Meanwhile on the International front....

"Wars end with negotiation. It's hard to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is you all die and disappear."

 

That was pretty good Maher. Don't say that all that often anymore.

 

Something tells me Yemen is just hours away from &FO stage of life.

 

Yemen is already one of the world's top hellholes. The Houthis, a people persecuted long before this by the Saudis and their proxies, have turned to being Iranian proxies. Menawhile, the water supply for the country is expected to go dry in the next 5-10 years, rendering the conflict moot.

 

Neither do I, but he nailed it on this one.

 

Getting to peace.

https://wapo.st/3tqJDnO

 

Adjacent to the arguments over speech and its consequences, on campus and off.

That’s Not Censorship

For the past few years, the right has worn itself out decrying“cancel culture”—claiming that left-wing mobs have destroyed the career of artists, writers, and freethinkers—and equating it with censorship. Liberals have typically been the first to point out that this is absurd. If someone says or does something that offends your sensibilities, you are of course free to avoid supporting that person’s professional or creative endeavors with your time and money. That is not censorship—it’s merely a consequence.

But in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, something has shifted. Compared with the tremendous suffering in the region, the opinions of American makers and consumers of art are a trivial concern. And yet the war has torn apart long-standing alliances in the arts and revealed ways of thinking that are, I believe, fundamentally dangerous to our democracy.

 

Israel Says Its Soldiers Killed Israeli Hostages as They Held Up White Flag

The new details about the incident emerged as Israeli and Qatari officials met in Norway on Saturday in order to revive talks about the release of hostages held in Gaza in return for a cease-fire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, according to people familiar with the matter.

The hostage deaths have intensified pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to take new steps to free the 129 remaining hostages. Israel’s war cabinet was set to meet later Saturday to discuss whether to officially resume hostage talks with mediators, the people said.

 

I guess I'd hope we hold the good guys to a higher standard.

 

What good guys? There are good guys here? Where are they?

 

I've done no research into it, but I would not be surprised to learn that the "almost half the munitions" thing is a non sequitur fabricated trotted out by those with a particular agenda just to put the IDF in the worst possible light.

 

Hamas can't propose an ending to the war because unending war is the only political goal it can achieve. Any negotiated settlement would negotiate it straight out of ecistence.
Any end, hell, even any substantial halt to the war means the immediate political end of Netanyahu. He's not ending it anytime soon.
There is, truth to tell, no real desire among either Palestinians or Israelis for any kind of settlement in which the two people would live in peace as political equals in one state or two. Any such settlement would have to be imposed and enforced by the rest of the world in a lengthy, dangerous and very expensive process. Nobody I know has even proposed such a blue sky idea.
Thus, the war will go on.