In his Washington Post column David Ignatius reports on the incipient ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas:

A hostage deal between Israel and Hamas will bring joy to the families of the 50 Israeli women and children initially being freed, and a desperately needed four-day pause in fighting for Palestinians civilians trapped in the Gaza war. And it could gradually expand to a broader de-escalation of the nightmare conflict.

The basic idea driving the hostage-release agreement, approved by Israel’s cabinet early Wednesday in Jerusalem, is “more for more,” a formula that’s well known in arms-control negotiations. If Hamas delivers more hostages, Israel would be willing to extend the pause, a senior Israeli official told me. There is no cap on how long Israel might halt its Gaza operations, he said, as Israel seeks eventual release of all captives, including those in the military.

In his New York Times column Bret Stephens is not nearly as optimistic:

But a cease-fire wouldn’t spare just civilians. It would spare, and embolden, the main fighting force of Hamas. It would also embolden terrorist allies like Hezbollah. That’s a virtual guarantee for future mass-casualty attacks against Israel, for ever-larger Israeli retaliation, and for deeper misery for the people of Gaza. No Israeli government of any political stripe is going to allow the territory to rebuild so long as Hamas remains in charge.

That gives a second meaning to “Cease-Fire Now”: Either a demand for Israel’s total capitulation, or a recipe for a perpetual cycle of violence between a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction and a Jewish state that refuses to be destroyed. Whatever else one thinks of Israel, no country can be expected to sign its own death warrant by indulging those who, if given the chance, would annihilate it.

In his Washington Post column yesterday David Ignatius reported that the Israelis planned a large “tent city’ in south Gaza:

The next phase will focus on southern Gaza, where more than 1 million desperate civilians have fled, probably along with one of Hamas’s top political leaders, Yahya Sinwar, whom IDF officials believe is hiding in tunnels under his hometown of Khan Younis. As in the north, the IDF will attempt to separate the battlespace — dividing it into military targets around Khan Younis and civilian safe zones to the west. But this separation might be as difficult as it was in the north — with civilians again caught in the crossfire.

To care for Palestinians who have fled the battle zones, Israel plans to create a vast tent city for refugees at Al-Mawasi, on the coast just north of the Gazan border with Egypt. The location should allow humanitarian supplies to be delivered easily by land and sea. After the intense international criticism for the hospital battles in northern Gaza, Israeli commanders want to quickly create temporary medical facilities for thousands of wounded civilians threatened now with starvation and infectious disease.

That’s similar to what I thought was Israel’s best strategy: clearing a large part of north Gaza and building a tent city there, encouraging civilians to move north into it, carefully searching every entrant to ensure they were civilians. That would have been an admittedly risky strategy and one that the Israelis possibly do not have the ability to implement but I made what I thought was a better assumption—Gaza is now a write-off; it must be completely leveled not just to the ground but below the ground. That’s a consequence of Hamas’s handiwork there.

Here’s my question. Will the ceasefire last four days? Keep in mind that Hamas violated a ceasefire in its October 7 attack.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal follow up on my question:

Expect Hamas to drag out the cease-fire in hopes of making it permanent. Dribbling out 10 hostages a day, Hamas could stall for a few weeks. Or what if it claims after day two that Israel has broken the deal and hostage releases will continue only after Israel holds off for another few days? What if it pulls that trick over and over?

The domestic and international picture will become more complicated for Israel. At home a nation united will be divided over how long to wait. Abroad, the pressure to continue the cease-fire indefinitely will grow, and Israel can expect harsher criticism when it resumes fighting. Israelis know all this, but they are willing to accept the costs to retrieve the captives.

Jack heard about how distressed people were that the pandas were returning to China and decided to fill the gap they left behind. He’s become a panda.

In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin warns that Chinese President Xi appears to be dissatisfied with the status quo:

During the two leaders’ private meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area, Xi struck some ominous notes on Taiwan. Regarding Beijing’s long-standing desire to bring the island under its control, Xi said his “preference was for peaceful reunification,” a senior U.S. official told reporters — but then Xi outlined several scenarios under which he might use force. Biden reiterated to Xi that the United States supports the status quo and is determined to maintain peace.

But Xi’s reaction to Biden’s simple restatement of existing U.S. policy was to tell the U.S. president that China would not be satisfied with the status quo forever.

“Xi responded, ‘Look, peace is all well and good, but at some point we need to move toward resolution more generally,’” according to the official.

concluding:

Leaders in Washington and Taipei can’t allow optimism about the U. S-China relationship to obscure the fact that Xi is rapidly altering the status quo around Taiwan and interfering in Taiwanese politics more than ever before. Xi has revealed his true intentions. Ignoring his ominous words and actions would be the most dangerous policy of all.

My only observations are the following:

1. Taiwan is more important to the United States than either Israel or Ukraine.
2. At this point we are likely to lose a war with China.
3. Some American pundits will not be satisfied until we fight a war with China.

My advice is that we should reduce our dependency on Taiwan as quickly as we can.

