I’ve been watching the Israeli sources for several days to see if the tentative, coming very soon, imminent, hostages for ceasefire deal. What I kept seeing was this has been going on for weeks, nothing is happening, there’s no deal.
Now, however, we have news.
💥"Official Israeli source"
-50 hostages will be released at once
-Hamas has not committed to release all hostage children. Hamas says it will try to locate the rest during truce days
-Ceasefire will last 4 days
-Hamas will release 10 more hostages for every additional truce day— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي💙 (@NTarnopolsky) November 21, 2023
– אסירים פלסטינים שהורשעו ברצח – לא ישוחררו
– האסירים הפלסטינים שישוחררו, נשים וקטינים, יועברו לביתם
– דלק וסיוע הומניטרי ייכנס לעזה במהלך ימי ההפוגה
– כל גורמי הביטחון, כולל צה״ל ושב״כ, תומכים בעסקה
– חמאס מסוגל לשחרר בשלב זה כ-80 חטופים— Suleiman Maswadeh סולימאן מסוודה (@SuleimanMas1) November 21, 2023
Machine translations of Maswadeh’s reporting:
The details of the kidnap deal, according to an Israeli political official:
– 50 abductees will be released at once
– There is no commitment from Hamas to release all the children. Hamas will try to locate the rest during the truce
– The ceasefire will be for 4 days
– Every additional day of the ceasefire, Hamas will release 10 more hostages
– The abductees who will be released alive, have Israeli citizenship
>>>
And:
– Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder – will not be released
– The Palestinian prisoners who will be released, women and minors, will be moved to their homes
– Fuel and humanitarian aid will enter Gaza during the ceasefire days
– All security forces, including the IDF and Shin Bet, support the deal
– Hamas is able to release about 80 hostages at this stage
ETA at 12:00 PM EST: Here’s Barak Ravid’s reporting. It has now gone beyond the original four tweets I posted, so first tweet from the thread and the 8 from the Thread Reader App:
1 A senior Israeli official said in a briefing with reporters that the IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad support the hostage deal with Hamas and so are the members of the war cabinet
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 21, 2023
2 \ The Israeli official said Israel’s insistence in the last two weeks led to an improvement of the deal mainly when it comes to the increase in the number of women and children that could be released and the decrease in the number of days of pause3 \ The official said that among the 50 hostages that will be released on phase one there will only be Israelis or Israelis dual nationals. The official said that if Hamas chooses to release foreign nationals who are not Israelis it is doing this not as part of the deal4 \ The official said that if during the four day pause Hamas locates more hostages it is willing to release Israel is ready to give another day of pause for every 10 hostages Hamas releases5 \ An Israeli official said: “We think Hamas can get 70-80 hostages. For all we are concerned it needs to bring hostages from the Islamic Jihad and other factions that hold hostages”6 \ According to the Israeli official, Israel will not release Palestinian prisoners who killed Israelis. In the 24 hours after the cabinet approves the deal the names of the prisoners will be made public so that Israeli citizens can appeal to court against their release7 \ The Israeli official added that Israel will allow more fuel into Gaza only during the days of the pause and once the pause is over the amount will go back to level before the deal8 \ The Israeli official said that Israeli intelligence services made clear they have surveillance capabilities other than drones and therefore they have no problem with stopping the use of drones for six hours a day during the pause9 \ As part of the agreement Israel will continue to prevent the return of Palestinians from southern Gaza to the northern Gaza strip during the days of the pause and the IDF will resume military operations in Gaza once the pause is over. END
So were does this leave us? As is the case with everything for the past 15 plus years, with Bibi!
BREAKING: An official who is involved in the negotiations on the hostage deal says “the ball is in Bibi’s court now” and he needs to make sure the cabinet approves it
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 21, 2023
💥Netanyahu would not convene the government if he did not have a written offer in hand https://t.co/JFCaXlrNPY
— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي💙 (@NTarnopolsky) November 21, 2023
What is Bibi actually up to these days? Noga Tarnopolsky has the details after the jump: (emphasis mine)
The first month of Israel’s war against Hamas was marked by the highest-profile support ever from an American president with Joe Biden sweeping into Tel Aviv, where he bigfooted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis treated Biden like a savior after their government failed to foresee or prevent Hamas from slaughtering 1,200 people and shirked responsibility for the attack.
Immediately after October 7, Netanyahu went into virtual hiding. He was unpopular with Israelis and with the Biden administration before the war thanks to a proposed “judicial reform” that would have upended Israel’s system of government, and possibly saved him from his corruption trial, which is still underway. Seventy-six percent of Israelis believe he should resign as a result of perceived mistakes and misconceptions that allowed Hamas’ assault to be so lethal.
Now, as the war killing thousands extends deep into a second month, the man known as “the Magician” for slipping out of political traps is trying to wriggle loose again by directly confronting the United States and, according to one former and one current U.S. official, angering the Biden administration.
“For the first three weeks, Netanyahu was asleep,” said Gideon Rahat, a professor at Hebrew University who specializes in Israeli politics. “He just couldn’t function.” When Netanyahu woke up, Rahat said, he realized that Biden had replaced him as the leader Israelis turned to in their anguish. “He didn’t like hearing ‘Biden, Biden, Biden’ everywhere, and now he’s trying to get back into it. He wants to be the focus.”
During a press conference on Sunday, Netanyahu touted a “diplomatic Iron Dome” and said he would not give in to “increasingly heavy pressure … used against us in recent weeks” to cease fighting, agree to future Palestinian stewardship of the Gaza Strip, or agree to a deal that would see hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. “I reject these pressures and say to the world: We will continue to fight until victory — until we destroy Hamas and bring our hostages back home.”
