In an interview at Foreign Policy of Israeli hostage negotiator Boaz Ganor by Tal Alroy, Mr. Ganor selects a variant o my option B from my musings over the likely outcome of the war between Israel and Hamas:

I would expect to see a military operation in large parts of Gaza changing into rescue operations here and there based on new intelligence on the whereabouts of the hostages.

The consideration of the Israeli hostages will become a minor consideration. The success of the military operation and the guarding of the lives of the Israeli soldiers would probably be the first priority.

I suspect it may start out that way but that won’t last long and it will transmogrify into something easier on Israel’s soldiers and harder on the Gazans.

Speaking of predictions William Galston’s prediction that the attacks by Hamas over the weekend are likely the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political career—that is confirmed by the opinion polls which are telling us that 4 out of 5 israelis blame him for Israel being caught flat-footed by the attack.

It looks very much as though prospects for preventing Israel’s war with Hamas from widening into a regional conflict have become much more difficult. The BBC is reporting that Syria is claiming that the Israelis have bombed the Damascus and Aleppo airports:

State media said runways had been damaged at both Damascus and Aleppo airports and flights would be diverted to Latakia, a city in north-west Syria.

Israel has not commented on the strike. It has previously attacked targets in war-torn Syria, linked to Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister was planning to fly to Syria on Friday.

Syria’s Damascus and Aleppo airports not only handle civil aviation but also host military bases, which are reportedly transit points for Iranian arms sent to Hezbollah – a militant group which is powerful in both Syria and Lebanon.

An unnamed military source quoted by Syrian state media said “simultaneous” Israeli strikes had “damaged landing strips in the two airports, putting them out of service”. The source called it a “desperate”Israeli attempt to divert attention from the Gaza conflict.

This is breaking news. Whether this is tactical or strategic or true at all is impossible to say.

I think that Zack Beauchamp is trying to thread a very tiny needle in his piece at Vox.com, “How to think morally about the Israel-Hamas war”. I respect his saying this:

Almost immediately after news of the attack broke, celebrations broke out among a group of Western leftists, hailing Hamas’s incursion as an act of “decolonization.” This was not merely a handful of isolated individuals, but included journalists with large followings, professors, and student organizations at elite universities. At a rally supported by the Democratic Socialists in America in New York, the crowd cheered Hamas’s success.

This cheerleading for murderous terrorists is ghoulish and self-discrediting: “a betrayal of the left’s most fundamental values,” as New York magazine’s Eric Levitz writes.

It is also, in a way, revealing. The moral failures of the fringe left show us how not to think about the ongoing horrors in Israel and Gaza — and, in doing so, point to a better way.

It needed saying. He continues:

Currently, the Israeli government is preparing a ground invasion of Gaza that threatens to come with unimaginable human costs. The callousness with which they are talking about civilian deaths in Gaza is appalling. An anonymous Israeli official told Israeli reporter Alon Ben David that their response would turn Gaza into “a city of tents.” A parliamentarian from the ruling Likud party said, on national television, that Israel should not concern itself with the safety of any Gazans who “chose” to stay in the Gaza Strip. (With crossings into Egypt and Israel blocked, Gazans could not leave if they wanted.)

This, too, is evil.

I do not pretend to know exactly what the right choice is for Israel going forward. But I know that if the Israeli Defense Forces do slaughter civilians indiscriminately, the Israeli government will be committing abuses on moral par with those of Hamas.

It takes him a while to arrive at his “alternative”:

I agree with Winant, broadly, that American policy prior to this conflict has been far too tolerant of the deepening of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. After the current emergency, the Biden administration ought to reconsider what it can do to put pressure on Israel to cease its cruel and counterproductive policies.

I agree with that. So far, so good. He continues:

This moment, to put it mildly, is not a time when anything like that will happen. But what we can do now is bolster the forces who support peace and equality on the Israeli side in other ways.

Israelis will never feel safe making concessions if they don’t, well, feel safe.

Surprisingly, bombs, rockets, and mortar attacks have a way of making one feel unsafe.

He continues:

More broadly, we need as outside observers to maintain basic human values in ourselves: to see the victims on both sides as humans, to care about suffering, and to attune our statements and activities toward finding ways forward that can improve the situation. If we allow ourselves to slide into moral solipsism, we won’t merely justify atrocities; we will blind ourselves to the steps that can be taken to actually make life better on the ground.

