The Moral Calculus of Israel's Hostage Rescue

June 10: 275 die in hostage operation … Europe veers right … Trump probation officer visit today … Chomsky ailing …

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, meets with rescued hostages and family members on Saturday, the day God doesn’t want him doing stuff, after not meeting with family of slain hostages. (Screengrab / Forbes video obviously lifted from someone else.)

Israel, and humans generally, are still celebrating the rescue of four hostages from Hamas on Saturday.

The four hostages were freed after 245 days in captivity, at a cost of one dead Israeli commando, at least 274 dead Palestinians, and about 700 wounded.

A lot of folks have been doing the moral calculus — or is it immoral subtraction? — on this operation, so let’s crunch the numbers, and show our work!

Four - 275 = -271. That’s a net loss of 271 lives. You can also do it this way: 275/4 = 68.75. That’s a net cost of 68.75 lives per liberated hostage.

And, of course, that doesn’t even take into account the nationality conversion factor. Should one dead Israeli commando count more or less than 274 dead Palestinians? I haven’t checked the exchange rate this morning, but whatever it is, the numbers seem off.

It’s hard to imagine arguing before the operation that 275 dead would be worth four freed. In the trolley problem, would you divert the trolley to save four by sacrificing 275?

But here’s the thing, Israel didn’t know how many people would be killed — including their own — when they launched the operation. Israel didn’t decide to kill 275 people to rescue four. It was a roll of the dice. Which doesn’t necessarily make it any more moral.

But what if the four, or in the trolley problem the one, were someone you loved? What wouldn’t you do to free someone you loved after 245 days of imprisonment and fear and whatever else they suffered?

What if the one you loved had been put on the tracks by those five? Or one of those five? What if a train left Chicago at 40 miles…

Okay, enough numbers. Let’s address the suggestion that the dead Palestinians weren’t innocent. First of all, we don’t know all the details yet.

Israel’s military says that the four hostages were in two separate locations, both of them locked rooms guarded by Hamas gunmen. We don’t have enough information to say how many civilians were complicit. Or weren’t.

According to one report, three hostages were held in the home of a Hamas member, whose family may or may not have had a say in Daddy using his mancave as a hostage Airbnb.

The hostages were being held in a refugee camp, so it’s reasonable to assume that (a) there were some non-Hamas supporting civilians there and (b) they were packed in pretty tightly. But however tightly the civilians were packed, it’s still highly unlikely that there were 274 of them crammed into just two apartments.

And, in fact, only a few of the fatalities occurred during the initial raid. One raid went perfectly. The other, not so much. That’s when the Israeli commando was killed.

But it was the flight, after the liberation, in which most of the people died. Not in the two apartments.

According to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Palestinian militants began firing at the fleeing rescuers and hostages with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. So the IDF called in air strikes from both fighter jets and surface artillery. As you do.

Some of the bombs the IDF used reportedly were made right here in the U.S. And, in a striking irony, it appears that they (a) were made by Boeing and yet somehow (b) worked.

Of course, the reason Hamas hides among civilians is that they assume Israel wouldn’t kill civilians. In other words, even Hamas thinks better of Israel. But in Israel’s defense there’s an undeniable logic at each step of the operation. If you find out where the hostages are, of course you try to rescue them. If the rescue comes under attack, of course you open fire on the attackers.

But even if you accept the moral calculus of such operations — the exchange rate of four for 275 — let’s go back to the numbers for a minute, and add some new ones. Haaretz reports that the rest of the hostages aren’t in one convenient location waiting for a big, Entebbe-style raid. They’re scattered all over. Meaning, it would take multiple operations similar to Saturday’s to free them.

An analysis in Haaretz by Anshel Pfeffer points out that 120 hostages remain, 43 of them declared dead by Israel. Only seven have been rescued in 245 days.

If Israel keeps rescuing hostages at this rate, the Bible tells us there’s a good chance the last of them will be saved by Jesus.

On the other hand, Hamas has released 109 hostages due to diplomacy, 105 of them specifically as part of the short-lived truce negotiated back in November. For anyone not great at math — my fellow English majors and most journalists — even in these times of bespoke facts, 109 is still more than seven.

However you look at it, this was never a regular math problem, it was a word problem. The words of a cease-fire deal are what will free the remaining hostages. Diplomats, not soldiers. 

