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Netanyahu not doing enough to free Gaza hostages, says Biden
Meanwhile there's a massive strike in Israel today which the PM has called a disgraceful show of support for Hamas. This is all in response to the recovery of six dead hostages which were shot, presumably before they could be rescued. Although this is indicative of Hamas's weakness in some sense, it has greatly exacerbated criticism of Netanyahu that he is prioritizing political survival over the lives of hostages. Although the US has generally pointed the finger at Hamas for the failure of previous ceasefire talks, it is clear that frustration with Israeli intransigence is beginning to boil over, with the US threatening to just go home and let Israel continue miring itself in a war that is creating further political division (is it okay to rape prisoners?), damaging their economy, and causing Western countries to rethink their support.
Based on some other hostages' testimony it seems likely that these 6 hostages were shot because the IDF was about to rescue them.
It's an unsourced reddit post, but this person claims the names of the hostages were being circulated a couple days before the bodies were found. There were rumors of a rescue mission: https://old.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1f660pm/the_6_hostages_bodies_found_in_gaza_have_been/lkyth9t/
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The moment the Israelis exchanged one hostage for a thousand Palestinians created a terrible precedent of which Hamas seeks to repeat.
I am not sure why the Israelis, knowing that their enemies were digging tunnels, did not dig tunnels of their own. Surely with modern equipment and a lack of a need for secrecy they could dig beneath to undermine them. Why hasn't this happened?
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Odd reports coming out of the west. I always feel strange reading these, the way they’re framed, the kind of background assumptions (or ignorance?) required to take these reports at face value.
To clarify: Hamas wants Israeli forces out of Gaza, including Philadelphi (the Gaza-Egypt border) so that they can take a long breather and resume fighting on better terms. To be blunt, Israelis would have to be retarded to take this kind of deal on these conditions alone.
Additionally, some of the Arabs released in the last hostage deal already went back to being terrorist scum and killed Israelis (and are now dead), making a deal with the 30:1, 50:1, 500:1 ratios Hamas is demanding an even worse deal. Trading a hostage for more dead Israelis is, again, retarded.
Frankly I can’t understand why any westerner thinks this is a good deal - unless they don’t actually know the details of the deal and just assume it’s some form of reasonable. The Biden admin is continually proving itself to be a terrible ally, and I just wish we could get off the American tit and make our own ordinance again.
I understand why Biden wants a ceasefire: to make it all temporarily go away before the election. And I understand why some Americans want a ceasefire: because they have a very dim understanding about anything that happens outside of America. What I can’t get my head around is why a huge number of Israelis seem to want a ceasefire.
They want the hostages back. Everyone I know is at most 2 degrees of separation from a hostage or more. It hits very close to home. Many don’t know the details of the deal, or suspect that PM Netanyahu is working from bad motives and don’t believe the reported details.
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Perhaps the Iron Dome has insulated them from the consequences of living in rocket range of Hamas all too well?
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It's the generic (and often unconscious) response to people being uncivilized on the left:
We ought to empathize with them, and take seriously whatever motivated them to such actions.
We can't put expect anything of them, because they're uncivilized.
We can't expect to influence them, because they're uncivilized. (And is it even right to try to sway them from it, given the justifications that they have for it?)
Instead, responsibility should be loaded upon those who react too harshly, because they should have known better. And we should feel bad for the victims of the response.
This is precisely the same path that leads people to adopt soft-on-crime prosecutors, and generally punish those who retaliate against the lawless. It happens often when it's easier or involves less unpleasantness for the state to punish those who are otherwise productive, than those who are wild.
This is the default thought pattern that happens when sympathy and responsibility get loaded onto different parties in some conflict. It clearly correlates with seeing things as oppressor (responsible) and oppressed (sympathetic), which is tied to why it's more common on the left, I think.
See Daniel Penny, see the UK riots (and speech arrests), see opinions on cops (when unjustified), etc.