“No one thinks that at the end of this Netanyahu will still be around,” the U.S. official said, echoing Israeli sentiment. “It just doesn’t seem possible, whenever this winds up. He’s not taking any responsibility, but he’s trying to reposition himself for political survival. It’s incredible.” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)
Over the past week, Netanyahu has openly defied the U.S., by far Israel’s most important ally, on every war-related issue except the goal of eradicating Hamas. He declared that Israel would retain “security control” for Gaza “indefinitely,” leading Biden to say occupying Gaza would be “a big mistake.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken also underscored that there should be “no reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.”
Hours before Netanyahu spoke, Biden wrote in the Washington Post that “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”
Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday appeared to be a direct rebuke, according to Chaim Levinson, a political analyst for the left-leaning daily Haaretz and an old Netanyahu hand. He wrote that Netanyahu’s repositioning was now clear: “Mr. Security is dead; Mr International is born … He can no longer run for reelection on a platform promising to deter Hamas and prevent ISIS from reaching Sderot; his ticket is the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu will eliminate it. He will prevent Biden and Blinken from letting it into Gaza.”
Netanyahu has rejected the return of the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by a violent coup in 2007, telling NBC News that “a different authority” would have to take over after the anticipated defeat of Hamas. His extremist, ultraright finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, commended the prime minister for “clearly” stating that the “Palestinian Authority is a body that supports and encourages terrorism.”
“There’s no difference between Gaza and Ramallah,” Smotrich said in a radio interview on Monday. “We should all wake up to this fact. The Palestinian Authority supports terrorism and supports the terrible massacre. This war should end in a situation where there is no threat to the State of Israel. For any reason. That is victory.”
Biden also wrote that he has been “emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.”
“I told President Biden that the accusations against the settlement movement are baseless,” Netanyahu said on November 9, dismissing American pleas that Israel curb a swelling wave of violence in the occupied West Bank, which is governed by the Palestinian Authority and dotted by Israeli settlements. He portrayed the violence is coming from a “small extreme minority,” not the settlement movement.
“His comments about Palestinians particularly riled us up,” said a U.S. official familiar with relations with the Israeli government. Netanyahu’s words, in the official’s opinion, “were unnecessary given what we are trying to do for him and the support we’ve given him.”
By the way I actually do believe that Bibi will be around when this is over. There will never be a no confidence vote in Knesset to bring down the government and force an election. The reason for this is that the extremist coalition he’s built is using the cover of the emergency to achieve their authoritarian, theocratic, and neo-fascist objectives. Convicted terrorist Ben Gvir is illegally arming his ulradevout ultranationalists constituents with carbines the US provided Israel solely for military and law enforcement work. Smotrich is looting the treasury to illegally funnel money to his ultradevout ultranationalist constituents institutions. Both are working to drive Palestinians out of east Jerusalem, as well as the occupied West Bank and further expand the illegal settlements. Yariv Levin, Israel’s Justice Minister, is actually undertaking by fiat what he and Bibi were unable to through legislation: transforming the judiciary. Gantz, who is now in the emergency war cabinet, has never been able to actually build a coalition of his own because he’s even more hawkish regarding the Palestinians than Bibi is. As is Bibi’s Defense Minister Gallant. If a no confidence vote passes, none of these extremists get to keep doing what they’re doing. In terms of their personal political goals and ambitions, Hamas attack is working out great for them.
By law the next Israeli election won’t take place until 2026. By then, Bibi and his extremist coalition partners will have so radically transformed Israel’s government and constitutional order that none of them will be going anywhere. This state of emergency has been a great gift to them. They will milk it for every thing they can.
Finally, as I wrote the other day, once the women and children hostages come back and relate they’ve been abused, show signs of abuse, or both, I expect the Israelis will escalate because of how these hostages were treated.
Open thread!
Baud
👍🤞
randy khan
Fingers crossed.
It’s important to recognize that if Hamas releases the hostages, the pressure on the Israeli government to stop the fighting gets stronger – not just internationally, but domestically. I don’t know if Hamas thought about this when it took the hostages or not, but taking the hostages practically guaranteed an invasion would be supported by nearly every Jewish Israeli, and certainly all of the meaningful political parties.
Adam L Silverman
@randy khan: There will still be almost 200 hostages left if Hamas can actually deliver all 50 of the women and children being held.
Old Man Shadow
@Adam L Silverman: That is assuming they haven’t been killed in the air strikes and shelling.
dmsilev
It’s a really sad sign of the state of things that this needs to be specified.
way2blue
This is the passage in Barak thread that jumped out at me:
I would think seeking the release of foreign nationals as well as Israelis would be welcomed by western allies. Not understanding the political dynamics. Again…
dimmsdale
A sincere thanks for your post on this, Adam; I’m always on the lookout for anything you have to say on the ME as well as on Ukraine; your measured competence is an incredibly important commodity these days. Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving as well!
Adam L Silverman
@Old Man Shadow: Correct.
Adam L Silverman
I have updated the post. Ravid added five more tweets of reporting, so it now has the first tweet from his thread and the remaining 8 from the Thread Reader App.
JPL
@way2blue: It will interesting to see what Adam thinks, but that statement was written for the home audience, imo.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: Thank you for the kind words. You are most welcome. And a happy Thanksgiving to you too.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: The Israeli government does not care about the foreign national hostages. They only care about the Israeli and dual Israeli national hostages.
cain
I feel like Hamas has poked the bear and made Israel even worse. Frustrating.
Also, I think I was reading somewhere maybe it was on balloon-juice that Israel has been provoking Hazbollah into joining into an all out regional war. This seems to fit with his idea of creating even more chaos so he can turn Israel even more right wing by making Israeli feel even more unsafe.
I don’t know what the U.S. can do here – I’m feeling somewhat nervous about this conflict and how it might spill over into a regional war.
suzanne
Adam, do you see any possible reason why the Israeli government wouldn’t take this deal?
cain
Thanks Adam for this update.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: That was me, bottom of last night’s Ukraine war update.
