War between Hamas and Israel

[N.E. Brigand]

New York Times: "In the West Bank, Release of Prisoners Deepens Support for Hamas."

As a reminder: while Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, the West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority. For now. But if kidnapping families and beheading babies leads to prisoner swaps that strengthen support for Hamas outside of Gaza, then maybe it was a mistake for Israel to agree to to a ceasefire.

[N.E. Brigand]

Earlier today on Fox News, Maria Bartiromo discussed an "awful story" about "the first American" to be released by Hamas: a four-year-old had seen her parents killed in the Oct. 7th attack. Bartiromo said that it was wonderful that the girl was freed, "but we also learned that her family is major donors to President Biden and that her aunt actually bought Hunter Biden's art". Bartirom asked, "Was she the first one because she had the connection to Biden?" and her guest said, "It's an interesting web".

[N.E. Brigand]

A number of the people kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7th were foreign nationals, notably including some folks from Thailand, one of whom tells the Times of Israel that Hamas treated its Israeli captives the worst, beating them with cables.

There is also some reporting from Israeli television (shared in that link by the Jerusalem Post) that one hostage claims to have been held in the attic of United Nations Relief and Works Agency worker and another hostage claims to have been held in the house of a Gaza pediatrician.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said today that the October 7th massacre in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered and another 250 Israelis were kidnapped was "just a rehearsal" for what's to come.

[N.E. Brigand]

Hamas has claimed credit for a shooting in Jerusalem in which three people were killed (described as "a 24-year-old woman named ... Livia Dickmann, a woman in her sixties, Hanna Ifergan, and a 72-year-old man, Elimelech Wasserman, a rabbinical judge") and thirteen more were injured.

[N.E. Brigand]

I don't think dead hostages should count toward the total released each day.

[N.E. Brigand]

Is "community tension" a synonym for "antisemitism"?

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times reports that the Israeli government had Hamas's October 7th battle plans a year ago but didn't believe they were anything more than aspirational. To be fair, the plans didn't include a date of attack. But the details were accurate.

One analyst warned her superiors that this was Hamas's "plan designed to start a war."

Edited to add: some people suspect Netanyahu was behind the release of this document the Times as part of an effort to blame Israel's military intelligence.

[N.E. Brigand]

Also it appears that Hamas has broken the ceasefire by launching rockets at Israel.

[N.E. Brigand]

Hamas has claimed credit for a shooting in Jerusalem in which three people were killed (described as "a 24-year-old woman named ... Livia Dickmann, a woman in her sixties, Hanna Ifergan, and a 72-year-old man, Elimelech Wasserman, a rabbinical judge") and thirteen more were injured.

Also it appears that Hamas has broken the ceasefire by launching rockets at Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken today emphasized why the temporary ceasefire is over: "It's important to understand why the pause came to an end. It came to an end because of Hamas. Hamas reneged on commitments it had made. In fact, even before the pause came to an end, it committed an atrocious terrorist attack in Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding others, including Americans. It began firing rockets before the pause ended, and as I said it reneged on the commitments it made in terms of releasing certain hostages." (The temporary ceasefire agreement had called for Hamas to "provide a list of hostages it intended to release by 7 a.m." each day, but they didn't.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper that tends to have a left-of-center stance, reports that "behind the scenes, almost every leader in the region, including in most of the Gulf states, is urging Israel to end the war only after Hamas is defeated".

- - - - - - - - - - -
In other Gaza news:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken today emphasized why the temporary ceasefire is over: "It's important to understand why the pause came to an end. It came to an end because of Hamas. Hamas reneged on commitments it had made. In fact, even before the pause came to an end, it committed an atrocious terrorist attack in Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding others, including Americans. It began firing rockets before the pause ended, and as I said it reneged on the commitments it made in terms of releasing certain hostages." (The temporary ceasefire agreement had called for Hamas to "provide a list of hostages it intended to release by 7 a.m." each day, but they didn't.)

More on this from the Times of Israel:

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby appears to back Israel’s claim that Hamas still has additional women and children hostages who it could release.

Israel says roughly 17 Israeli women and children remain in Gaza and that its truce with Hamas stipulated that the terror group would release all of them before freeing other categories of hostages.

However, Hamas refused to present such a list last night and instead proposed holding talks for the release of other categories of hostages, an Israeli official told Hebrew media, saying that Jerusalem rejected the idea and moved to resume the IDF’s fighting, which began after Hamas again violated the truce by firing a rocket at Israel before it expired this morning.