I imagine things will get a lot better for you, if the 2024 election goes to Trump, and worse if it goes to Harris.
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I was reminded of some of the discourse surrounding @BurdensomeCount's post here reading this recent Maureen Dowd peice on Palantir.
Long story short there is a strong class-based bifurcation here where a lot of if not a majority of the West's so called "elite" are like EC in that they deeply resent western values. They want to dissolve the people. They want to see Isreal as a western ally weakened just as they want to see Iran/HAMAS and Russia as western opponents strengthened.
...because it really is that simple. Democrats in the US and Labor in the UK are all about a woman's right to choose right until it comes to a Isreali woman's right to choose not to be raped or taken hostage which point we're supposed to pretend that there is some sort of nuanced position to be had. I say "screw that".
The ones who resent western values are Israel. AIPAC and ADL are some of the biggest threats to western values. Israel is a state fundamentally opposed to western values that causes constant headache for the west.
Israel isn't a western ally, it is nothing but a giant burden on the west causing constant problems in the middle east, engaging in massive foreign interference and receiving a tonne of aid.
Iran is an indoeuropean nation that is stable and exports oil. They are socially conservative while still having a modern and industrial economy. They have done an excellent job at resisting the catastrophic neo-con policies that have swamped Europe with refugees and let jihadists run amok in the middle east. We should be thankful that Iran helped liberate large parts of Iraq and are fighting jihadists in Syria.
What about European women's right not to be raped by the migrants IsraAID is bringing into Europe? What about the christians in the middle east that are being destroyed by the hostile nation of Israel?
While Israel was on the opposite side of the civil war from the majority of Syria's Christians, they have no real beef with the Christian population elsewhere in the middle east; indeed, the one that they deal with directly, the Maronites, Israel would rather be more powerful as a counterbalance to Hezbollah. Of course the Maronites don't particularly want to be an Israeli puppet either.
While I'm sure some Christians have gotten hit as collateral damage in Israeli strikes and Arab Christians by and large are not huge fans of Israel, Israel doesn't seem any worse for surrounding Christian populations than the Muslim governments of those countries are.
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I mean, yeah; a state organized around blood-and-soil nationalism premised on a mythic past and present-day military conquest is pretty opposed to the modern deracinated, pacifistic, cosmopolitan western ideal. A bit surprised that you're in favor of the latter over the former, but wonders never cease!
Clearly the gentile governments of European nations don't care about protecting that right. Sounds like a problem with the Gentiles.
Sounds like another failing of world christendom. You should probably get on that.
Funny how the ADL and AIPAC have been pushing hard for the polar opposite of nationalism for us. Mass migration and open borders to Europe, an ethnostate for Israel.
Yes, we need to get rid of the AIPAC and ADL influence.
Why, it's almost like diaspora populations have strange relationships with the host nation and the metropole. Of course, if you actually look at the people who are doing the on-the-ground work of the mass-migration you get a lot of Catholic groups, not Jews.
Ah yes, the gentiles who actually hold office are just helpless little mice before the terrifying might of...completely ordinary lobbying groups. And it just so happens to aaaaaaallllll be the Jews...couldn't be the Turkish lobby, or the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Iranians.
The US has a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military advantage over any plausible combination of Middle East powers. This includes billions annually in military aid to Israel and refusing to export advanced weapons to other regional powers. The US even gives aid to Israel's neighbours for maintaining good relations with Israel.
Then there are the loan guarantees, the US's tactical ignorance of Israeli non-NPT nukes and the incredibly slavish rhetoric from US leaders: Donald Trump repeatedly expounded his dismay at how Israel no longer controls the US House of Representatives like it used to.
Or we could look at the Biden administration cabinet: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-in-the-biden-administration
Homeland Security, Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Treasury and Attorney General are Jewish along with many more.
It's laughable to think that Turks or Iranians have anywhere near the level of influence in Washington that Jews do.
