Home » Biden, Blinken, and a possible hostage deal

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Biden, Blinken, and a possible hostage deal — 15 Comments

  1. I didn’t heed your warning. I listened, and became very very angry. I haven’t been keeping up as closely as I did in the early days, but this is the first I’ve heard of weapons entering Gaza via tunnels from Egypt. I suspected this would happen.

  2. One of the ‘intellectual’ pillars on the left is the ‘theory’ of transnationalism. Which posits that nation States must be dissolved. Perhaps the three most prominent nation States in the West are the United States, Israel and arguably the UK. Of the three, Israel is the most physically vulnerable. Hamas, i.e. Islam and the Left are in agreement that Israel must cease to exist.

  3. Mike, I thought that Egypt had dug up those tunnels a while ago and even invented the tactic of flooding them with sea water. It’s hard to keep up these days.

    I can’t imagine how bloody the merging of Gaza and the West Bank into a single country would be. Both of them are dictatorships and don’t see eye to eye. The last election of any kind was in Gaza in 2007 in which Hamas won by killing its rivals from the PA. No doubt the winner will institute a Jeffersonian democracy.

  4. Yes, I know everyone says Egypt hates Hamas and wouldn’t help them. But I don’t really buy it. I assume the Israeli navy has the coast line well monitored. The obvious way to get weapons in is under that border. The Palestinians have clearly been very clever in avoiding detection, and I have to think they have plenty of sympathizers in Egypt.

  5. An observation from the post Neo linked:
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-demands-release-of-fatah-terror-chief-barghouti-pflp-leader-as-part-of-hostage-deal/

    Hamdan tells Lebanon’s LBC TV that Hamas insists on a permanent ceasefire, rejecting the proposal’s staged approach, with several pauses in fighting.

    “There is no way that this will be acceptable to the resistance,” he says.

    “We have tried temporary truces and it turned out that the Israelis don’t respect these truces but always violate them,” Hamdan says in an apparent reference to a weeklong truce in November that ended after Hamas failed to provide a new list of hostages for release that met previously agreed criteria and fired rockets at Israel.

    In fact, Hamas violated the prior years-long truce by attacking on 10/7, and then Hamas violated the November truce as noted, thus the Israelis proceeded with their attacks, the truce being already void.

    The Palestinians remind me of my brother, who always cried about getting hit back but never admitted he had hit one of us first.

    Hamas keeps using the word truce to mean “you stop fighting with us, until we’re ready to start again, usually by ambushing you.”

  6. Yes, they are dealing with criminal murderous ideologues, but …
    In all of the TV shows with hostage negotiating “experts”, they always say to demand “proof of life” from the criminals to continue the payoff, etc.
    Thus, one might think Israel’s negotiators should be continually demanding proof of life of the hostages as part of any promise to cease fire for some time span (say once every 3 to 7 days?).

    Of course the real world is not a TV show and showing proof of life of the hostages they hold would be too risky for Hamas, but not demanding it seems a strange item to not bring up???

    Has it been reported that even at this late date, the IDF does not really know where all of the tunnels are, down to multiple levels underground? Perhaps some are not being entered yet for fear of Hamas killing the hostages held therein?

  7. Correction: There is NOT immense internal pressure for a hostage release.

    The Lefties overplayed this issue, explicitly linked it to petty anti-Bibi politics – and lost most Israelis.

    As Caroline Glick has reported (see the video you embedded) even Left-leaning Israelis realize that things are different this time.

    There is also understanding that this is a long haul battle for Israel’s existence. The emotional breast-beating pitch of the left has not convinced most Israelis… there are more important things that must be done “by any means necessary” to quote one of the Left’s slogans…

    Also the horrors of the attacks and the testimony of the released hostages has led many to doubt that more than a few hostages are still alive.

    In contrast, the protests against the “humanitarian” aid to Hamas is snowballing. It started with a handful of families of soldiers and has grown to thousands blocking the trucks. When the army closed the area of the border crossing to civilians, the protest shifted to the port of Ashdod – and grew in number.

    Don’t believe everything you see/read. You can safely discount any reports of internal Israeli pressure to compromise.. they are wishful thinking by progressives and pundits.

    This Israeli coalition will easily survive for the foreseeable future. Saber rattling by Yair Lapid or others is just that – they understand that anyone disrupting conduct of this war or talking about coexistence will be punished in the polls.

  8. I don’t think it would take a rocket scientist to conclude that Egyptians of many different stripes have been paid handsomely over the past 15-odd years—are being paid handsomely now—to look the other way while Gaza was/is being rearmed, resupplied, reinvigorated through Sinai tunnels by…might one guess WHOM?

    Where else could such huge quantities of military materiel and building material (and tunnel “consultants”) come from?
    (IOW, just another “Peace Dividend”…)

    Meanwhile, the Israeli LEFT, having clearly been thrown off balance by the October 7 butchery and savagery, has recovered and eagerly climbed on the “Bring the Hostages Home NOW” bandwagon so as to put pressure on Israel’s government…and ultimately take down Bibi.
    (But then the Israeli LEFT has made common cause with “Biden” for some time now. And vice versa.)

  9. Don’t believe everything you see/read. You can safely discount any reports of internal Israeli pressure to compromise.. they are wishful thinking by progressives and pundits.

    Thank you, Ben David.

  10. I can’t watch the unwatchable. If I were willing to make a so called deal it would mean my entire life was a lie. Fu** these people. The only words I have left are expletives.

    The only question I have remaining is, do I go with the k bar or the khukri. I bet you think I’m joking. The nice thing about a knife is you never need to reload it.

    Both

  11. I take it back. I can watch the unwatchable. Because those who perpetrate it depend on people looking away.

    I prefer to look death in its stinking ugly horrific face. But I don’t like it.

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