Adam L Silverman
@suzanne: I expect they’ll take it. The questions are whether Hamas can actually deliver on there part, who breaks the ceasefire first, and/or how long it actually lasts.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: You’re welcome.
way2blue
@Adam L Silverman:
That was my guess—as we watch how the U.S. & other concerned nations navigate (or seek to thwart) Netanyahu’s more extreme plans. Thanks Adam, for again informing us about the Israel/Palestine crisis. Your ability to extract accurate information from the swirl of mis & disinformation is… Just thanks!
Villago Delenda Est
It’s a start. For the current crisis. The long term issues will probably never be addressed by either side, so we’ll relive this again in the future.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: I think Israelis care about the foreign national hostages. But you’re right, Bibi and his fascist fellows do not give a rat’s ass about them. They’re in a fucking Lidice mindset, as is Hamas.
Chris
Yep.
That was my take at the start of this mess – remove Bibi now, or he’ll simply do everything he can to draw out the emergency and use it to further entrench his political survival and his supporters’ power. The idea that it’s all good because he can just be removed after the war is over struck me as the worst kind of wishful thinking.
Adam L Silverman
Here’s the latest reporting I’ve seen. From Arab Israeli journalist Roi Kais:
Translation:
Adam L Silverman
@Adam L Silverman: His follow on:
Translation:
Adam L Silverman
@Chris:
Damien
Well Adam, sounds kind of like Bibi and his band of religion-poisoned fascist fuckwhistles are actively turning Israel into an indefensible villain.
Just gentle ribbing, but you must be fun at parties 😂😉 “This dip is good, but the saturated fat of the cream cheese is actively blocking your arteries. Unfortunately coronary artery disease is likely to kill you while you’re sitting on the toilet.”
Joking aside, you’re basically the only source I trust to tell it straight. Not your fault “straight” is so shitty right now, and I look forward to when there’s some legitimately GOOD news.
Thank you Adam
Betty Cracker
If this comes to pass, Israel will have ceased to be a democracy, and I hope Americans have the courage to cut them off cold. Not another dime. Not one more bullet. (And by “Americans,” I mean Democrats, of course. Republicans have essentially the same goal as Netanyahu, only on a Christianist platform.)
cain
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah.. not sure about that. I can definitely see Israel working to get the GOP back in charge – because they will absolutely be happy to work with a fascist Israel.
Evangelicals will also be happy to see Israel working towards a path of self destruction.
We honestly are surrounded by assholes.
Warblewarble
Even in the unlikely event that they are ever applied visa restrictions on the settler terrorists are weak sauce and of no consequence to the hard core who have already burnt their bridges. Those who need to be targeted are in government , and heaven forbid “Our Strongest Ally” should ever be held to account. The scorpion gotta do what the scorpion gotta do.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
The elephant in the room when it comes to Israel has always been that the U.S. government is extremely restricted in the pressure it can bring to bear on Israel, because domestic public opinion, and it goes far beyond the Republican Party, will lose its shit if it ever perceives the U.S. as pressuring Israel excessively. And the definition of “excessively” is practically meaningless.
We’ll see if that’s changed in the 2020s, but I doubt it.
FastEdD
My heart desperately wishes for peace through every bit of hopeful news. My head takes everything with so much salt it could fill the Dead Sea.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: True, but we’re living in an age of shifting alliances and disrupted political patterns. If you’d have told me 10 years ago that Republicans would be lining up to suck Putin’s dick, I’d have thought you were crazy. Things change!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
What if I, in the same breath, told you the policies Putin was pursuing?
Tony G
@randy khan: Call me cynical, but when this catastrophe started on October 7th I thought that Hamas, presumably not being stupid, KNEW that they were triggering a savage IDF attack on Gaza. (If I poke a grizzly bear with a stick I am choosing to provoke a violent response from that bear.). Exactly why Hamas chose to do this, I don’t know. Perhaps Hamas is so cynical and so indifferent to the lives and suffering of Palestinians that they wanted to provoke this bloodshed in Gaza for propaganda purposes. What a shit-storm. The worst possible people are the “leaders” of both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Tony G
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Putin is a fascist, not a communist, so for Republicans his ideology is just fine.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker:
It ceased to be a democracy when Bibi started pushing the reforms legislatively in the spring. Having hundreds of thousands of citizens in the street protesting, the bulk of the fighter pilots in the Israeli Air Force, and the bulk of the Israeli Special Forces resign in protest is not actually a sign of a healthy, vibrant democracy. They are the signs of a state that has crossed the threshold into authoritarianism because you have lost the ability to use the normal political process to achieve your goals. In this case blocking Bibi’s judicial reforms.
It is the same dynamic here. The fact that 6 JAN 2021 happened is the same type of indicator. As was McConnell’s blocking Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Justice. As is 30 states having GOP trifectas and, as a result, being managed illiberal democracies where the will of the majority of voters do not actually matter. As is having to get a court order to keep polls open in majority Black districts in Mississippi because they ran out of ballots within an hour of opening and still never had enough ballots for everyone to vote. As is every extreme gerrymander and extreme voter suppression scheme.
All the extra hard work everyone has to do to just barely eke out competitive victories in the US is not a sign of a vibrant liberal democracy. All of this extra effort and work and expense are signs that the US has already gone past the tipping point. Far too may people – elected officials, the news media, elites, notables – either refuse to recognize what has happened and continues to happen or refuse to admit it out of fear of what happens when they actually tell everyone the truth.