Since 2008. Extremely GWoT-pilled. What harm, exactly, is this doing to our policy in the region other than generating more $120,000/yr. paperwork compliance jobs for folks living in Falls Church? Were we on the cusp of selling F-35s to the Iranians? Is Egypt making a better case to advance our interests in the region?
The sum-total of all U.S. aid to Israel since its founding 75 years ago is about
0.5%[Edit: /u/Randomranger is correct, this should be 5%; I make sloppy math mistakes] of the 2023 US budget spend. Also, that includes money for highly-productive joint research and development projects, and billions upon billions in laundered subsidies for U.S. military-industrial conglomerates (i.e. grants which can only be used to purchase equipment/services from U.S. firms), both of which we would want done anyway even if Israel wasn't the one doing it.You're right, there couldn't possibly be any other rationale for paying regimes on top of major trade and international supply routes to not blow each other's major infrastructure up. Has to be the nefarious influence of da Joos.
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Israel is only "a burden" and "causing headaches" in so far as our current so-called "elites" are more aligned with the interests of Iran and HAMAS than they are those of thier own nations.
There is nothing "European" or "Western" about Iran and "stable" is releative. Thier current tegime relies far more heavily on foreign support to maintain thier grip on power than the current Isreali government does.
Our so-called elites argue for "nuance" there to. Hence thier support for anti-western and anti-enlightenment policies like a two-tiered justice system for migrants vs non-migrants under the guise of "decolonization", "social justice", and various other flavors of socialist nonsense.
Christians aren't getting discriminated against or killed by the state of Isreal, they're getting killed by the people the state of Isreal are currently waging a war against.
The elites are completely bought by Israel and are far more zionist that the populations.
We have zero interests in wasting trillions destroying middle eastern countries and we have no interest in causing massive refugee crisis on the border of Europe. We absolutely share an interest with iran, we want a stable Iran that isn't causing a migrant crisis, we want jihadists defeated in Syria and an end to the forever war.
Far more than there is with Saudis. Iranians tend to be the easiest middle easterners to integrate. They even speak an indoeuropean language.
Yes, they sell oil and cashews to us. I hope they continue and don't have their oil industry go the way of Libya's.
The same woke politicians want to bring the migrants here from the wars they created. I oppose the wars that brought them here and the mass surveillance state migration requires. One of the advantages of the middle east rejecting the globalists is that they don't get infected with wokeness.
Israel has driven a large portion of the christians out of the country, killed thousands, bombed churches and orthodox jews spit on christians. The Christian community in Syria has been wrecked during the war in which Israel sponsored the Al Nusra front. Jerusalem should be a christian city and jews are the one religion in the area that completely rejects christ.
If our elites are bought and paid for by isreal why is the US government spending so much money and materiel to keep HAMAS in the fight, while pleading with the IDF to pull thier punches? Why are the most vocal supporters of HAMAS the staff and student bodies of Yale, Columbia, Et Al?
I dont think you have any idea what you're talking about. The state of Isreal has been accepting Christian refugees from across the middle east for decades now, that many of these Christians do not stay in Isreal and instead use it as a stepping-off point to Europe and elsewhere is not the same as Christians being "driven out" of Isreal.
Israel is the greatest welfare queen of them all. Trying to stop Israel from taking their genocide too far makes sense as there is a limit to how blood thirsty they can get and still win elections. Brutal wars in the middle east aren't popular.
Why are these schools cancelling people who don't think Israel has a right to genocide Christians while they cancel people say it is ok to be white?
Israel is terrorizing christians: https://international.la-croix.com/world/israel-unprecedented-report-lists-anti-christian-acts
To be clear, you are complaining about spitting and anti-Christian graffiti in Isreal while ignoring the priests getting imprisoned in Iran, assasinated in Pakistan, and the lynching of non-muslims in Syria and Lebanon.
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Iran has colossal numbers of Afghan refugees and has the same issues with them that European countries do. You spout DR memes without even understanding the countries you discuss.
