this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
585 points (100.0% liked)
Political Memes
8806 readers
2612 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
article
the weird thing is that Israel's government is being confusing - the ceasefire is meant to be lasting but they have vowed to invade Rafah anyway until Hamas is toppled.
Sounds to me like Netanyahus government wants to trade hostages to appease protesters and voters, and then continue flattening Rafah anyway.
The deal has always been a temporary ceasefire in exchange of hostages.
The deal Israel wants, anyway.
Yeah, because giving up your only leverage permanently in exchange for what basically amounts to pressing pause on the genocide is SUCH a good deal!
Hamas might be despicable terrorists, but presumably they're not total idiots!
That's the worst deal since the Dutch sold New Amsterdam (now New York) to the English for a bunch of nutmeg! Nutmeg was hella expensive back then 😛
The fact that the Israeli government is acting in bad faith and doesn't actually care about the hostages doesn't mean that the Israeli people don't care.
The fact that people who aren't genocidal maniacs desperately want the hostages to be freed means that getting them back would be a huge get for the Israeli government, worth many times more than a temporary truce is.
Which is basically what Israel is offering. They're asking for the political points from getting the hostages back and will invade and/or bomb the shit out of Rafah no matter what.
Or to simplify: giving everything in exchange for basically nothing is a bad deal. Hamas knows it, the Israeli government knows it and the NYT knows it.
The latter two are just gaslighting people about it to pretend that the Israeli government is being anything approaching reasonable.
What are you basing that assumption on?
Edit: come to think of it, the opposite is very much the case: a 40 day pause will take the international pressure off Israel long enough that the media moves onto other things. Meanwhile, Palestinians are just as dead 40 days later but with a fraction of people still paying attention.
Yeah it is. It's basically the equivalent of being broke and jobless and selling your house for $5000. Sure, you can pay rent for a while with the $5000, but it's much less than the house is worth and when the money's spent, you're homeless AND just as penniless as you started out.
Only instead of a house, it's tens if not hundreds of thousands in civilian lives.
It's both: if they were serious, they wouldn't make such a ridiculously bad offer.
I wouldn't on that persisting, though, as public opinion both domestically and internationally is increasingly worsening for the Israeli government as sympathy for their victims grow and outrage at the many atrocities spreads.
Nope. The Israeli government won't stop at that.
Because the article and headline are muddling the waters after Israel has already (almost immediately) rejected the deal. Gaslighting isn't always about tone.
I mean yes and no. Have you seen the protests in Israel? Yeah those aren't because the Israeli public suddenly cares about human rights; they're equal parts because Netanyahu wants to get rid of democracy in Israel and because of his disregard for the hostages' lives in his assault on Gaza, so they are doing their job. And let's remember that their real role hasn't come yet; these hostages are there for after the "war" ends because without any hostages Israel will be turning Gaza into beachfront real estate.
Okay attitudes towards the hostages can be unrealistic, but I think you're missing a few key points.
First of all, the hostages aren't meant to prevent Israel from completing its genocide. That's just not the reality on the ground. They're meant to pull the negotiations in Hamas's favor. What I meant by "to prevent Israel from turning Gaza into beachfront property" was "so the eventual ceasefire agreement doesn't have Gaza becoming beachfront property as part of it". Again, "as part of the ceasefire agreement". The only thing the hostages are doing now is losing Netanyahu face at home; I'm 100% aware that they're not holding back the IDF (Hannibal directive anyone?). That said, they have been a central part of negotiation between Hamas and Israel. They're not the end all be all of genocide enders, but they're very much valuable because the Israeli government can't sacrifice Israeli civilians' lives for a war half the population agrees doesn't have a clearly defined goal. Or, well, they can, but the protests a few days ago show why that's a bad idea.
Correction: So technically it was a week but that aside, the idea was for a pause that would become "something more enduring" in Biden's words. It didn't work and that's why Hamas is now not accepting anything less than a permanent ceasefire. I doubt they went into the deal expecting that it'd end in a week with no progress.
In a way, yes. Again, remember the protests from a few days ago. The Israeli public is pissed that the hostages aren't coming back home. This is half the reason they're opposing the war over there. Meanwhile the genocide, while definitely having their blessing, is a more top-down affair. Could be me misreading the situation, but it seems to me like Israelis are more invested in the hostages' safe return than in this particular genocide. At least enough of them are that people are calling on Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire deal.
The hostages alone won't save Gaza, but their existence or lack thereof will and has had a large effect on negotiations, and it's natural to think it will have more when Israel is more serious about trying to end the fighting (which will happen eventually; they can't go on like this forever (hopefully)).
So you're making good points generally, but the protests I'm referring to clearly demanded a ceasefire so the hostages can return. They explicitly said that they wanted Netanyahu to make a ceasefire agreement and return the hostages.
Yeah make that a hundred.
The protesters are actually calling for a ceasefire and have been for a while so at least it's not as one-sided as you seem to think. No idea about the ratios though, so feel free to drop them if you've seen them.
Yes, but none will actually work. How many hostages has Israel retrieved outside of negotiations? From a purely strategic point of view force is not working if your goal is to retrieve the hostages (which we know it's not). Israelis aren't upset because the IDF is attempting to retrieve the hostages using force; they're upset because force can't work without sacrificing a significant fraction of those hostages as both we and the Israeli public have learned in the past few months.
I bet the person who got all the nutmeg thought it was a great deal
Yeah, William III, Prince of Orange was fucking STOKED about how much better his Ontbijtkoek became!
I'm just going off what it said in the article