Ezra Klein: Israel is giving Hamas what it wants
Israel’s 9/11 — that’s been the refrain. And I fear that analogy carries more truth than the people making it want it to. Because what was 9/11? It was an attack that drowned an entire country — our country, my country, America — in terror and in rage. It drove us mad with fear.
And in response, we shredded our own liberties. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Our response to 9/11 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It made us weaker. It made us poorer. It made us hated around the world. We didn’t pull our forces out of Afghanistan until 2021, 20 years later. And when we left, we did so in humiliation and catastrophe and defeat, abandoning the country to the Taliban.
Our politics still haven’t recovered from the ravages of that era. It was, in large part, the invasion of Iraq that discredited the Republican Party’s leadership class, leading directly to the rise of Donald Trump. 9/11 created a permission structure in American politics to do incredibly stupid brutal things, and we are still paying the costs. Perhaps we always will be.
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I think vengeance is a legitimate and even necessary goal here. It cannot be safe to murder Israeli civilians. But vengeance cannot be the only goal. Israelis, no less than Palestinians, deserve peace and security. Those need to be considerations, too. And that requires considering things.
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The brutal facts of the occupation, the architecture of control, and humiliation, and checkpoints and work permits and blockades that Palestinians live under, it does not justify Hamas’s murders. But it helps explain Hamas’s strength, its persistent appeal to at least some of the Palestinian people. Hamas is built on Palestinian despair. And if you radically increase Palestinian fury and despair, if you create a new wave, a new generation of fathers who lost their sons, and brothers who lost their sisters, and people now dedicated to revenge, have you actually made Israel safer, or have you made Hamas or something like it stronger?
Hardliners feed on each other. Hamas’s political strength has been an excellent excuse for Netanyahu’s government to abandon even the pretense of a real peace process. If Hamas is on the other side of the table, then there can be no peace process because there is no partner for peace. Israel is right that it cannot make peace with Hamas, that Hamas’s actual aim is Israel’s eradication.
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Hamas and its backers in Iran want this war. They fear the normalization of Israel’s relations with the rest of the Middle East. The misery of the Gazans is and always has been their strength/
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We’ve spent decades testing the proposition of whether inflicting more punishment on the Palestinians will strengthen the moderates or the extremists in their midst. The answer is known.
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If you loathe Hamas, and you should loathe Hamas, you should assume that the place they’re trying to lead us is not where we should be trying to go. If you don’t think Netanyahu’s rule has made Israel safer, or more united, or closer to a resolution of the fundamental threats that face it — and it hasn’t — you should not yourself be cowed into trusting his instincts in this moment. That’s a lesson Americans learned, or should have learned, from 9/11, the one we have to pass on now.
Terrorists want you to act in a haze of fury and fear. The only antidote is to open yourself to criticism and second-guessing.
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There is no country in the world that would not hunt Hamas’s leaders to the ends of the Earth right now if their savagery had been visited upon them. And that is to say nothing of the hostages Hamas is still holding captive. But the idea that you’ll destroy Hamas this way, I doubt it, particularly if this becomes not just a generational trauma for ordinary Israelis, but also for Gazans, with thousands dead and who knows how many maimed and homeless and displaced.
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The hardliners make each other stronger. Is it possible for the peacemakers to do the same?
The youth are not slow-dancing anymore.
Decoder Ring: The Fast Decline of the Slow Dance. Rise and fall of an awkward rite of passage.
Includes a brief history of slow dancing, starting with the waltz, which was hugely scandalous 200+ years ago.
Let me read you a quote here. It’s from a July 1816 issue of the London Times about a ball given by the Prince Regent: “We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the waltz was introduced at the English court on Friday last. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think of it deserving of notice. But now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.
Jacob Mikanowski, author of the book “Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land,” talks with Tyler Cowen about Eastern Europe, including “differences between Eastern and Western European humor, whether Poles are smiling more nowadays” and “why Stanisław Lem hasn’t gotten more attention in the West.”
Could Stanisław Lem be the most underrated sage of the AI age?