What about funding Houthi Islamists whose flag says ‘Death to America’ serves Western foreign policy aims in Yemen? Since MBS’ ascension Saudi funding to Wahhabi Islamist mosques abroad has been in any case dramatically curtailed, this isn’t 2014.
Whose fault is that? They didn't create the Taliban and then fight the Taliban for 20 years.
What do they mean by death to America? I don't think they mean death to ordinary Americans. They mean death to neoliberal imperialists.
I have no issue with them delivering death to people who are trying to infect the Middle East with gender studies and push millions of migrants into Europe. I consider the people who participated in the wars in the middle east absolute traitors well deserving of the Houthis are delivering.
It serves an important foreign policy goal, kicking the globalists out of the middle east.
This made me chuckle IRL
"The leopards eating faces party surely don't want to eat my face, just the faces of my outgroup!"
Again why are they not saying death to Brazil? Death to China or death to Iceland? Why specifically the US?
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I am sure you would not apply this level of charity to Israelis chanting anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim slogans.
When people are burning flags and chanting death to a country, they are not making a distinction between "neoliberal elites" and ordinary citizens of that country. It would not even be completely unreasonable to point out that if you think the "neoliberal elites" deserve death, then the people who vote for them and pay taxes to their regime are complicit. This was the justification for 9/11 and basically every other terrorist attack on American soil or against American civilians and military personnel.
When people say "Death to ____," they mean Death to ____, not some abstract and nuanced political objection to ____'s current political leadership.
Which universities in the Middle East are pushing Western gender studies courses? Would love to know how those are going.
In mild, mild fairness, I could imagine that, like with North Koreans, the modal Iranian might carry much less hatred towards an ordinary American in isolation compared to the totality, but that probably doesn't scale well.
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There is no such thing as ‘globalists’, only competing factions seeking to expand their own (global) influence. Why are one side globalists but the other not? Islam is an inherently ‘globalist’ ideology, how could it not be?
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Of course, if you're determined to be charitable you will interpret any "death to [country]" chant as a desire to merely rid it of the bad elites in a manner surgical enough to not kill the entire country, or at least large amounts of countrymen. However, it does not appear to work out that way often.
For the record, I think that when someone says "death to America", they are not aiming to be very discriminate about it if given the chance.
I'm also curious if you'd extend the same charity to the domestic extremists who say "death to AmeriKKKa".
Why are they chanting death to America and not death to Iceland, Zimbabwe or Uruguay? It is clear that they are motivated by the absolutely abhorrent policies that american impoerialists have imposed on them. They are fighting the same military industrial complex that is a cancer on western societies.
A lot of that crowd seem to be actively pushing the same wokeness as the people trying to impose gender studies on Afghans. If they strictly meant the NSA, black rock and Lockheed Martin I would support it. If they want to impose all sorts of wokeness then I don't support it.
This is extremely naive. The same people will happily make terror attacks in arbitrary non-majority muslim countries they can get into, in fact even in majority muslim countries against non-muslim minorities.
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I'd be more concerned by what they'll do, not what they're motivated by. Generally, fighting a country's military-industrial complex in any meaningful manner is not good for that country. Unless, of course, you're losing badly and are just feeding your soldiers to the enemy's weapon industry.
I think you're displaying the same naivete here that the Russian progressives do when they assume that the West, if it crushes Russia, will only kill Putin and let the planet heal.
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Western elites are pro-Russian? In what world?
I’d make a more substantive comment, but frankly, this assertion seems so obviously false that I’m not sure the rest of your analysis is worth engaging with.
Edit: Reading the quote from that article in context, I think you completely misunderstood what he meant with regard to Russia. He was contrasting the positive response to his pro-Ukrainian activities with the mixed-to-negative response to his pro-Israeli activities.
Western elites are split/ukraine is complicated but i do think that the Clinton/Kerry/Obama wing of the Democratic party in particular are much much more concerned with keeping both the Ukrainians and the Russians in the game than they are the security of the US.
