Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Natasha Hausdorff, barrister and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, discussed the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine—I don’t say Hamas, because I don’t think either Natasha or I think there will ever be peace between Israel and Hamas—with Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV yesterday. In this seven-minute conversation, Hausdorff believes that the chances for peace, while not solid, have been increased with the new administration. Trump may do (and is doing) a passel of crazy things, but most friends of Israel think he offers a more salubrious future for the Jewish state than did the Biden administration. The Forward agrees, though it notes that Rubio’s support for Israel has by no means been sycophantic or 100%. But it’s surely better than Anthony “There’s a Red Line Around Rafah” Blinken.
11 thoughts on “Natasha Hausdorff and the hope for peace”
I always drop what I’m doing to hear what soon-to-be Mrs. Ceiling Cat has to say.
Thanks for posting.
For Israel, the primary goal is the release of all the hostages. The ultimate goal is to neutralize Hamas completely. It seems like, since the temporary truce, there are still thousands of terrorists crawling out from under the rocks and out of the tunnels in Gaza.
Gaza is just one big Orc-factory.
That scene in the Lord of the Rings movie still gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Hamas is a gang like MS-13. If they run the streets in an isolated community and run for political office, you’d sure as hell vote for them if you’re life depended on it!
The distinction between Palestinians and Hamas is challenging. Don’t most Palestinians support Hamas? Really, I mean don’t MOST? Some sources say at least 70% of those in Gaza and the West Bank support what Hamas did on October 7th.
I don’t know how they feel now. But there is reason to say that they generally don’t dare voice opposition to the media.
Mark Sturtevant has made a good point. While there is a great deal of indoctrination there will certainly be Palestinians who will see through it and genuinely want a peaceful settlement but those numbers are impossible to calculate.
There was not a totally dissimilar situation in the UK with Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA, for many years it was impossible to differentiate between the genuine republican politicians and the terrorists. For many of the Irish there was a great wish for independence but also a total abhorrence of terrorism but few spoke out against the IRA and I do not blame them, kneecapping was a standard punishment used by the Provos but also a 50/50 shooting, this was a bullet to the base of the spine, the 50/50 part was the odds of ever walking again. There are still those, notably the “Real IRA” who advocate a violent solution but thankfully they are very much a minority now.
The problem with Hamas is a greater one as they have better access to weapons and a definite target of Israel while the IRA was targeting its own people with the majority of its bombs, there were some mainland Britain bombings but the majority were in Northern Ireland.
Ultimately the Irish problem was solved by diplomacy and this is the big difference, even among some of the Sinn Fein leaders who were almost certainly terrorists there was a willingness to debate the issue but it is difficult to see anyone within Hamas who would consider a diplomatic route, although there may be some but if there are it is not something anyone in their right mind would admit in the current climate.
We were also helped a great deal by the American influence which lead to the Good Friday agreement but it should be noted that until then there were a great number of Americans openly supporting the Provos and raising money for them. This is similar now with the deluded ones in the US and UK who are supportive of Hamas, the loss of their support will not make a major difference initially, they are not raising money for the terrorists but if there is no support for extreme anti-Israeli actions in the West it could cause a rethink by some Islamic regimes who are supportive of Hamas.
How to educate terrorist sympathisers is another question but it must be attempted in the hope that the next Hamas atrocity, and it is when and not if it happens, must be met with universal condemnation.
Education of terrorist sympathizers is a futile hope for Hamas and Hezbollah, as all of us on campus know. And the “universal condemnation” is also a futile hope, as the world, by and large, is against “genocidal” Israel.
I think you are right. Israel as the “oppressor” can’t rely on world public opinion ever changing in its favour, because most of the world is full of envy and resentful stupidity.
If the IRA had ever been an existential threat to England (not just the Northern Ireland part of the UK), England would have had to defeat the IRA no matter what it took. The world, with its fascination with revolutionary movements (so long as they don’t threaten peace and order in their own countries, and even then not always), would have condemned at the UN the repression and violence that England and the British Army would have resorted to at home and in the breeding grounds of Ireland. It would have donated cash and cheered enthusiastically every time an IRA bomb blew up a pub full of Englishmen or murdered the Royal Family…as it pretty much did in actual fact.
No, Israel is on her own, supported by a few carefully cultivated allies. The rest of the world will betray her and shelter her enemies, and indoctrinate her enemy’s children against her given the slightest excuse, or no excuse at all.
Hausdorff is pitch perfect as always. I am optimistic, but only guardedly so. There will be no success unless Israel and the United States prevent Hamas from ever holding political or military power in post-war Gaza. Both the Israeli and the U.S. leadership have said that Hamas will not return to power, but they must mean it and they must enforce it. If Hamas does not give up power through negotiation, Israel will have to take power by force, and President Trump—a man who says that he wants to end wars—may find himself in the position of extending one. President Trump must not back down.
Over the next 40 days or so, and perhaps beyond as phase II and phase III negotiations take place, the region will be calm and Israelis—and the world—will start to get used to the moment of peace. This is Hamas’s strategy: to create an illusion of peace to break the willingness of the Israeli people to continue to war. It is critical that the joy of having the hostages return to their families not soften the Israeli and U.S. demand for Hamas to go. Now is the moment that history will remember.
