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Jewish Journal

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July 14, 2014

Facebook, please manipulate me

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Marty Kaplan, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Opinion /

What do you call it when media try to manipulate your feelings without first asking for informed consent?

Tuesday. 

Example:  The average Facebook user sees only 20 percent of the 1,500 stories per day that could have shown up in their news feed.  The posts you receive are determined by algorithms whose bottom line is Facebook’s bottom line.  The company is constantly adjusting all kinds of dials, quietly looking for the optimal mix to make us spend more of our time and money on Facebook.  Of course the more we’re on Facebook, the more information they have about us to fine-tune their formulas for picking ads to show us.  That’s their business model: We create and give Facebook, for free, the content they use and the data they mine to hold our attention, which Facebook in turn sells to advertisers. 

Those are the terms of service that everyone, without reading, clicks “I Agree to” – and not just for Facebook. We make comparable mindless contracts all the time with Gmail, Yahoo, Twitter, Amazon, Siri, Yelp, Pandora and tons of other apps, retailers and advertiser-supported news and entertainment.  If you’re online, if you use a smartphone, you’re an experimental subject in proprietary research studies of how best to target, engage and monetize you.  They’re always testing content, design, headlines, graphics, prices, promotions, profiling tools, you name it, and you’ve opted in whether you realize it or not.    

Many of these experiments hinge on our feelings, because much of what makes us come, stay, buy, like, share, comment and come back is emotional, not rational.  So it should surprise no one that Facebook wants to know what makes its users happier.  But when they acknowledged last month that they had tested – on 700,000 people, for one week – whether increasing the fraction of upbeat posts in their news feeds made them feel more upbeat (it did), a ” target=”_blank”>the name of his book – in 1984, before the Web was spun. But that didn’t stop  entertainment, which is exquisitely attuned to the marketplace, from making its long march through our institutions.  Today, politics is all about unaccountable corporations manipulating our emotions; they're constantly testing and targeting their paid messages to voters, none of whom are asked for informed consent.  The news industry is all about the audience, and much of its content has long been driven by the primal power of danger, sex and novelty to trap our attention, but there's no clamor for shows and sites to warn us we're lab chimps.  

John Kenneth Galbraith called advertising ““>Neuroscience now shows what happens: Our emotions are faster than our reason, which we then use to reverse engineer some rationalization for our actions.

Is there any way to protect people from the “>banishment is an authoritarian solution.  More speech, not less, is the democratic answer to assaults on freedom and agency.  Open-source “>Media Impact Project.) And the place where countervailing speech really wants to get heard is in the media, whose industrial success, like Facebook’s, depends on monetizing our attention.  I’ve seen a lot of stories about Facebook fiddling with the happiness of our feeds.  The irony is that I encountered all of them on media whose owners are just as determined to push my buttons as Mark Zuckerberg.

Marty Kaplan is holds the Norman Lear chair at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.  Reach him at martyk@usc.edu.

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Federal Protective Service statement on gunshot at pro-Israel rally

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile /

STATEMENT:

On July 13, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) were on-site at the Wilshire Federal building where there was a demonstration of approximately 1,800 protestors.

At approximately 5:20 p.m., FPS requested an ambulance for a female who was injured after allegedly being assaulted by four males. An FPS law enforcement officer on-site attempted to stop the four male suspects who were attempting to flee the scene in a vehicle, and discharged one round from his service weapon. Subsequently, LAPD officers were able to stop the vehicle and detained the four male subjects. No injuries were reported and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident.

MORE DETAILS:

The FPS law enforcement officer who fired his service weapon has agreed to provide a voluntary statement to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office in the presence of his Union Representative. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office has taken custody of the firearm as evidence.

In accordance with FPS policy whenever a weapon is discharged, the FPS law enforcement officer has been placed on paid Administrative Leave.  FPS will conduct a Use of Force review upon completion of investigations by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office and National Protection & Programs Office – Office of Compliance and Security.

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Don’t demolish LACMA: In praise of the ‘vulgar’ architecture

Leave a Comment / Culture /

When Renzo Piano was first approached about designing an addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Italian architect hesitated. “As I already told you,” he wrote in a letter to Eli Broad, whose donation was funding the building, “it’s very frustrating to play a good piece by a string quartet in the middle of three badly played rock concerts.”

“Three rock concerts” was a reference to the existing architecture of LACMA, which had grown in fits and starts over the years. The original museum, which opened in 1965, was local architect William Pereira’s Southern Californian version of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center—three temples on a raised plaza. The second stage was a partial makeover by the New York firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, which in 1986 inserted a postmodern wing and roofed over part of the plaza. The third stage (1988) was a freestanding pavilion designed by the Oklahoma maverick Bruce Goff.

Blogger Mark Berman calls Pereira’s original buildings “mid-century classics.” Typical maybe, but classics? The architecture is pretty banal, even by Lincoln Center’s low standards. Stage two is not much better—L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight called it “Hollywood Egyptian.” And stage three, with its two stone towers and fossil-like objects on the roof is, well, goofy by any standard.