And Benny Gantz seems to have checked the math here. Gantz is a former defense minister and political rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Until Saturday, he was also in Netanyahu’s three-member war cabinet.

Gantz stepped down, citing Netanyah’s failure to craft a proposal for a post-war what’s-left-of-Gaza. But he also criticized Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war itself. And Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu prevents us from moving forward to a real victory,” Gantz said yesterday, officially making him an antisemite by the U.S. congressional definition. According to Gantz, Netanyahu is prioritizing his own “political survival” over Israel’s national security.

As long as Netanyahu is leading (or in Gantz’s eyes failing to lead) the military effort, he’s unlikely to face that whole awkward corruption trial thing. Gantz called on Netanyahu to hold elections, but Netanyahu’s likely thinking about another (approximate) number…

Thousands of people, including hostage family members, showed up at protests after the rescue throughout Israel calling for a cease-fire deal to get the remaining hostages freed. They also called on Netanyahu to go.

ONE MORE NUMBER A new U.N. report out this weekend says that the entirety of the Gaza Strip is now facing possible famine conditions next month. The report was compiled by U.N. agencies run by crazy European socialist radicals like World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain, widow of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

As Juan Cole points out, the definition of a famine includes more than two out of 10,000 people dying every day for lack of food or water. Cole did his own number-crunching and if conditions do tip into official famine stats, we’ll be talking about 660 dead every day. We’re gonna need a bigger pier.

D-Day Was So Fun, Europe Eyes a Redo

Thursday’s 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day, the allied invasion at Normandy, were apparently so powerful and so moving that some European voters responded by shifting drastically toward candidates likely to restore those halcyon days.

Sunday was the third and last day of voting, as nations chose their next representatives to the European Parliament. Countries moving sharply to the right include France, Austria, and Germany. (History buffs may recall that France was previously moved sharply to the right by an Austrian who was running Germany.)

The elections were largely seen as a rebuke to the parliament’s centrist leaders, whose parties were punished by voters yesterday for being centrist. Green parties reportedly also didn’t fare well in early projections, but it’s not believed that the far-right victors claimed enough seats to establish a majority coalition.

Voters mostly stayed with centrists, but the biggest gains were seen on the right. No, not that right. Further. Keep going…

So now, with centrists still in charge, the fascists will just have to learn to work well with others in the democratic system they’re trying to destroy! (And this, of course, comes just as the U.S. thought that fascism was the one area where we were ahead of Europe. Can we at least get bullet trains, please?)

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party came in second, with 16.5% of the vote. How far right? Alternative for Germany is officially a “suspected” extremist group…in Germany. Its lead candidate was barred from campaigning after suggesting some SS officers were righteous dudes.

Dear Germany, we don’t want an Alternative for Germany. We’ve had that twice now and really hated it.

Yours (gulp),

the rest of the world

I mean, Germany shouldn’t even be allowed to have right turns on green. 

In Austria, the far-right party came in first. How far-right is Austria’s far-right party? They’re called the Freedom Party. And these days, in any language, “Freedom” usually means the opposite of “freedom.” Italy’s Brothers of Italy party also came in first, giving Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni even more clout on the world stage, historically a place where fascists should not have clout.

But it was France that made the headlines, because the party of President Emmanuel Macron took such a shellacking that he dissolved the National Assembly and ordered new elections to be held June 30. 

The National Rally, the far-right party of Macron’s rival and longtime far-right leader Marine Le Pen, got more than twice the votes of Macron’s party.

It’s not exactly clear why Macron would call for new elections at a moment of such visible party weakness. Okay, it’s not clear to me. But other people definitely have theories!

One suggestion: Macron may be signaling to his electorate that he’s heard their gripes. And/or Macron may want to give National Rally some power — when the presidency isn’t on the ballot — so that voters have time to get sick of them before the presidential election. And/or Macron may be calculating that voters were focused on European issues — dang immigrants! — and a French election might yield stronger support for his party based on voters focusing on France stuff. And/or the shock of snap elections might galvanize a fractured left/center/center-left into working together to stave off, y’know, fascists.

All that said, this isn’t the time to freak out. For one thing, it’s never that time. For another thing, fascists are terrible at working together. Le Pen is already seeking an alternative to Alternative for Germany.

And remember, there are very real differences between World War II and now. For instance, now the Nazis have cell phones. And Instagram.