That’s pretty vague. But I agree with this, too:

We can and should extend sympathy to Israeli victims, but we should not let that shade into justification for retaliatory atrocities. We should condemn Hamas terrorism, but we should also condemn Israeli abuses against Gazans.

and here’s his conclusion:

Criticize Israel when it slaughters Palestinians, and criticize Palestinians when they slaughter Israelis. Note the asymmetries — both Israel’s vastly superior power and Hamas’s much greater disregard for rules about targeting civilians — but do not allow those differences to obscure the most basic moral truth: that human suffering is, in and of itself, wrong.

This is not just how we say the right things about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It’s how we, in the end, will figure out how best to contribute to peace down the line. To think otherwise, and find fault only with one side, leads to the moral oblivion of cheering the slaughter of children.

I agree with that, too. Nowhere does he explain how supporting leaders who advocate uncritical support for Israel can be reconciled with the views he’s expressing. In the end he makes common cause with them for electoral reasons which is not a moral judgment.

I found this piece at The Hill Judy Kurtz amusing in a grim sort of way:

Sen. John Fetterman said Wednesday that America “is not sending their best and brightest” to represent them in Congress.

“Sometimes you literally just can’t believe like, these people are making the decisions that are determining the government here. It’s actually scary,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

My former business partner once said something we referred to as the “reverse Voltaire”: “I may agree with what you say but I reject your right to say it”. I believe that Sen. Fetterman is referring to the House but it applies equally if not more so to the Senate. Elections are not assessments of cognitive ability. I find it simultaneously amusing and depressing that people insist that they are.

Over the years I’ve encountered quite a few politicians socially. My experience is that they have typically been pretty ordinary members of the professional class. Not stupid but not brain trusts, either. When you add that our Congress is increasingly ideological and ideology has a way of making people stupid, it explains a lot.

Has the Chinese economy “hit the wall”? That question is raised and partially confirmed by Yiping Huang at East Asia Forum:

Has China’s economic miracle ended? The answer is probably yes, as no miracle lasts forever. Higher incomes and the higher labour costs they create, deteriorating external conditions and an ageing population all present serious long-term headwinds against high growth.

But China is neither the Soviet Union in the 1960s nor Japan in the 1990s. For China, sectors like technology platforms, electric vehicles, green energy and electronics are now vibrant sources of innovation and growth. A major financial crisis, like a blow-up of the property sector, is still unlikely. The economic impact of demographic shifts will be partially countered by artificial intelligence and the digital economy.

This article was written before the announcement that Chinese property developer Evergrande was on the brink of collapse and the subsequent bank runs.

I don’t know what is happening with the Chinese economy but I suspect that the levers that have been pulled over the last several decades by the Chinese authorities to boost the economy no longer have the force they used to.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but there is such a widely held misconception about people having some sort of inherent right to particular areas I felt it was worth repeating. The most immediate example of this is the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. They both use their holy books to prove that God has given them the land.

The reality is messier than that. As well as we can tell there have always been Jews in Israel and there have always been Arabs in Israel. What has happened over time is that one side or another has seized control of the land by force. In 1948 it was the Israelis. In 1967 and 1973 the Arabs retaliated, were defeated, and the Israelis took more territory. Since then the Israelis have negotiated some of the land they seized away.

In the 7th century it was the Arabs. In the 16th century it was the Turks. The Turks held Palestine from the 16th century to the early 20th century. During that period the only people who owned any land in Palestine were the Ottoman, Jews, and Christians. I have written about that extensively. Claims by the Muslim Arabs that their ancestors owned the land for hundreds of years are BS. They didn’t. They were tenants.

If you’re going to argue that might doesn’t make right, the only ones who have any reasonable claim to the land are the Maronites in Lebanon. Before the Israelites the Canaanites held the land (DNA tests have suggested that the Maronites are Phoenicians who were identical to the Canaanites). But reality intrudes once again: I’m quite sure that some time in the mists of history their ancestors seized the land from someone else.

That isn’t just true in ancient Palestine. It’s true practically everywhere. It’s true in the American Southwest where the U. S. government displaced the Navajo who had displaced the people who there before them who had displaced the people who were there before them. It’s true in the Northeast of the United States. It’s true in Egypt, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in India, in China. There may be some vestigial population in East Africa who have actually always been there but, frankly, I doubt it. I think the present inhabitants came from somewhere else.