I remember Lem was celebrated in literary circles in the late 70s or 80s, but we haven’t heard much about him since. I read several of Lem’s books and stories, enjoyed them and found them thoughtful.
U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Struggle for Recruits. The Marines Have Plenty.
When asked earlier this year about whether the Marines would offer extra money to attract recruits, the commandant of the Marine Corps replied: “Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine. That’s your bonus.”
Elizabeth Spiers: I Don’t Have to Post About My Outrage. Neither Do You. I agree. Nobody’s required to post an opinion about Israel and Palestine.
Robin Sipes was feeling sad. Her doctor prescribed her a cat. Her doctor said he wrote it down “because people sometimes don’t follow your instructions.”
These five toys are regular finalists for Hall of Fame honors. Now fans can vote one in. The pogo stick, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper, My Little Pony, PEZ dispensers, and Transformers.
I was having fun with a telemarking scammer and they hung up on me and I’m disappointed.
CALLER: “I’m calling from [mumble] about an order for an Apple MacBook Pro and Apple AirPods that you placed and that is being delivered to Houston, Texas.”
ME [slowly, confused]: “It’s for a … apple?”
CALLER: “Yes, an Apple MacBook Pro—a laptop computer—and Apple AirPods. You will be charged $1,667. Did you place that order.”
ME [slowly, still confused]: “… Apples don’t have ears?”
Then they hung up. Damn, I was just getting started.
“I had to quit a job because of aggressive nesting geese.” I have rediscovered “Ask a Manager.”
I was having system problems several months ago, the solution for which was to reinstall the operating system. Now the problems are back, so I upgraded to Sonoma, which will either fix the problems or give me ALL NEW UPGRADED problems.
Where does the coyote get money to buy all that stuff from Acme? I don’t know how much a 25 foot tall slingshot costs but I bet it’s expensive.
RIP Mark Goddard, who played Major Don West on the 1960s “Lost in Space.”
Lovely statement from Goddard’s co-star Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson. Variety:
R.I.P. to Mark Goddard. A truly beloved friend and brother to me for 59 years. I knew this was coming for the past few months. Shortly after a great phone chat he and I had on his 87th birthday in late July, I became aware that I would most likely never see or speak with him again. The last words we exchanged were “I love you.”
The show was initially more of a straight action-adventure, with Goddard’s Major West as a romantic lead opposite Judy Robinson, played by Marta Kristen. But when “Batman” took off in the ratings, “Lost in Space” went for camp and there wasn’t much for Major West to do other than yell at Doctor Smith.
In his 2008 memoir, “To Space and Back,” [Goddard] referred to his space uniform, his wardrobe for the show, as “silver lamé pajamas and my pretty silver ski boots.”
Goddard left showbiz, went back to college, and became a teacher of special needs kids.
Goddard lived a life of service, bringing happiness to a lot of people (including me) and then as a teacher. A good life.
That was a bad idea. I’ve done it several times previously and it was a bad idea those times. I expect I’ll do it again because I want it to be a good idea.
The word ‘But’ asks to not appear in these sentences. Alexandra Petri: “The word ‘But’ has been stunned to find itself appearing in an increasing number of sentences that begin ‘The killing of children is never acceptable … ‘“
The Most Iconic Vintage Dessert from Every Decade
1940s: Bread pudding.
I love bread pudding. I eat it several times a year.
Unfortunately, the last time we got bread pudding it wasn’t great. We got it take-out—a massive brick. I froze most of it, but made the mistake of not breaking it up into individual portions beforehand, further diminishing the likelihood that I will ever eat that bread pudding.
Future archeologists will no doubt wonder at the find.
A 21-year-old computer science student from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln won a global contest to decipher the first text inside a burned, blackened scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The student used X-Ray computed tomography (CT) scanning and an AI algorithm to detect Greek letters on several lines of the rolled-up papyrus. The letters spelled out the word “purple.”
Mary Lou Retton Crowdfunded Her Medical Debt, Like Many Thousands of Others
But unlike the Olympic gymnast, most people don’t raise enough money to cover their costs.
Our healthcare system is a disgrace.