The US was an imperfect pluralistic liberal democracy from the late 1960s through to 2016. Prior to that at the municipal, state, and federal level it was an illiberal managed democracy. The backlash to the period that was the late 1960s through 2016 was strong, relentless, under reported, ignored, pooh poohed, and, as a result, succeeded in pushing the US back into what it has been for the majority of its existence. Which is not a liberal democracy.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: Did Bibi not finally get passage of his gelding of the court system? That seemed like the final piece of the puzzle for handing the car keys more or less permanently to the right wing.
One of Likud’s remaining vulnerabilities should be backlash for their utter failure in preventing 10/6 to begin with, but George Bush taught me that failure can prove to be its own reward, regardless of the body count.
The Iran boogieman assures we will not divorce Israel IMHO.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: He did not. His Justice Minister is slowly putting them into effect by fiat under cover of the emergency.
Soprano2
This is why I want to lose my shit at people like Duncan Black. He seems to believe Biden could bring all kinds of pressure on Israel and suffer no consequences at all, and this just isn’t true. He cites things Reagan did, without acknowledging that the world is completely different now than it was when Reagan was president, and that this kind of thing is received differently when a Democrat does it. I think Biden has said as much as he thinks is politically feasible about Gaza and the Palestinians, and it’s a whole lot more than any Republican would ever say, but the thanks he gets is howling about how it’s not enough, he should kick Israel to the curb immediately. It’s nonsensical.
taumaturgo
@Chris: For those in this blog that haven’t noticed, when it comes to Israel we have a uni-party. Both parties feed heavily from the Israel lobby coffers, not to mentioned the weapons manufactures. It is not personal, it is all about the $$.
Ohio Mom
Hamas has lost children? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, the Trump years.
I am crossing my fingers very hard that this ceasefire comes true and is the start of …something.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@taumaturgo: Democrats are too accomodating to Israeli government thugs, true. Republicans are their full-throated eager enablers. Don’t both sides this shit, even if this is the one case where there’s a tiny nugget of truth to it.
They aren’t the same.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, fiendish even for them.
Thanks for the clarification.
Chris
@Soprano2:
The problem is that for the first time there’s actually a domestic constituency that might need to be taken into account that cares about the Palestinian side as well, given reactions in the Arab American community and given how disproportionately concentrated it is in Midwestern states that are on the electoral razor’s edge, made the difference in 2016 and 2020, and will make the difference one way or another in 2024.
I have no idea how Biden is going to thread this needle, and I suspect he doesn’t either. Historically, pro-Palestinian voters have had quite possibly the most easily dismissed cause in all of politics, and politicians from both parties acted accordingly. For them to be electorally significant is pretty much unprecedented, and since the pro-Israel demographics haven’t stopped being relevant either, Democrats are going to have to figure how best to catch the 22.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@way2blue: I defer to Adam on this, as we are all here for his expertise, but I think the foreign nationals taken hostage for which Israel is not negotiating any release are agricultural “guest” workers from Asia. Israelis don’t care about them any more than we care about our migrant farm workers. The Israelis like rights-free cheap labor as much as we do, but Mexico is far away, so they import poor people from places like Thailand.
I just found this about them on the internet:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/21/israel-serious-abuse-thai-migrant-workers
taumaturgo
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
2022 AIPAC
contributionsbribery to congressional candidates:Democrats = $7,932,728
Republicans = $4,766.099
House Recipients 2022: Democrats $4,801,918
Republicans $3,725,749
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Adjust your priors. They are competent Fiends. (They should be treated as such.)
Another Scott
Good news.
Thanks for the update.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Chris: I understand that, it’s why I want to lose my shit. He seems to think Biden could just throw Israel overboard and embrace the Palestinians, and that’s just not true. Biden has said a lot more about Gaza and the Palestinians and helping them than I remember any other president saying. What people like Black seem to want is I think impossible for Biden to do. They can’t even acknowledge that he’s better on this than any president has been for a long time.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, I keep hearing assertions that Bibi is supporting Hamas on the low. Do you have any good factual sources about this?
Marc
It isn’t just Arab-Americans that need to be taken into account, it’s also Muslim-American communities originally from Africa and Asia, plus a good portion of the under-30 demographic. My daughter and her friends are representative, mid-20s, multi-cultural and multi-racial, they tend to be far more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians than they are the Israelis. If the Democrats want these communities to come out and vote enthusiastically for Biden, more visible efforts need to be made to address their concerns. Just telling them to suck it up and vote, ’cause Trump, is a mistake.
Bill Arnold
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Adam will have lots more.
This (right after Hamas’s murderous pogrom) is a typical press piece, and draws from discussions within Israel for the last 10 years or so, or more. Not enough direct quotes but it’s easy enough to find them.
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces – The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from (The Times of Israel, Tal Schneider, 8 October 2023)
Direct payments (or control with other means) would be very hard to prove without luck or a leak, and might also involve Islamic Jihad.
Joey Maloney
I am sad to agree with the learned Dr. Silverman but I’ve been saying this since the war started. The Israeli public has no confidence or trust in Bibi but it’s not up to us. It’s up to his stooges in the Knesset whether he stays or goes and they are all at least half bright enough to understand that they either hang together or hang separately, as the saying goes.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Where was the “anti-war left” in 2021, when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan? He spent a lot of political capital with that action, and his polls haven’t recovered since. It’s frustrating to see.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: There’s a huge generational split too. Americans under 40 feel very differently about this than Americans over 40, even if they are very liberal. And the split is largely intra-left.
The thing is, the split is so complete that I don’t even think people on each side of the divide really even get how the other side sees it.