The siege of Gaza continues. The Israelis are not allowing water, food, or fuel to enter the district until the Israeli hostages are released. The BBC reports:

“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter,” said energy minister Israel Katz.

Israeli troops are mobilizing at the border.

How will this crisis end?

1. The hostages will be released, the siege lifted, and everything will go back to a dreary normal
2. The Israelis will conduct a house-to-house search of Gaza for the hostages with bitter urban warfare every step of the way. Some hostages will be found, some found dead, some not found at all.
3. The Israelis will stop bombing Gaza when they think they have exacted enough revenge, i.e. stop short of their stated objective.
4. The Israelis will clear a buffer zone between Israel and Gaza which will be surveilled around the clock. That also stops short of their stated objective.
5. The Israelis will assume the hostages are dead and kill every man, woman, and child in Gaza.
6. The present Israel-Hamas war will expand into a regional conflict.

I continue to believe that the situations with the Israelis and Palestinians are not symmetrical. The retort to that has been that events have not proceeded as I suggested they would to which I respond, how do they know? Every year in the last 30 years, indeed, since the founding of Hamas, Israel has experienced some terrorist violence, e.g. attacks, bombings, rockets and mortars, etc. For events to unfold as I have suggested the Palestinians would need to refrain from political violence for some period of time.

The Israelis and Palestinians have irreconcilable objectives. Both think the entirety of the land of Israel belongs to them. If the Israelis stopped ratcheting up their security measures, more Israelis would be killed. If the Palestinians stopped engaging in political violence, the Israelis might be able to relax their security measures. See? Not symmetrical.

We don’t support Israel’s goal—making Israel into a Jewish state or, worse, Greater Israel (present Israel plus “Samaria”, i.e. the West Bank and Gaza and parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon). We don’t support Hamas’s objectives: extermination of the Jews in Israel.

Full-throated support for Israel means implicitly accepting Israel’s goals.

Call it lazy or cowardly but the United States should tread a narrow line, opposing Hamas’s terrorism without supporting Israel’s broader goals. It’s not the path we’re on now.

I read the responses of the panel of experts assembled by The Guardian to the question “How should the U. S. respond to the Israel-Palestinian Crisis?” with a sort of grim amusement. Here are the experts and their responses:

Joshua Leifer: ‘The US has the power to stop the bloodshed’

Alex Kane: ‘Biden is giving the green light to an extremist coalition’

Yousef Munayyer: ‘The laziest thing the US can do is condemn Palestinian violence yet ignore the causes’

Libby Lenkinski: ‘Retain a sense of humanity for all innocent people’

Noura Erakat: ‘The US is a central part of the problem

I presume you get the gist of it.

Israel is not the ally of the United States. It is a client of the United States but it is a client like no other of which I am aware that dictates the terms and conditions of the relationship. In terms of U. S. politics support for Israel is a valence issue.

Consequently, Mr. Leifer is wrong. Yes, the U. S. could “stop the bloodshed” by bombing Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, or all of the above into oblivion but that isn’t what he means and in any event that won’t happen. Israel will not change their course of action if we say “Pretty please” and, as I note, support for Israel is a valence issue. We won’t hold our military assistance hostage to a change in Israeli policies.

Mr. Kane apparently does not read the U. S. news media. What he interprets as a “green light to an extremist coalition” (he means Israeli coalition) is interpreted by some in the U. S. as a green light to Palestinian atrocities.

Mr. Munayyer is correct. Condemning Palestinian violence and ignoring Israeli actions over which we have no influence is the laziest thing we can do. It’s also our most likely course of action.

Ms. Lenkinski’s remarks are a lament. I agree. It’s worthless and provides no guidance for action but I agree.

Noura Erakat is operating under the misapprehension that the Israelis would do things differently without U. S. support, verbal or material. Where’s her evidence? I don’t believe that is the case. Quite to the contrary the Israelis don’t need our permission and will do what they will regardless of what we say or do.

Injecting ourselves into the war is the last thing we should do. It is of no benefit to us and we’ll get blamed by somebody regardless. There is literally no upside.

The conflict is an instantiation of what happens when two peoples claim the same territory based on made up history, supported by their holy books. The panel’s reaction illustrates why we should not involve ourselves in such arguments in any but the most lofty terms.