It just seems crazy to me given the power imbalance. A cynical part of me suspects that things are playing out exactly as some evil strategists hoped they would, which, given all the children dying, is super-depressing.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Hostages are variables that Hamas controls and Israel must respect. They can be used as chips to barter with, shields to hide behind, and tools to shame the Israelis in the court of public opinion.
Their objective was to provoke this response from Israel. Hostages really force Israel to act immediately.
Wouldn’t it be the other way around ? Hostage means that you nced to open some negociation for their release. And that a military intervention would put them at risk.
Israel used to do prisonner exchanges,
Israel is killing us slowly and quietly and the world is ignoring it. Maybe if they’re provoked into revealing themselves to the world we’ll be seen.
That’s sorta classic supervillain logic. Doing terrible things just so someone else will have to do them too and in doing so “reveal” that they are “equally” monstrous. Israel has had some super fucked up policy for a long time, and I’m not defending that, but the approach of provoking them by committing your own war crimes knowing that it will lead to this much civilian suffering on all sides is even more fucked up.
Most death are civilians while Hamas getting stronger every year.
I think they expected to swap the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, since they’ve done it before.