Chris
@Marc:
You’re right about the non-Arab Muslim communities as well, several of whom are also well-represented in the Midwest. I agree about the under-30s’ sympathies (heck, I basically am one of them, I’m only five years older), but I think Israel/Palestine is far less likely to be a make-or-break issue with them. For a lot of Arabs and Muslims, it’s a huge deal, like it is for Jews; they’ve gotten used to just being ignored because that’s how it always was, but all of a sudden they’ve got leverage now.
cain
@Adam L Silverman: Could explain why they want a fight with Hezbollah – to continue having an excuse to do more authoritarian shit.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: I think there are a lot of young progressives who just do not like Joe Biden for general vibe sorts of reasons and have been looking desperately for some specific reason to not support him, and they’ve found it.
Gravenstone
Suspect this was the intention all along. Basically goad Israel to overreact with the intention of scuttling any and all nascent overtures of acceptance by other regional nations.
Geminid
@Marc: You are right that Democrats should not tell opponents of US support for Israel to “suck it up.” I happen to side with Joe Biden on this matter, but I hope that if I encountered someone who in good faith thinks differently I would still show them respect, because they deserve it.
cain
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: The left is never satisfied – there is always more. They thrive on being disgruntled. What they want is a complete transformation of the Democratic party into a far left party.
Perhaps they should look at all these other govts that are leftist – none of them have been successful. Hell, we have better worker rights than they do.
cain
@Chris: Well, I don’t think the younger Jews are in on the whole Israel thing either.
Israel is definitely going to overstep and its support is going to crater even amongst Jews who are by in large liberal. Israel represents Jews in a way that makes them all look bad.
Chetan Murthy
@Gravenstone: This was Bin Laden’s strategy (and it worked! sigh)
ETA: by which I don’t mean that he wanted to destroy US relations with other countries, but rather, he wanted us to overreact and thereby turn Muslims all over the world (and in the US too if possible) against the US. And against US client regimes in Muslim countries.
Baud
@Chris:
IMHO, people with newfound leverage tend to overestimate the leverage they have and end up setting their own cause back. There is an opportunity to rebalance the U.S. approach here, but it’s a fleeting and delicate one.
Geminid
@Gravenstone: I think Hamas hoped to pry Israel’s Western supporters away. EU nations provide Israel with significant diplomatic support, and they are Israel’s biggest trading partners. So far they have sided Israel in this conflict and more generally, but that can change.
SomeRandomGuy
The whole mess is impossible.
What’s Israel’s endgame? Probably to be so badass Hamas won’t try something like this again, when, they were so badass Hamas would never have dared to do anything like this in the first place. So they’ll implement a stupid strategy to double down on a stupid strategy, because they’re like right wingers everywhere: every problem can be solved by use of military force, and refusing to obey namby-pamby ‘rules’ like ‘don’t deliberately murder a bunch of non-combatants.'” Sure, people have told right-wingers that you only make more terrorists by doing that, but rightwingers say “well those murdered innocents won’t be terrorists, amiright?” which really begs the question: is there actual opposition to genocide, or do rightwingers just hate people using the accurate descriptive?
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
What killed our support was Iraq though. Hard to believe bin Ladin anticipated that Bush and company would misuse 9/11 to invade Iraq. Had Bush stuck with Afghanistan, we’d have been in an entirely different situation.
Rachel Bakes
Thank you Adam for your thorough report and analysis. 🤞
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: I continue to wonder why (and whether!) Dem voters are anti-Biden. I mean, he’s better than anybody had a right to expect! And yeah, he’s not perfect, esp. not on the issues I care about. But FFS, his opponent is offering tire rims and anthrax!
I read about “Joe’s too old!” and I wonder: “in what manner has his age shown his unfitness? In what manner has his age caused him to do things that you think are bad? Or is this just a vaguely-formed miasma, like <<I want to vote for a woman, but not this woman>>?” I really do feel like they’re doing to Joe what was done to Hillary.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Bill Arnold: Checking it out, thank you.
Baud
@Geminid:
I’m probably jaded by the Internet, but I feel like most people see disagreement as disrespect these days.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: I’m trying to come up with a witty rejoinder involving pants, but no luck.
“Most people”? I disagree but my sample size is small.
[ETA it does seem like that’s a deliberate strategy adopted by the crazies: stoke disrespect and anger.]
MisterForkbeard
@Chetan Murthy:
Evidently he said “Britney” instead of “Taylor (Swift)” a few days ago, which is entirely proof of… something
Old School
@Chetan Murthy:
But he referred to Taylor Swift as “Britney” yesterday! If I can’t depend on my president to be current on today’s pop stars, then I … wait, that doesn’t really affect anything, does it?
Edit: Got to get up earlier to beat MisterForkbeard…
CarolPW
@cain:
Getting locked down in the library to keep other students at their colleges from harassing them, or getting blocked from walking through the quad, or having the kosher dining room shut down because of threats, or having the Twit fuckhead agree with the Tree of Life Synagogue manifesto or having an antisemitic Republican presidential front runner might make them think differently.
Baud
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
So freaking disrespectful.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
@Old School:
Oops he did it again…
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: there are emojis for this.
Geminid
@SomeRandomGuy: There was a good interview last month of Amos Yadlin, a former IDF intelligence chief, in Politico Magazine. The interview covered a lot of ground, but one thing that stood out to me was when he stated the Israeli government’s basic war aim: to end Hamas’s 17 year rule over Gaza.
I could not say whether or not the IDF will achieve this or even can achieve it, but Yadlin is still very tied into that nation’s security establishment and I believed him when he said they are going to try.
C Stars
@MisterForkbeard:
@Old School:
Someone has probably already posted this, but here’s a link to a non paywalled Atlantic article about how Trump is actually very old.
Has Anyone Noticed That Trump Is Really Old?
He’s younger than Biden, but not by much.
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: The problem with this type of “thinking” is that, de-facto, there is a binary choice: Either Trump or whoever the Dems nominate (Biden this year; Hillary seven years ago). That’s the choice, like it or not. Intelligent adults understand that and act accordingly.