See the hilarious half measures like arming the Ukes with aircraft and artillary but then prohibiting thier use against russian military targets in russian held territory. Its obvious that our so called elites dont want either side to win. Given that, whats the real objective if not to deplete western stockpiles?
The restrictions forbid using US-provided missiles against Russian forces on Russian soil, not on Russian-held territory. This seems to me like a sensible precaution aimed at minimizing the risk that Russia claims this as a NATO attack against Russia and retaliates with nuclear weapons.
Which Russian soil? The soil that was Russian in Jan 2022, or the soil that was always historic Russian territories yesterday?
The former; the soil within the internationally recognized borders of Russia.
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Last time I checked the prohibitions were on striking pre-2022 Russian territory. Were they updated since then?
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What's the general strike about? Like granted labor unions probably get caught up in a general factor of left wing politics everywhere in the world, including Israel, but is there any specific trigger?
Yes, on Saturday night the IDF found 6 dead hostages in Gaza (in the Rafah area, btw) - apparently they were killed by their captors shortly before the IDF arrived. This lead to more protests in favour of a hostage deal, and a strike announced by the country’s largest labour organization.
Edit: I should note that in Israel, labour unions aren’t necessarily left wing. Israel in general has socialist roots so organized labour is basically baked in in many industries. A lot of unions today are actually Likud power centers, after some realignment when Labour (the party) basically became irrelevant. The head of this union, HaHistadrut is purported to be a friend of the Netanyahu family actually. Conspiracy theories abound about him being a controlled opposition of sorts, giving Bibi an excuse to act in ways that his coalition disapproves of.
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/philadelphi-is-becoming-rafah-negotiators-lament-politicization-of-ceasefire-term/
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-817291
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-said-to-call-philadelphi-demand-a-disgrace-drawing-fury-from-pm-ministers/
Reading those articles, they're pretty neutral - or ambivalent - towards those claims.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/philadelphi-is-becoming-rafah-negotiators-lament-politicization-of-ceasefire-term/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-said-to-call-philadelphi-demand-a-disgrace-drawing-fury-from-pm-ministers/
These all seem like reasonable concerns that aren't really answered in the article.
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Yes, I’m well aware. The experts don’t impress me. These are the same people who got us to this point, and they should all go home as far as I’m concerned.
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Lots of Westerners are:
Well, let me amend that to “reasonable westerner” then. Those all seem like terrible reasons. Especially 2, which I keep hearing also repeated from the Israeli left, seems to not understand that Arabs are a finite resource.
We’re at about 2% of Gazans dead, and 4.5% wounded to incapacitation. At some point they’re going to run out of able-bodied men. Might take a few years, but that’s still preferable to another October 7th.
This would work if there were 7 million Israelis and maybe 4 million Arabs. But there are about 450 million in the Arab world. Many of them do not particularly like Israel. The 7 million Israelis are not even internally united.
How many people do you have the ability to kill before the flow of Western weapons and support runs out?
There are less than 2 million Arabs in Gaza. I don’t imagine we could take on the entire Arab world, and happy that we don’t have to.
Good question. The alternatives are cruder bombs with more collateral damage though, which I don’t imagine is a more palatable option for limp hearted westerners.
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Machiavelli would tell you that you'll need to eliminate all the male children as well or else they'll grow up and seek vengeance.
Which Israel can't do. So the reluctance there at least makes sense.
The fatal problem with the radicalization thesis imo is that it's all well and good for America, but not everyone can go home and stop radicalizing people.
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That’s one benefit of stretching the war, then - they’ll grow up to a killable age!
More seriously though, if their society collapsed they’d likely have to move somewhere else anyway. In my fever dreams I hope Trump is elected and disbands UNRWA somehow, and then those refugees might even integrate in their host countries. That being unlikely, I’ll accept them just being further away and thus less likely to cause damage.
