do one-for-one swaps.
There's also the problem that Hamas wouldn't be prepared to do much to get innocent civilian hostages released - they would want their own people, who are rather harder to capture in bulk. It's possible, though, that Israel could round up several tens of thousands of Palestinians whom it knows to be innocent civilians, falsely convict them all of murder or something, and then agree to release them in exchange for Israeli hostages. Might be worth a try, anyway, and considerably less bloody than what's happening now.
go in circles
Tom Tomorrow recently posted this cartoon of his from *2014*. (Can't find a non-Bluesky link.)
https://bsky.app/profile/tomtomorrow.bsky.social/post/3ki66cuxeqd2f
Scroll down, someone's posted it. (It isn't very good though.)
Footnote to 3: "Equally true" does not imply "true."
Yeah. I was making your point explicit, not disagreeing.
In the event of a ceasefire being agreed, how long would it be before another attack similar to 7 October? Weeks? Months? Never?
I will always wonder what would have happened if rather than immediately counterattacking, Israel had offered staggeringly huge bounties for the Oct. 7th wrongdoers.
My impression, which may well be wrong, is that Israel easily has the military capacity to have stopped attacks like those ones from happening, but instead chose to ignore Gaza and promote Hamas, so that it could focus on expanding in the West Bank and attacking Fatah.
I don't have anything substantive to say, but I would just like someone to ask Netanyahu how much of a personal betrayal October 7 was, considering how much he has done to help Hamas for so many years.
I think he's not answering that kind of question.
I think it would be better conveyed via the medium of shoe-to-head.
In some cultures that would come across as disrespectful.
Posting before reading any comments because...
it is true that Hamas could release the rest of hostages and (probably?) end the war.
No, it's been quite clear that Bibi doesn't give a shit about the hostages and that he needs to continue to prosecute his genocidal war if he wants to stay in power and out of prison. Likud doesn't give a shit about the hostages either, and nor does the IDF just based on their actions over the course of the war (the 3 escaped hostages anyone? And much else besides).
They're a mirror image of Hamas who care greatly about the Palestinian cause, such as they envision it, and not a shit about actual Palestinian lives.
In related news, it's been awhile since I've heard that any Gazans I know (friends, coworkers and former coworkers, students) has lost any relatives, unlike the absolute torrent at the beginning like one of our students who lost around 60 relatives, a former coworker who lost around 21 or 22, another about a dozen, etc. And I'm thankful that a close friend hasn't lost any family last I've heard which was last week but he's still trying to get them out with French embassy contacts (he did his PhD in Paris and is a French citizen).
15: The Reuters and BBC articles focus on different things in the poll, so I went to the source to figure out what was going on. https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/963
As you say, 72% of the public (dunno how statistically sound the Gazan polling is) believe "Hamas' decision to launch the October 7 attack was correct". But (these are all quotes from their summary):
The detailed section about understanding of the definitions of war crimes, and belief in whether they were carried out, might also be of interest.
They note that support for Hamas goes up during wars, then reverts to the mean. Anyway, Palestinians seem to be a more informed and sensible polity than Iowans, but maybe not to the degree one would like.
The tragic kicker: "56% have no food and water to sustain them for a day or two, and 64% say a family member was killed or wounded during the war."
Responding to the OP -- something that I said early in the Israeli attack was that Hamas is clearly acting terribly badly (both in their attack on Israel and in provoking an attack that's been devastating for Gaza) but I am more likely to be critical of Israel because I believe they have more choices available to them and more freedom of action.
At this point I also think the relative damage done by each is unequal, but also the capacity for a better response (and therefor the expectations) are higher for Israel.
Hamas isn't dressing up some corporate fuckwit and funding them to run as a "moderate" in the Democratic primary for my House district.
To be fair, I bet most corporate fuckwits don't even know a Hamas guy to ask for campaign money from.
there's not a lot that the US can actually do to change things significantly at the moment.
I strongly disagree with this. The U.S. could put quite a bit of pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire, and I can't say for certain but it's likely that pressure would be effective.
I don't think US pressure on Israel is likely to actually be effective, but it's certainly worth a shot.
If we're going to try pressure it should be to oust Netanyahu and not to have a ceasefire. A ceasefire would last less than a week just like the last one.
I do think it's worth trying to get the US more firmly working toward a ceasefire, even via the relatively puny medium of city level resolutions, but I was pretty disheartened at the wall we're facing when I saw the Senate voted 72-11 against even investigating war crimes.
I have what is probably an irrationally strong dislike for city level resolutions about this. I think that city governments should very much stick to their city. There's clearly room for some overlap, as for example with BDS stuff, but the default position should be "this is not in issue for this body, no matter how strongly all the individual members of it may feel about the subject".
That's a good general rule, but sometimes moral outrage needs more outlets to bubble up. I think it has in the past been a vehicle for changing minds at higher levels. In the case of California, it probably helped push both Lee and Porter to firmer ceasefire positions. That said, 15 people calling their congressmember may be more effective than 100 people filling up a council chamber.
I don't think US pressure on Israel is likely to actually be effective, but it's certainly worth a shot.
Traditionally, US pressure has escalated to include bombing the country that won't listen (cf. Yugoslavia in 1999). That's probably not an option here.
cf. should probably be eg. in that last comment.
42: There's a state Senator I've followed on twitter who has generally good opinions on domestic policies who is Jewish and gone crazy pro Israel. There is plenty of antisemitism but the ADL is now basically anti Palestinian.
I see my State Senator calling for a cease-fire. My town is more small-c conservative in some ways but also more liberal which means that my State Senator supports Medicare for All and has sponsored Massachusetts single payer bills.
I worry that saying nothing cedes everything to the most pro-Israel factions. I feel very squishy about this, because I always gelt the way you do in the past.
What would have been your take on divesting from South Africa? That was a big deal for university investment funds. I don't know whether divesting did anything to hasten the end of Apartheid, but many would have said that the endowment funds were supposed to make money wherever they could, and that was their only job.
17: try to keep up with current events: they already have.
"More than 4,700 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem since October 7, according to the UN.[21][6] Those arrested or detained include journalists, politicians and political activists, artists, medics and physicians, temporary workers, and other civilians, including women and children."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_detentions_in_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#:~:text=More%20than%204%2C700%20Palestinians%20have,civilians%2C%20including%20women%20and%20children.
Still not enough though. I'm not even sure Hamas will swap for innocent civilians at all - they want their own people back. But if they do, one Israeli is worth about fifty Palestinians.