Bottom line, though, LAST time out, the Nazi rise to power was all about blaming “the other” for economic woes. THIS time, howeve–oh wait.

Okay, well here’s a difference. Last time, Germany initially agreed to keep the peace with the Soviets while accumulating power and countries. This time, the surging far-right candidates are largely skeptical of helping Ukrai–oh wait.

Trump to Meet with His Probation Officer

Okay, you’ve been so good and sat through all this depressing not-inside-America news. So now, yes, we can talk DCC3FRFP¹ Donald Trump.

For decades now, establishment Democrats have been touting business experience as a good background for political office even though it’s the opposite thing of that. The party has recruited candidates based on their (sometimes nothing but) business backgrounds and then mounted campaigns premised on the conceit that leading a business is good training for political leadership even though it is the opposite thing of that.

When your party exalts business experience, that does many things. It warps the public portrait of what politics is for and is. It masks the inherently adversarial dynamic between businesses and the people, whose money the businesses are created to get. It also makes it harder to make a case against certain kinds of businesses and the predatory models for some entire industries. It also makes it harder to defend government regulation of said business, which would’ve been handy before Wall Street fell on the global economy in 2007. It also makes it harder to run against candidates such as Mitt Romney. And, most memorably, it means that Americans will see a fake-TV “businessman” as a viable political candidate and elect him as the president.

And there’s a flip side to this.

When said fake-TV “businessman” is convicted of a crime, and the majority of the opposing party hurls the words “convict” and “felon” at him…what does that say? What does that say to people who fucked up and/or got caught in the teeth of justice and served their sentence and are trying to fly right now?

We’ve gotta stop turning everything that applies to Trump into a negative just because it applies to a guy who’s a walking negative.

Let’s not turn “convict” and “felon” into catch-all slurs. He was convicted of specific crimes! There’s a whole internet with room for us to say he illegally deceived voters about his campaign spending!

All my tedious moralizing aside, and just between us … it’s admittedly fuckin’ hilarious that Donald J. Trump is meeting with his probation officer today. And because God is in the details, here’s what we know about the meeting:

It’ll be a virtual meeting

• Trump will be at Mar-a-Lago

• Trump will have not-yet-fired attorney Todd Blanche with him

• The probation officer is a woman

• Trump will assess his probation officer’s physical appearance

Possible topics:

• Employment history

• Criminal history

• Mental health

• Remorse Lack of remorse

• His probation officer’s physical appearance

• Current associations with criminals

• Rules against associating with criminals

• How lonely he’ll be not associating with criminals

The probation officer may also want to speak with others in Trump’s home. Ouch. RELEASE THE TAPES!

Four Quickies

• Trump has more than one virtual meeting to attend today. He’ll also be addressing an event sponsored by a coalition of groups that work to outlaw all abortions ever by anyone even if they were raped and/or incested. The group calls abortion “child sacrifice,” which is obviously never acceptable unless you’re cutting child health care or nutritional assistance for poor families.

• Today is the first parole hearing for Leonard Peltier in 15 years. The Native American-rights activist and convicted killer of two FBI agents has so far been denied parole for consistently denying that he killed two FBI agents. The 79-year-old has spent almost 50 years in prison.

• Noam Chomsky — the longtime social and political critic whose seminal book Manufacturing Consent (on how American media reinforce the status quo both subtly and the other way) I almost finished — is apparently not doing well. He’s 95 years old and his last public appearance was an interview June 5, 2023, with Piers Morgan (Jesus, what a way to go). It’s said Chomsky’s no longer communicative or ambulatory. But nor is he in pain. 

• On a more upbeat note, the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, which holds a big chunk of Tesla stock, says it will vote against paying CEO Elon Musk $56 billion as part of a contested payout Musk is self-driving toward. The $1.7 trillion Norwegian oil fund owns one percent of Tesla’s stock and in 2022 fund chief Nicolai Tangen said, “We are seeing corporate greed reaching a level that we haven’t seen before.” He apparently meant that as a criticism. (h/t)

TCB

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Other TFN friends — dare I say allies? — worth checking out: Jeff Sharlet, author and creator of the Scenes from a Slow Civil War substack and extravagant praiser of TFN; and The Moral High Ground from Evan Hurst, generous TFN linkifier.

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Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. DCC3FRFP = Disgraced, criminally convicted, tridicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.