Despite his hesitation, Piano relented and the first phase of his addition opened in 2008, the second phase two years later. The Piano addition struck me as heavy-handed, not his best work and hardly the “good piece by a string quartet” he had promised. As for the “rock concert,” my first impression of the original museum was that it resembled an undistinguished shopping mall that had been enlarged over the years and then awkwardly converted into a cultural facility. But after sitting for a time at Ray’s and Stark Bar, the outdoor café on the shaded plaza, I changed my mind. 

Most art museums today resemble either palaces (if they are old), or upscale automobile showrooms (if they are new). This was neither. Groups of excited children played on the plaza and clusters of teenagers wandered in off Wilshire Boulevard. The familiar mall-like atmosphere made this an unintimidating space; it was definitely not the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it struck me that this vulgar (in the literal sense of the word) solution to an art museum succeeded in one important way. Because of its lack of pretension, this was a cheerful place in which people appeared decidedly at home.

A sense of place is an elusive quality, difficult to achieve, and not easy to maintain. It is the result not only of architectural forms but also of behavior, habit, and time. Learning to use what you have is as important as having the perfect building. That’s why it’s a shame to hear that LACMA has decided to wipe the slate clean and demolish all its older buildings, except the Goff pavilion. Why does Los Angeles, which has little enough history, feel the need to keep reinventing its surroundings? 

It would be better to reconsider this wholesale demolition. Especially as the proposed replacement, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, leaves much to be desired. It is a spreading building raised up on stilts; instead of a friendly plaza there is a dark and gloomy undercroft. The kidney shape is supposed to have something to do with the nearby La Brea Tar Pits, but it reminds me of a 1950s coffee table. Finished all in black, the proposed museum will be a somber presence among the palm trees on Wilshire Boulevard, as anomalous as a Calvinist preacher on a sunny Malibu beach. Or maybe it’s the quintessential Angeleno building?  After all, replacing an aging faithful spouse with a younger, more stylish trophy wife is an established Hollywood custom. 

Witold Rybczynski is emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and the recipient of the 2014 National Design Award for Design Mind. His latest book is How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit.

This was written for Zocalo Public Square

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A week on, Gaza war takes on deadly routine despite calls for truce

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Palestinian militants resumed rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on Monday after a 24-hour lull in strikes on the Israeli commercial capital, and Israel kept up its air and naval bombardments of the Gaza Strip despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire.

The military said it had shot down a drone from Gaza, the first reported deployment of an unmanned aircraft by Palestinian militants whose rocket attacks have been regularly intercepted.

The use of a drone would mark a step up in the sophistication of the Palestinian arsenal, although it was not immediately clear whether it was armed.

Around half a dozen Israelis have been wounded since the start of the week-old offensive, which Gaza health officials say has killed 169 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

With international calls mounting for a ceasefire, Egyptian media said U.S. Secretary John Kerry was due in Cairo on Tuesday for talks on the Gaza situation. There was no immediate U.S. confirmation of the report.

The worst flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence for almost two years was sparked by the murder of three Israeli teenagers and revenge killing of a Palestinian youth.

Israel has arrested three people, two of them minors, over the Palestinian's murder and officials said on Monday they had confessed to burning him alive.


Israeli soldiers from the Nahal Infantry Brigade walk across a field near central Gaza Strip on July 12. Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters

The European Union said it was in touch with “all parties in the region” to press for an immediate halt to the hostilities, a day after Kerry offered to help secure a Gaza truce.

Egypt and Qatar are seen as potential mediators but peace efforts were complicated by Hamas's rejection of a mere “calm for calm” in which both sides hold their fire in favour of wider conditions including prisoner release and an end to Israel's Gaza blockade.

The Israeli army said its aircraft and naval gunboats attacked dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip and that Palestinian militants fired more than 20 rockets into Israel, slightly wounding a boy in the town of Ashdod, where a home was damaged. Palestinian health officials said at least 20 people in Gaza were wounded.

But Israel did not carry out a threat to step up attacks against rocket-launching sites it said were hidden among civilian homes in the town of Beit Lahuiya after urging residents there to leave. A U.N. aid agency said around a quarter of the town's 70,000 residents had fled.


An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires towards Gaza from outside the central Gaza Strip on July 12. Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters

Tel Aviv experienced a rare lull in morning rocket strikes, but they resumed during the evening rush hour, with the Iron Dome missile interceptor system going into action. Police said there were no casualties or damage.

“SPECIAL MISSIONS”

Hamas, the Islamist group which runs Gaza, said its armed wing had sent several locally-made drones to carry out “special missions” deep inside Israel.

A military spokesman said the drone was shot down near the port of Ashdod, about 15 miles north of Gaza, by a U.S.-built Patriot missile, used largely ineffectively by Israel against Iraqi Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War.

An Egyptian-brokered truce doused the last big Gaza flare-up in 2012, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Egyptian President Abel Fattah al-Sisi in a phone call that his country is the most credible party capable of persuading both sides to stand down, an official Egyptian statement said.