Martin
@Tony G: Of course Hamas knew there’d be a security crackdown – that was the point of the attack. Security crackdowns are good for Hamas recruitment, or for turning citizens into activists/fighters that are at least somewhat aligned with Hamas.
So yes, Hamas is willing to sacrifice Palestinian lives for their political objectives, but so is Israel – just in a different way. Bibi’s administration said Hamas was useful were PA was not because the latter forced them to work though a political stalemate – Israel didn’t want to agree and adhere to a 2 state solution, which is what PA was fairly peacefully pushing for, but Hamas, trusting that they will at least try and kill Israelis meant they could escape that political stalemate through violence – and Israel was much better positioned to win a violent conflict than they were to win the political conflict they were in. So Israel too chose violence and continues to because the settlements are ensured to produce violence and ensured to result in the death of Israelis. But they’ve determined that is an acceptable sacrifice for their larger political goals (in Bibi’s case, annexation of the West Bank and Gaza). Bibi can’t get there without the death of Israelis.
That doesn’t mean either party *want* their citizens to die, but they want their political goals more than that.
In this case it’s also entirely possible that both sides miscalculated – Hamas was too successful at killing Israelis, forcing Israel’s hand at a much stronger crackdown than Hamas anticipated and Israel will prove too successful at killing Palestinians forcing the international community’s hand to intervene.
We want to think these people are smarter than us. Reminder that Donald Trump was president of the US for 4 years. A lot of these people are absolutely not smarter than us. They do dumb shit constantly.
Nukular Biskits
@Damien:
I second your appraisal of Adam.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I agree that this just isn’t rational, but I’ve been trying to figure out anti-Democratic-Party progressives for a long time, and I think a lot of them simply have a moral model of correct behavior in a democracy that is completely different from “vote in such a way as to bring about the best outcome”. They think of that kind of strategizing as somehow dishonest, like telling a lie.
Their model is something more like “vote in such a way that you would desire everything the candidate does or espouses to be universal law”, and it means just about everyone is inadequate and votes for marginal protest candidates or for nobody abound.
A corollary is that if you vote for someone, they’re elected and they do anything wrong, you have dirty hands, whereas if your vote causes the election of someone else bad who you didn’t vote for, that’s the corrupt system’s fault, not yours. So never voting for anyone who wins, or not voting at all, is a way of keeping your hands clean.
Citizen Alan
@cain:
As I’ve said before, Hamas and the Netanyahu administraiton are in a mutually parasitic relationship in which the political influence of each is dependent on their ability to provoke the other into further extremism.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That worldview sounds quasi-religious to me.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
“We have always been at war with Israel/Hamas.”
Bupalos
It’s probably also worth noting that the kind of wholesale “switching sides” being referenced here would also be at least as morally fraught as our current policy path. All of these decisions come with body counts.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think it’s more like music hipsterism translated to the world of politics. “I liked them before they sold out and got commercial.”
Citizen Alan
@trollhattan:
Indeed. The reason so many people were and are susceptible to 9/11 conspiracy theories is the obvious extent to which Bush and the GOP benefited from 9/11. If there had been no 9/11, I 100% believe that a Dem would have won in 2004 and been in a position to replace Rehnquist and O’Connor. Instead, Bush nearly lost to Kerry despite being a war-time president!
Hoodie
@Martin: Seems to me that Hamas thought this would trigger a wider war, with Hezbollah and Iran jumping in and the Israeli response derailing any further progress on relations between Israel and the gulf states. The Iranians and Hezbollah didn’t oblige; I do wonder if they may have led Hamas on, but they didn’t want to have their fingerprints on this.
Martin
@cain: Citation needed on that one. I mean, ‘leftist’ in the context of the US could broadly mean ‘anticapitalist’, could mean ‘anti-hierarchical’, could mean ‘antifascist’. Could mean any and all three.
These groups often have very opposing goals. Hell, there’s a whole, very weird category of ‘authoritarian socialists’ who are very loud and stupid. So I think you have to be a fair bit narrower in terms of identifying which US leftists you are thinking of as well as identifying which leftist governments you are referring to.
When I think of the US left, I think of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalists, who are currently best represented by, say, Scandinavian countries, who you are arguing are unsuccessful.
AlaskaReader
@cain: If you will, from where are you attempting to attribute the credit for the existence of those worker rights?
Citizen Alan
@cain: For “The Left,” politics is entirely performative. If a contemporary American Leftist was offered a choice between getting only 75% of what they wanted or getting absolutely nothing but being able to blame it all on Democrats, they will choose the latter every time. BTW, I was delighted to see the execrable Susan Sarandon has been dropped by her agency for stupid and hateful about Israel at a pro-Palestinian rally. Will no one weep for the poor cancelled millionairess?
Matt McIrvin
@cain: I would like the Democratic party to be further left than it is, and in some areas, further left than it is ever likely to be. But I’m also a realist about how likely that is to happen, and I believe that harm reduction is a primary goal of elections whether it gets you your ideal world or not.
Old School
@C Stars:
Trump certainly is showing signs of age, but I couldn’t read the article about how old he is without signing in.
Bupalos
@Chetan Murthy: This just isn’t a realistic version of how most of the marginal American voters see the office of president. They don’t have an accurate image of how preidential decisions happen, how an administration functions, or how executive decisions play out in the economy or foeign policy. In the collection of image versions they do have of presidential power, it matters a great deal whether the president personally knows details and keeps them straight minute to minute. Many of this kind of voter will seriously consider that a momentary confusion of say Iraq with Iran could lead directly to a catestrophic war.
It’s pretty important to keep this in mind in assessing the political salience of Biden’s age. It’s going to matter a LOT. Almost surely more than incumbency. We better be clear-eyed about that, and figure out the most productive way to address this.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: If “cui bono?” were the only consideration I would find it entirely plausible that 9/11 was an inside job.