Today Catherine Rampelle devotes her Washington Post column to complaining that we’re robbing the young to pay for the old:

This year, as in years past, the report exemplifies the country’s seemingly bottomless commitment to add debt on behalf of retirees. The researchers calculate that a single man who earned the average wage every year of his adult life before retiring in 2020 at age 65, for instance, paid roughly $470,000 in taxes into the Social Security and Medicare systems. But he can expect to receive benefits equal to $640,000 over the course of his retirement.

is the nub of it. And here’s her peroration:

This is a choice. So, too, are the consequences for other, younger constituents. Politicians can’t find “room” in the budget for investments in pre-K, or child care, or paid parental leave, or a more generous child tax credit. But they’re perfectly happy to leave the entitlement system on autopilot, with programs for seniors gobbling up an ever-growing share of our future spending obligations.

American society long ago committed to ensuring minimum living standards for the elderly — whatever the cost. What, I wonder, would it take to secure the same sort of commitment to the young?

I have all sorts of problems with her analysis. She’s looking at the wrong numbers; she’s not taking the right things into account; she’s combining things that should not be combined.

Using the Urban Institute’s own figures, when you compare FICA (Social Security) paid over a working lifetime by someone earning the average income, based on conventional actuarial assumptions about their life expectancy they can expect to collect about 8% more in benefits from Social Security Retirement Income than they paid in FICA. That’s at 0% interest.

If they put 15% of their income annually into an account paying just 1% interest (without fees), by the laws of compound interest at the end of the period they’d have an account worth more than the expected benefits. The problem, obviously, is not that their retirement benefits are too high or they’re not paying enough for them. It’s that the money is being used as though it were part of the general fund.

Furthermore, average is not the right measure to use. Median is. Right now the average individual income is $61,000 but the median individual income is $54,000. Based on that, my conclusion is that there are far too many people earning minimum wage. That’s what happens when you reckon economic welfare based on the unemployment rate: you optimize your economy for minimum wage jobs. But that’s not well-suited to the “safety net” we’ve constructed.

The real problem (most of the difference between the 8% gap I mentioned above and the 36% gap identified by Ms. Rampell is Medicare. As Uwe Reinhardt put it more than 20 years ago, it’s the prices, stupid. We’re paying too much for healthcare and Congress has steadfastly refused to control healthcare spending. That refusal is the reason that, after enacting short term waivers of the increases they knew to be sustainable (the “doc fixes”), they finally three up their hands and stopped trying to control expenses at all.

There is no way to control healthcare expenses without controlling Medicare “reimbursement rates”.

My final point in this post is that last year the federal government paid about $750 billion on Medicare but government at all levels paid $870 billion on public education. Kids aren’t being ignored.

The simplest explanation of Ms. Rampell’s plaint about spending too much on the old while not spending enough on the young is that she wants education to be federalized. We should be doing the opposite. Healthcare for the elderly should be the responsibility of the states, not the federal government. I don’t believe the present Medicare system can be fixed.

At The Strategist Richard N. Haass summarizes the results of the summit meeting between U. S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping:

Over seven decades, the modern US–China relationship has evolved significantly. Early on, there was no relationship to speak of, and the US found itself in an armed confrontation with China during the Korean War. That was followed two decades later by a period of strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union, and then to boost trade and investment as a joint priority once the Cold War ended. But economic ties have become a source of friction in recent years, and as China became increasingly assertive, the two countries found themselves increasingly at odds over just about everything, from regional and global issues to human rights.

The San Francisco summit didn’t alter this reality. US–China relations remain an issue to be managed, not a problem to be solved. Expecting anything else from the summit was to expect too much. The world’s most important bilateral relationship continues to be a highly competitive one, and the challenge remains what it was prior to the summit: to ensure that competition doesn’t preclude selective cooperation or give way to conflict.

Terrible as it is to think about I do believe that war between the U. S. and China is an actual possibility. IMO the best way of reducing its likelihood is a two part strategy:

1. Ensure that the U. S. has the capability of winning a war with China.
2. Stop electing leaders who are willing to go to war if there is a viable alternative.

The notion that China can be deterred from pursuing what it sees as its vital national interest is foolish. I wish that were the case here.

From their most recent editorial I gather than somebody on the Washington Post staff went to the CVS to buy some Advil and were astonished to find the shelves bare. Here’s a snippet:

Shoppers visiting the CVS Pharmacy at 14th and Irving streets NW in Washington recently must think they traveled back in time to the Soviet Union. The store’s shelves are bare. The refrigerator cases are devoid of food or beverages. When we visited, only sunscreen and greeting cards were on display. But the bizarre scene is not a result of a failed planned economy; rampant theft is the cause. Shoplifters ransacked this CVS over two days early last month, and it hasn’t been restocked since. Weeks later, there’s still hardly anything to buy — or steal.

The CVS at 14th and Irving symbolizes extreme retail theft and the harms it can engender. Distressing and inconvenient to ordinary people, threatening to businesses and livelihoods, and repellent to tourists, unchecked shoplifting can corrode a community’s spirit.