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My question to Biden is “or what?” What exactly is the USA going to do if Netanyahu decides to say “no”. There’s not really even a threat to not sell bombs, let alone set out economic sanctions or bomb them or something. This, for that reason feels less like a statement to Netanyahu and much more about trying to shore up support for Kamala among the Pro Palestine crowd. There’s just no credible threat here for the Jews in Israel to fear. There’s not even a hinted at consequence. It’s just “stop the war in Gaza or I’ll huff and puff some more.”
A lot of Biden's decisions seem to treat this as an issue of balancing domestic messaging, without considering if parties other than US citizens are seeing and/or being emboldened by the ambivalence.
Edit: "America's" to "Biden's"
I think there a lot of mid-wits in think-tanks who view the US managerial class as the only people in the world capable of exercising agency.
Meanwhile a cynic might suggest that emboldening certain parties is the intent.
I’m absolutely convinced they are. The entire thing sounds like a parent desperately trying to get a kid to behave by making threats that they’ll punish them in some vaguely unspecified way. “Behave or else” only really works when there’s an actual “or else” and the other party has reason to believe that you have the will and power to actually do that. Biden has neither, and I don’t think anyone actually believes he does. He doesn’t have control of congress and would thus have a lot of trouble getting any policy changes to happen. Congress isn’t going to agree to withhold weapons. They’re going to Scream bloody murder if he even suggests sanctions. Even supporting the ICC thing is a non starter. We know this, Biden knows this, Netanyahu knows this. And so not only is there no reason to stop, but if he wants to prove he’s not beholden to American dictates, he’d be wise to double down and do more of what he’s been doing. Why would he agree to stop?
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I think that the hostages are basically a distraction, geopolitically.
I am willing to cut the IDF some slack for hostage saving operations, if 50 civilian Palestinians and 30 Hamas die in an operation that ends up rescuing a few hostages, I will not cry foul at them for valuing the lives of their own citizens higher than that of the civilians of a territory whose government are murderous bandits. Much more slack than for accepting collateral damage for other goals such as offing yet another Hamas lieutenant. Other than that, the hostages should not make a difference.
In the meta-game, the winning response to hostage-taking is to ignore the kidnappers demands. If you roll over whenever someone takes your citizens hostage, expect to be doing a lot of rolling over.
The problem with Nethanyahu's war is that is is not actually winning. Defeating Hamas would (at least) require occupying Gaza, and the IDF seems unable to do that. Just striking here and there until all of Gaza is living in some refugee camps will not get rid of Hamas (killing half of their bandits will not accomplish anything on a decade scale), and seems like a waste of human lives.
I think Biden (or his minders) does not care too much about lives of the remaining hostages either, and mostly uses this as political leverage on Bibi.
Gaza really deserves the Germany-45 treatment (occupation and the stamping out of their government), but if nobody is willing and able to do that and if we have to suffer Hamas to live either way, then it seems strictly better to cut a deal with them where both sides refrain from bombing each other rather than fighting a war whose objective will never be fulfilled. Bringing the hostages home would make it seem less like the defeat it actually is.
That was pretty much the situation before the war. Israel was starting to let Gazans cross the border to work, there were a few rocket attacks which engendered similarly small responses from Israel, but mostly things were peaceful...
Then Hamas stormed across the border, taking hostages and killing everyone they didn't take. With the woefully optimistic plan that this attack would set off a country wide pogrom and rid the Holy Land of Jews forever.
Why would Hamas agree to return to the status quo that they chose to violate? Because Gazan civilians are dying? Hamas wants Gazan civilians to die, because it legitimises their position and delegitimises Israel.
Gaza is essentially a giant open air prison that is banned form exporting and has severely limited imports. It isn't sustainable for them to have the pre October 7 arrangement. Long term the only future for Gaza is to get a much better deal. Forcing Israel to fight a permanent insurgency is a viable strategy because Israel is going to be stuck in an unsustainable situation. Israel can't be in a constant state of crisis and war.