“We think it’s more than plausible that they have more women and children that do and should qualify for an exchange,” Kirby says during a briefing.

“It’s because of Hamas that this pause ended… The onus is on Hamas to be able to produce a list of hostages.”

[N.E. Brigand]

Some grossness from "verfied" Twitter users who are claiming that Israeli news footage shows that Hamas captors taught nine-year-old (former) captive Emily Hand compassion. For example: "Looks like she learned some good manners while away. Went from not sharing to sharing. That’s a win." ... "Emily has learnt to become much more compassionate and caring." ... "So she came back a better person?" ... "So Hamas taught her manners?" ... "I'm so keen to see how Israel spin this one." ... "This is the reason they start bombing again, they want to kill both Palestinians and Israeli hostages as well, so that this kind of news don’t come out!" These are the voices that Elon Musk thinks should be trusted. (There are a few dissenters in that thread, but they're clearly the minority.)

[Frelga]

Meanwhile, the father of the 9yo Emily Hand describes her actual condition

We are starting to learn about the impact of Hamas captivity on the children and it's utterly heartbreaking.

Thomas Hand, father of 9-year-old Emily, says the little girl thought she had been held hostage for a year and now cries herself to sleep.

“The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips. She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”

“Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how to be comforted. She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up and quietly cried.”

[N.E. Brigand]

Haaretz: "Did Hamas Make Millions Betting Against Israeli Shares Before October 7 Massacre?"

Somebody did.

[N.E. Brigand]

If this is accurate, it's rather disturbing: "An Israeli Health Ministry official stated that the former hostages were DRUGGED with clonazepam, a tranquillizer that calms the nervous system, before their release so they would appear smiling and calm when Hamas handed them over to the Red Cross."

[N.E. Brigand]

Briahna Joy Gray was the press secretary for Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign until he dropped out in April of that year. At that time, Gray said she wouldn't be supporting Joe Biden's candidacy. (This year she's backing Cornel West.) Sanders subsequently distanced himself from her. A few weeks later she said that Biden should step down in light of Tara Reade's accusation that Biden raped her in 1993 and said those who disagreed with her were "rape apologists" who were "throwing the me too [movement] under the bus the moment it's politically inconvenient." (As a reminder: Reade's story about Biden was inconsistent and appears to have been contradicted by her own late mother, Reade was shown to be a fabulist about other areas of her life, and Reade, who had for some time expressed a fascination for Vladimir Putin, has since emigrated to Russia.) More creditably, Gray in 2018 had argued very strongly for a full vetting of the accusations against judicial nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Gray in recent years has been skeptical of reports of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, and now, in in light of reports -- finally acknowledged as legitimate by the United Nations -- that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli victims, Grays says that "'Believe all women' was always an absurd overreach."

[N.E. Brigand]

From CNN: "President Biden, at a fundraiser in Boston, tells donors that Hamas's 'refusal to release the remaining young women is what broke this deal and ended the pause in the fighting.' He adds, 'Everyone still being held hostage by Hamas need to be returned to their families immediately. We're not going to stop.'"

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently a bunch of young people in President Biden's administration are "principled enough to keep the White House internship on their resume, but not enough to resign in protest": they wrote a letter objecting to Biden's handling of the Hamas-Israel war, and they leaked it to the press, but they didn't sign it.

There are precedents, of a sort, for this kind of thing, like "Anonymous," eventually revealed to be a Dept. of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, who anonymously wrote both a 2018 New York Times editorial titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" and, after resigning, a 2019 book on that subject titled A Warning.

The interns demand that the Biden administration call for a "permanent ceasefire." Given that there just was a ceasefire which Hamas abandoned, I'm not sure how that would work. Also I object to the word "genocide" used to describe Israel's campaign in Gaza. While Israel's actions may or may not constitute war crimes, they are not genocide. Words matter.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I changed the title of this thread to "War between Hamas and Israel."

[N.E. Brigand]

I think Mehdi Hasan (whose regular shows on MSNBC and the NBC web service Peacock last week unfortunately were canceled) is right to call out Ron DeSantis's minimization of Islamophobia in the U.S. My impression in the two months since the Oct. 7th massacre is that American expressions of Antisemitism have been more widespread and visible than expressions of Islamophobia during that period but also that the latter has been more violent, with a young boy stabbed to death in Illinois and three men shot in Vermont. (It's not a competition, and I condemn all such expressions and actions, but some people are ignoring one or the other.)