It wasn’t timed ideally for Bush though. If it’d happened a bit later, say in September 2003 rather than September 2001, he’d probably have won reelection with one of the greatest landslides in US history rather than in a squeaker. On the other hand it did get him a rare “in” party win in the 2002 midterm.
JoyceH
@Old School:
My take on the ‘all the candidates are OLD’ complaint is that yeah, both Biden and Trump could very easily die in office during a second term. The difference is that Biden dying would leave behind a Biden administration staffed with competent professionals, whereas a Trump death would leave behind… well, you know.
Baud
@Bupalos:
If that were true, Trump wouldn’t have a chance either.
Also, Biden has always been a gaffe machine. It didn’t stop him from getting elected the first time.
In any event, it’s beyond our control.
Old School
@Citizen Alan:
Was curious what she did.
Citizen Alan
@Martin: When I think of the American Left, I think of three acquaintances (not quite friends) I have known over the last ten years. One of them saw his marriage break up after less than 3 years over his desire to move to Vermont so he could join the Black Bloc. Another spends all his free time on Facebook reposting “Marxist memes” when he’s not working at his day job as an IT specialist in New Orleans that paid him enough for his 14-day vacation with his wife to Greece. The third one smugly told me that he would not vote for either Trump or Clinton but rather Eugene Pureyear of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. At the time, that friend was a VP for Intellectual Property a a large corporation.
Cosplay Marxists, every fucking one of them.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
That last one is hilarious.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@SomeRandomGuy:
In my opinion, its to consolidate the hard right’s power and to drive the Gazans into Egypt from which they will never be allowed to return.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: To the extent I was ever drawn to any “conspiracy theories,” it was that I suspected the Bushies knew Bin Laden was going to strike within the continental US but they completely underestimated the scope. They were expected a few plane hijackings with few if any fatalities. At worst, something like the Centennial Park bombing that would kill a few dozen people. And then, they interrupted Shrub’s My Pet Goat reading to tell him the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor had gone down on his watch, and the simple bastard nearly shat himself.
Mendacity and incompetence is a deadly combination, it seems.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: It’s even funnier when you realize that, at the time, Eugene Pureyear was under 35 and wasn’t even eligible to hold the office of President even in some Bizarro World where he won.
Bupalos
I don’t think anyone has suggested Biden doesn’t have a chance because of his age. It’s just going to be a very real negative in a lot of marginal voters’ minds. It’s going to be a negative for Trump as well, but Biden’s presence insulates him from the issue.
If Biden wasn’t ego-invested here, he could have declined to run again specifically because of his age, and Trump would be standing there as the oldest nominee in history. Which would be even more salient because of his chaotic unpredictable nature.
Baud
@Bupalos:
Whatever the risk, I happen to think Biden is our best shot. I don’t see an obvious heir that is widely popular or an open primary that wouldn’t be contentious. That last part is even more true now with the Gaza situation. So I’m pleased Biden is ego-invested.
Martin
@Hoodie: Yeah, that might have been their specific goal with this attack, but again the security crackdown by Israel is necessary to cause that to happen.
I don’t think the Israeli response derailed it. I think Israeli expressions that nukes might be on the table may have given pause, and I think the US positioning also gave pause – which I would argue may have been an effort to get Israel to step down, rather than an effort to jump in on Israels side. But it sure looked to a lot of people that the US jumped on Israels side, which is why I think a lot of democrats are pissed. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure. If the US got spooked by internal Israeli nuke discussions we sure as shit aren’t going to reveal that and blow whatever assets we may had in the room. But it’s at least a possibility.
I don’t think we as observers can think of this in deterministic ways. There’s a host of possible motivations by all parties that we can give statistical weights to, and be aware of what the most likely explanation(s) are, but can’t rule out the cloud of other explanations that are valid if less likely (or we assigned the wrong weights to).
Bupalos
@Baud: I can see both sides there. Your take would be more persuasive for me if there wasn’t such a polarizing figure on the other side. I think that ultimately would heal potential rifts. So personally I think he should have announced he was done shortly after the IRA. I do think it’s really probably too late now.
Kathleen
@C Stars: Trump will not have a Black woman Vice President on the ticket.
PJ
@Bupalos:
You’re off your rocker. Give up the advantage of incumbency (probably worth at least 5 points), for what? “Enthusiasm”? Please. Nobody gives a shit about enthusiasm when it comes time to vote – either they think voting and democracy is important, and will vote, or they don’t think voting and democracy is important, and won’t.
Trump’s age wasn’t used against him in 2016 or 2020, and it won’t be used against him in 2024, not because Clinton or Biden are also old, but because the media likes Trump and wants him to win.
Martin
@Bupalos: I’ll observe another phenomenon to what I’ve said before regarding polling. The less constrained a person is in a decision, the more latitude they have to express dissatisfaction with that decision.
Everyone complains about taxes because they have to pay taxes. The more the decision to vote for Biden feels like a forced decision (because the alternative is apocalyptic) the more critical people will be of Biden. It’s not helpful, but that’s what people do. This is one reason why primarying an incumbent can be helpful – at least there was a choice. Despite a LOT of people on the left complaining about Biden during the primaries, they showed up during the general. They had a chance to vote for an alternative, they lost, but they respect that they were given a choice, and they showed up.
4 years later they don’t have a choice in the primary and they don’t have a choice in the general, and they resent that. Kinda normal. Not helpful to be badmouthing the only reasonable choice, but normal. You’d think people had learned after 2016, but not really.
MomSense
@Bupalos:
Trump’s age could be an issue now especially since he says crazy things, talks about starting WWII and doesn’t seem to know who is president now or who he ran against. Specifically trump’s cognitive ability is a legitimate issue of concern in addition to his temperament and erratic and sociopathic behavior.