The Medium article is helpful, but it would have some more credibility if it weren’t sprinkled with “SJW doesn’t mean anything anyway” obfuscations.
I always drop what I’m doing to hear what soon-to-be Mrs. Ceiling Cat has to say.
Thanks for posting.
For Israel, the primary goal is the release of all the hostages. The ultimate goal is to neutralize Hamas completely. It seems like, since the temporary truce, there are still thousands of terrorists crawling out from under the rocks and out of the tunnels in Gaza.
Gaza is just one big Orc-factory.
That scene in the Lord of the Rings movie still gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Hamas is a gang like MS-13. If they run the streets in an isolated community and run for political office, you’d sure as hell vote for them if you’re life depended on it!
The distinction between Palestinians and Hamas is challenging. Don’t most Palestinians support Hamas? Really, I mean don’t MOST? Some sources say at least 70% of those in Gaza and the West Bank support what Hamas did on October 7th.
https://themedialine.org/top-stories/poll-reveals-persistent-palestinian-support-for-hamas-attacks-on-israel/
I don’t know how they feel now. But there is reason to say that they generally don’t dare voice opposition to the media.
Mark Sturtevant has made a good point. While there is a great deal of indoctrination there will certainly be Palestinians who will see through it and genuinely want a peaceful settlement but those numbers are impossible to calculate.
There was not a totally dissimilar situation in the UK with Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA, for many years it was impossible to differentiate between the genuine republican politicians and the terrorists. For many of the Irish there was a great wish for independence but also a total abhorrence of terrorism but few spoke out against the IRA and I do not blame them, kneecapping was a standard punishment used by the Provos but also a 50/50 shooting, this was a bullet to the base of the spine, the 50/50 part was the odds of ever walking again. There are still those, notably the “Real IRA” who advocate a violent solution but thankfully they are very much a minority now.
The problem with Hamas is a greater one as they have better access to weapons and a definite target of Israel while the IRA was targeting its own people with the majority of its bombs, there were some mainland Britain bombings but the majority were in Northern Ireland.
Ultimately the Irish problem was solved by diplomacy and this is the big difference, even among some of the Sinn Fein leaders who were almost certainly terrorists there was a willingness to debate the issue but it is difficult to see anyone within Hamas who would consider a diplomatic route, although there may be some but if there are it is not something anyone in their right mind would admit in the current climate.
We were also helped a great deal by the American influence which lead to the Good Friday agreement but it should be noted that until then there were a great number of Americans openly supporting the Provos and raising money for them. This is similar now with the deluded ones in the US and UK who are supportive of Hamas, the loss of their support will not make a major difference initially, they are not raising money for the terrorists but if there is no support for extreme anti-Israeli actions in the West it could cause a rethink by some Islamic regimes who are supportive of Hamas.
How to educate terrorist sympathisers is another question but it must be attempted in the hope that the next Hamas atrocity, and it is when and not if it happens, must be met with universal condemnation.
Education of terrorist sympathizers is a futile hope for Hamas and Hezbollah, as all of us on campus know. And the “universal condemnation” is also a futile hope, as the world, by and large, is against “genocidal” Israel.
I think you are right. Israel as the “oppressor” can’t rely on world public opinion ever changing in its favour, because most of the world is full of envy and resentful stupidity.
If the IRA had ever been an existential threat to England (not just the Northern Ireland part of the UK), England would have had to defeat the IRA no matter what it took. The world, with its fascination with revolutionary movements (so long as they don’t threaten peace and order in their own countries, and even then not always), would have condemned at the UN the repression and violence that England and the British Army would have resorted to at home and in the breeding grounds of Ireland. It would have donated cash and cheered enthusiastically every time an IRA bomb blew up a pub full of Englishmen or murdered the Royal Family…as it pretty much did in actual fact.
No, Israel is on her own, supported by a few carefully cultivated allies. The rest of the world will betray her and shelter her enemies, and indoctrinate her enemy’s children against her given the slightest excuse, or no excuse at all.
Hausdorff is pitch perfect as always. I am optimistic, but only guardedly so. There will be no success unless Israel and the United States prevent Hamas from ever holding political or military power in post-war Gaza. Both the Israeli and the U.S. leadership have said that Hamas will not return to power, but they must mean it and they must enforce it. If Hamas does not give up power through negotiation, Israel will have to take power by force, and President Trump—a man who says that he wants to end wars—may find himself in the position of extending one. President Trump must not back down.
Over the next 40 days or so, and perhaps beyond as phase II and phase III negotiations take place, the region will be calm and Israelis—and the world—will start to get used to the moment of peace. This is Hamas’s strategy: to create an illusion of peace to break the willingness of the Israeli people to continue to war. It is critical that the joy of having the hostages return to their families not soften the Israeli and U.S. demand for Hamas to go. Now is the moment that history will remember.
The Medium article is helpful, but it would have some more credibility if it weren’t sprinkled with “SJW doesn’t mean anything anyway” obfuscations.