Also, no American hostages of any age or gender have been released.
Beau of the Fifth Column had something to say about that, and he seems a bit more worked up than usual in this video which for some reason this software doesn’t want me to embed, so here’s a link.
There are some good points here, especially about the value of hostages. We may not be comfortable with the notion of valuing some human lives over others, but that is what is playing out here. Hamas released the Thai and Filipino hostages, who were adult men, because they held little value to Hamas. The Israeli government will value Israelis over other nationalities (that is why release of the Asians were done via negotiations between/among Qatar, Hamas, and their respective governments, I’m not sure Israel was involved at all with that). Americans, whether single or dual nationality, are valuable. If they’re also Israeli then Israel cares about them. Since they’re Americans the US cares about them and their captivity might serve to moderate an American response and/or lead the US to attempt to moderate an Israeli response. So Hamas keeps four year old American toddlers.
Adult male Israelis who are young are, of course, potential soldiers so Hamas doesn’t really have much incentive to release them early, or perhaps at all. The older ones… well, hate to say it but older men don’t generate the same response as women and children do.
It’s a cold calculus and thinking that way makes me want to take a shower afterward, but there it is.
One of the consequences of this war is that notable waste of space Itamar Ben Squeaks has been running around pushing a ludicrous private gun ownership plan (apparently to make up for the fact that he has no intention of performing his duties as Minister of National Security).
Israel has always had a much healthier relationship with guns than other places I could name, and my own wild theory has always been that this has to do with everyone serving in the army. You know how some people say that school made them stop loving learning? I literally saw this happen with some of my younger relatives, who had a boyish love of all kinds of weapons until the army stripped away the exoticism and allure through mind-numbingly-repetitive maintenance and target practice.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that a slimy worm like Ben Gvir, who was denied the opportunity to serve because of his support of terrorist groups, never grew up and still has a gun fetish.
Fuck Ben Squeaks and fuck his attemps to turn Israel into the Jewish Wild West.
That depends. For some leaders at some times, the Palestinians proved extremely useful in justifying Pan-Arabism. So Abdullah I of Jordan, for example, who wanted to unify Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Syria into the kingdom of Greater Syria under his own rule, would definitely not want the Palestinians to go anywhere (nor would he want them to possess their own state, since then they wouldn’t need him to “liberate” them - hence his assassination at the hands of a Palestinian nationalist).
Egypt has generally leaned away from Pan-Arabism and towards Egyptian Nationalism. So indeed, most Egyptian governments we have seen wouldn’t have cared whether the Palestinians are there or not, beyond theor rivalry with Israel. But there have been exceptions.
This is all a moot point, though, because the Palestinians of Gaza don’t want to go anywhere, and outside of Right wing fever dreams Israel isn’t going to make them.
You’d then have a very large terrorist organization in the US, dedicated to killing and kidnapping Jewish people. Certainly not all, because a vast majority of the new citizens would just want to live in peace and raise their families. But a significant proportion, nontheless.
Fair enough, I meant that they don’t want to leave what they consider Palestine but yes, they do want to leave Gaza. And in fact that goes a long way towards explaining why there is so little interest in leaving Gaza for other countries - Hamas and other groups promise that with continued support they will clear out all of Israel for the Palestinians.
Do you see the word “Israel” anywhere in the post he was responding to? I’m well aware that both Israel and Egypt enforced a Gazan blockade. His post was still a non sequitur.
How is that a hoax? A hoax means lying, and I don’t see any lies on that site. People go to Hamas.com to learn about Hamas, and learn they do.
If someone did something similar with Trump.com - hijacking it and filling it with actual statements, actions and images of Donald Trump - then we’d all be applauding it, and rightfully so.
In happier news, Sunday’s hostage/prisoner exchange went smoothly. And an American was included in that batch of hostages.
A friend was all excited about that, and made me realize that I’ve kinda assumed the American hostages are dead, and hadn’t given much thought to them.
It did, thank God. They don’t release the names of the hostages until they’re in Israeli hands, so I find myself sitting there in front of the TV asking myself, “How many children? How many children?” Yesterday was a good day.