You have it fundamentally backwards. Israel not only already substantially opened up shortly before Oct 7, but they also hoped to open up further and Hamas put an end to it since it was against their interest. Palestinians working in Israel and normalising relationships is in Israel's interest, since it makes Hamas' obsolete and removes their biggest thorn in the side. Or at the very least they would like to just leave the Gaza strip alone, but that was unsustainable since it gave Hamas' easier access to weapons. Endless death and war on the other hand is in the Hamas' interest, since it lets them generate western and arab support and keeps them in power.
Israel was expanding the occupied terrirories on the west bank, had killed hundreds of Palestinians during 2023 and had thousands of Palestinian hostages. They were conducting a blockade against Gaza.
It isn't endless. Algeria was French for a century, now it isn't. Rhodesia was British for a century, now it isn't. They are turning Israel into the next Vietnam and making Israel fundamentally unsustainable. The US left most of Iraq and all of Afghanistan because it simply wasn't going to end. Israel minus Palestinians and ultra orthodox is about 1/60th of the US but trying to occupy a quarter as many people as the US tried to occupy with the help of Britain and several other countries in 2003.
You see how calling convicted terrorists "hostages" makes people suspicious of your point of view right? Why are we conflating the West Bank and Gaza? They will never be one nation again unless they ethnically cleanse Israel off the map. Of course there were trade controls in Gaza, it is, I don't know how many times it must be stated, run by a terrorist organization whos interest is killing Jews and using its own citizens as human shields to try and get American and European Leftists sad.
Palestinians have every right to engage in armed resistance. Israel is taking more than combatants prisoner and not providing trials.
Why aren't there trade controls on Israel then? They are bombing and occupying Israel? Fundamentally what the region needs is a situation in which Palestinians are in control of the situation and have a stable arrangement that they are satisfied with. The needs of the Israelis can't take higher priority than those that represent the bigger population. Security in the arab world is needed both for them but also since it benefits Europe. The interests of an insignificant tiny state with no natural resources has to be way down the priority list.
Well if its an armed resistance then they are POWs and not hostages. You are trying to have it both ways. In one part of your frame this is a legitimate war, so the Gazans are entitled to violence. Yet, in the other part of your frame Israel is not entitled to carry out its war in an effective manner, which, given normal rules of engagement + Hamas's tactics would ordinarily entitle Israel to a genocide. Which you would, obviously, again object to.
So a genocide of Israel is necessary? The people of Gaza have spoken and they prefer death to coexistence.
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Those comparisons would be more meaningful if Israelis could just take the suitcase or death deal. Even if we wrote off the ones of European origin, the Mizrahi Jews certainly can't/won't go back "home".
It bodes ill that the Palestinian cause seems to depend on a very narrow equilibrium where Western nations are both decadent and secure enough to just eat a loss or two, given the disanalogies.
It's not worth wondering about for Westerners but I often wonder if Palestinians actually think the Algerian deal is viable. Or if they're just lying for their audience and know deep down that, when it comes to it, Madagascar really isn't an option but they'll burn that bridge when they get to it.
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Quality of life in the Palestinian territories in general pre-war was not substantially below that of other (non-petrostate) Arab nations and communities.
Wasn't there a pretty big Gaza/west bank difference there, or am I misremembering?
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In Egypt people aren't stuck in a tiny area that is under blockade. They didn't have hundreds of their country men killed by an enemy government in the past year and they didn't have thousands being held hostage by Israel.
Daily reminder that Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza twenty years ago and were rewarded with redoubled attacks, after which they instituted the blockade.
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POWs or terrorist being held captive is not the same thing as “held hostage.” Also wonder why IDF killed hundreds of Palestinians but not Egyptians
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I’m not 100 percent sure what Hamas expected. In my mind I boil it down to three scenarios.
I suspect different participants may have had different scenarios in mind. The guys who were actually going in were probably pumped up with scenario one, while the leadership actually had in mind scenarios two or three.
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