It’s happening in the nation’s capital. The D.C. police department does not track shoplifting specifically but reports that theft in general is up 22 percent over last year. It is harder and harder to find a grocery or pharmacy in the District that doesn’t lock up laundry detergent, toilet paper and deodorant. A Giant in Southeast no longer even stocks certain name-brand health and beauty products that thieves target. A liquor store downtown is closing because of constant shoplifting. The H Street Walmart shuttered earlier this year. (The company said the store “hasn’t performed as well as we hoped.”)

I was reminded of John Adams’s remarks:

But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep <, Start deletion,[. . .], End,> simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by <, Start deletion,[. . .], End,> morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition <, Start deletion,and, End,> Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other

There are several known ways of controlling theft. The first and best is for people not to steal because stealing is wrong. The second is to ensure that would-be thieves are deterred by the likelihood of being apprehended and punished. The third is to maintain a police force large and empowered enough to apprehend criminals, DAs to prosecute criminals, and judges to punish them. The last is to authorize and empower shopkeepers to protect their stores against theft.

When none of those are the case, you have more theft.

In her Washington Post column Ruth Marcus is appalled at the New York Times’s reporting of Hamas press releases as factual and outright refusal to report the facts fully when they are revealed:

After the evidence was presented, did the media go back to the sources that misled them about terrorist activity? I have yet to see that. Cable and network news shows that featured critics claiming this was purely a hospital have not invited those guests back to explain their misstatements. The news organizations have not leveled with audiences that they were manipulated.

The New York Times, invited to tour the hospital with IDF, declared, “The controlled visit will not settle the question of whether Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza, has been using Al-Shifa Hospital to hide weapons and command centers, as Israel has said.” Really? I suppose if you believe all this evidence was cleverly manufactured it doesn’t “settle” the matter. Otherwise, it demolishes claims that this was purely a civilian facility.

Critics demand that Israel now show it was a “command center,” a generic term without definition and without legal significance. It was used as a military facility. Period. For some, no evidence will ever be enough to undermine the credibility of sources whose false claims about the hospital have too often been accepted at face value.

It’s already been established that the NYT along with other media outlets has published photos taken by stringers, er, embedded with Hamas. I’m open to other explanations but it seems to me the simplest is that the NYT is not on Israel’s side.

Let me be very clear. I believe the solution to Western media sites publishing propaganda is that they stop publishing propaganda. Stories should be corroborated by genuinely independent testimony. You know, a return to the old journalistic standards.

President Biden snuck an op-ed into the Washington Post on Saturday. Here’s a snippet:

Today, the world faces an inflection point, where the choices we make — including in the crises in Europe and the Middle East — will determine the direction of our future for generations to come.

What will our world look like on the other side of these conflicts?

Will we deny Hamas the ability to carry out pure, unadulterated evil? Will Israelis and Palestinians one day live side by side in peace, with two states for two peoples?

Will we hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his aggression, so the people of Ukraine can live free and Europe remains an anchor for global peace and security?

And the overarching question: Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?

I only have one question: how? The entire situation reminds me of the ultimate rhyme about supply chains:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Ukraine’s artillery alone is firing more shells in a week than the entire European Union produces in a year. In a month they’re firing more shells than the U. S. produces in a year. That’s just Ukraine.

Could the U. S. ramp production up to meet the challenge? Given the time and materials yes. But not immediately. And not while reducing our production of greenhouse gases.

Let me add another complication. Given a choice among supporting Ukraine, supporting Israel, and supporting Taiwan, which is the best course of action. The answer is obvious to me: Taiwan. As noted above we cannot do all three at the same time.

What I thought was best about Ben Caspit’s column at Al Monitor was that he was thinking about what happens after the conclusion of Israel’s war in Gaza. He suggests three “day after” options:

• Egypt assumes control of Gaza
• The Palestinian Authority returns to Gaza
• Some international organization assumes control of Gaza

All of these options are fantasies. To give you some idea of how fantastical the third option is (besides, as the author notes, that never works) here’s a snippet:

One creative solution being floated is the construction of a huge artificial island off the coast of Gaza.

“It will be cheaper and faster than rebuilding the Gaza Strip itself,” a very senior former security official told Al-Monitor, seeking to promote his brainchild. “There is technology, means and money. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have huge numbers of such artificial islands, which have become hubs of tourism, commerce, housing and infrastructure. It is relatively easy. It is cheap and it will allow everyone to turn over a new leaf. The Gazans will receive a new land with efficient infrastructure. There will no longer be a land border between Israel and Gaza.”

The source warned that any attempt to rebuild Gaza is doomed given the massive underground tunnel network into which everything could collapse.

“The underground city will suck up what is above it. Disaster is yet to come,” the former security official said. “This island could be a pretty good solution.”

I seriously doubt that Egypt will accept the first option. The Israelis don’t want the second option. The “international” option would end up being the status quo ante.

IMO there is only one stable outcome and it’s unacceptable—remove the Jews from Israel in one way or another. A Palestinian state alongside Israel would inevitably be a return to the status quo ante.

His “fantasy island” could actually take place—just not with Gaza’s present population.