The media decided to make Biden’s age an issue because they don’t have anything else to squawk about.
If Biden had dropped out trump’s age wouldn’t be an issue because the media don’t care about it. They love the drama and clicks trump delivers to them.
Geminid
The meeting of Israel’s full Cabinet began about three hours ago and as far as I can tell it’s still going on. I saw an item in the Times of Israel that may explain the delay: there are 38 Cabinet ministers! I think with Gantz’s party the coalition totals 75 Knesset members. So one out of two coalition MKs has a cabinet position of some sort.
This comes from coalition negotiatians where, in order to satisfy the various parties, new cabinet posts are created. This is in a nation with about 9.5 million citizens.
gvg
@Baud: And also, torture, which we not only shouldn’t have done, but doesn’t work and generates false information which then ends up contaminating all the analysis done based on it, then based in the next result etc. Bush supporters were inclined to think like thugs that brute force always works best, and just screwed everything up. It is even why they thought conquest would be easy and cheap. I have no training in war, but I knew they were screwing up and failing from the get go, even before the torture came out. And I should have expected that. It’s in all their dumb fantasies.
Chief Oshkosh
@cain:
Sshh! Nobody tell Denmark!…Or Norway…Or The Netherlands…Or Finland…Or Iceland…Or Sweden…Or…!
I’m actually a pretty conservative guy, but even I recognize that the US Democratic Party is, at best, center-left.
Geminid
@Martin: I don’t think there were any internal Israeli nuke discussions. That dumbass with a made-up cabinet post came up with that one himself. He’s one of the hooligans Netanyahu let Itamar Ben-Gvir bring into the government.
The guy got slapped down immediately. Aside from being stupid, he violated the first rule of the Israeli Nuke Club: Do not talk about the Nuke Club.
Chris
@PJ:
Yep.
I don’t know what the hell it’s going to take before the average Democratic voter ingrains the fact that no matter what their issue with the current candidate is, any candidate they can come up with is going to have an equivalent issue drummed up by the media that’ll be just as big a handicap in the election. Stop believing the media. Stop repeating the media’s concern-trolling. It doesn’t fucking help anything.
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: None of those Scandinavian countries have a Left government. Right now they all have Center-Right or Center-Left governments. Maybe these countries were more liberal 20 or 30 years ago, but from what I’ve seen their voters now are no more liberal than voters in the US.
Mike in NC
@Old School: I read part of that article. Fat Bastard is basically still stuck in the 1970s and 80s when it comes to most policies. Stuck in the 1950s in other matters, like Civil Rights.
Chris
@Chief Oshkosh:
This comes with multiple caveats;
1) The Democratic Party is further to the center than most of the West’s “center-left” parties… on economics, mostly. On other issues, it can get very different. The Democrats are to the left of just about every “center-left” party in Europe on immigration, for instance. And probably even some far-left parties.
2) Even on economics, the left-wing cred of countries like the one you mention comes with quite a bit of coasting on reputations that were built in the immediate postwar era, when the modern welfare states were created. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. The Europeans had their DLC/Third Way types too, and I’d argue the U.S. Democrats pulled out of that mentality faster, and they’ve been moving pretty steadily to the left since the mid-2000s. Ten years ago, I was pretty fucking relieved that the country I lived in was being run by Obama and not the austerity cultists that took over the EU, and Biden’s economic policy has been miles better than Obama’s.
3) The Democrats are our system’s equivalent of what in most other Western nations would be not a party, but a coalition. In France, Mike Bloomberg would be LREM (the centrist party built on the ruins of the center-left and center-right party that currently holds power). AOC would be LFI (the far left party). Over here, they’re both in the same party. That limits the usefulness of comparisons somewhat.
Adam L Silverman
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I included a full run down on this in either the second or third update I did in October on the Israel-Hamas war. You’ll find all the details there. Either the 8 OCT or the 15 OCT one.
Adam L Silverman
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: They were either silent as he was being crapped all over by the political reporters, the GOP, Trump and his people who actually negotiated that terrible deal, and the MAGA right or they joined in.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: @cain: I partially misspoke. They were able to push one reform through before they paused their legislative efforts. That one legislative reform of the judicial system removed the reasonableness clause, as well as made other changes.
Chief Oshkosh
@Geminid: They have very liberal institutions compared the US. E.g., heavily socialized healthcare, strong consumer protections, etc.
ETA: And stronger unions
ETA2: Agreed about recent elections, but…
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: Yes, I’m talking about recent elections, like in the last 5 or 10 years, and I’m talking about these countries’ electorates as they exist now.
Miss Bianca
@Martin: Scandanavian countries have a Herrenvolk socialism. To the extent that they are successful, it’s because up to now they have had fairly homogeneous populations. Now that they are starting to get immigrants slightly duskier in hue – which would make their populations more like the US in that regard – suddenly a.lot of these countries are finding that their social.safety net is either too broad, too expensive, or both. An inconvenient truth that US lefties appear none too eager to address.
ira
@Chris: Excellent points. Not to mention that the FED — The FED !!! — has a dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment, while the monetary sadists at the ECB only worry about inflation.
Add to that, unlike the U.S., Europe has no surplus transfer mechanism from one country to another, since it’s only a monetary union, not a fiscal one, something which keeps the Mediterranean countries in a fiscal straitjacket.
Of course, if the Club Med countries had the cojones, they would call Germany’s bluff and demand a fiscal union, or else threaten to leave the Euro. Since Germany depends so much on exports — exports are about 50% of GDP (China is at 20% and the U.S at 10% for comparison) — if the Club Med countries did leave the Euro, the currency would go through the roof, and Germany would be insolvent overnight. The threat alone would be more than enough to achieve the desired outcome, imho.
A Good Woman
Appears Israeli cabinet has approved the hostage deal.