A Palestinian protester throws a stone toward Israeli troops as they fire tear gas during clashes in Ramallah on July 11. Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

But Cairo's government is at odds with Islamist Hamas, complicating a mediation bid with the group, an offshoot of the now-outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Asked if Egypt was mediating, Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said only that Cairo was “in close contact with the Israelis and all Palestinian factions as well as with regional and international countries”.

He said he did not want to predict whether those efforts were moving Israel and Hamas close to a ceasefire.

A Hamas politbureau member said Kerry called the foreign minister of Qatar this week, asking him to mediate with the Palestinian movement. A Qatari government source said, however, that Hamas had unrealistic conditions for a ceasefire.

“Qatar is the only one that reached out to us,” Hamas official Ezzat al-Rishq said in Doha. “I wouldn’t say it's mediation – it’s still too early – they have just opened a line of communication with us, but there is no clear plan on what form of mediation this will be.”

SEVENTH DAY OF WARFARE

Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based Palestinian human rights group, said 869 Palestinian homes have been destroyed or damaged in Israeli attacks over the past week.

Hamas leaders have said a ceasefire must include an end to Israel's Gaza blockade and a recommitment to the 2012 truce agreement. In addition, Hamas wants Egypt to ease restrictions it imposed at its Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip since the military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.


Israelis stand at the scene after a rocket fired from Gaza landed in Ashdod on July 14. Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters

Hamas has faced a cash crisis and Gaza's economic hardship has deepened as a result of Egypt's destruction of cross-border smuggling tunnels. Cairo accuses Hamas of aiding anti-government Islamist militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an allegation the Palestinian group denies.

For its part, Hamas leaders said, Israel would have to release hundreds of the group's activists it arrested in the West Bank last month while searching for the three Jewish seminary students who it said were kidnapped by Hamas.

The detainees include more than 50 Hamas men who were freed from Israeli jails in 2011 in a prisoner exchange.

Israel's Gaza offensive, which began last Tuesday, has claimed the lives of at least 138 Palestinian civilians, including 30 children, health officials in the enclave said.

There have been no fatalities in Israel in the fighting. Iron Dome, which is Israeli-built and partly funded by the United States, has intercepted many of the rocket salvoes.


A Palestinian fire-fighter tries to extinguish a fire caused by an Israeli tank shelling in the industrial area in the east of Gaza City on July 12. Photo by Ashraf Amrah/Reuters

But the persistent rocket fire has disrupted life in major cities, paralyzed vulnerable southern towns and triggered Israeli mobilisation of troops for a possible Gaza invasion if the Palestinian rockets persisted.

While allowing for an eventual diplomatic solution, an Israeli official said Israel would, for now, pursue its military offensive “to restore quiet over a protracted period by inflicting significant damage to Hamas and the other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip”.

In Ashdod, where Israel's chief peace negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni was inspecting rocket damage, her spokeswoman refused to allow any questions about a truce. She said anything Livni might say about a potential ceasefire could derail any diplomatic efforts to achieve one.

Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Michael Georgy in Cairo and Amena Bakr in Doha; Writing by Jeffrey Heller

A week on, Gaza war takes on deadly routine despite calls for truce Read More »

Rocket seriously injures Israeli teen in Ashkelon; dual citizens leave Gaza

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

An Israeli teenager was seriously injured by a rocket fired from Gaza that landed in Ashkelon.

Another Israeli man was wounded in the rocket strike on Sunday afternoon in a residential area of the southern Israeli city.

“Hamas has chosen to attack our cities with massive and indiscriminate rocket fire,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at the beginning of the regular Cabinet meeting. “I said from the outset that we would respond in strength against this criminal firing at our citizens and this is what we are doing.”

Early Sunday morning, four Israeli Navy commandos were injured in a ground battle on a beach near Gaza City, where they destroyed long-range rockets and its launcher, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Three Hamas fighters reportedly were killed in the clash.

Also Sunday morning, nearly 700 Palestinians with foreign passports, including dozens of dual Palestinian-Americans, left Gaza for Israel. From there they will travel to their other home locations.

Since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge early on July 8, more than 800 rockets have been fired from Gaza on southern, central and northern Israel, according to the IDF. Some 147 rockets have been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.

The IDF said its forces have struck 1,320 of what it calls “terror targets” across Gaza, including 735 concealed rocket launchers, 64 training bases and militant compounds, 58 weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, 32 Hamas leadership facilities, 29 communications infrastructures and additional sites used for terrorist activities.

Cities throughout northern Israel on Sunday checked and opened public bomb shelters following two salvos of rockets fired from Lebanon since the start of Protective Edge.

Also Sunday, the Temple Mount was closed to visitors after Palestinians rioted, throwing rocks and explosives at Israeli policemen. Two officers were injured in the unrest.

Rocket seriously injures Israeli teen in Ashkelon; dual citizens leave Gaza Read More »

Hamas tells Palestinian civilians to stay in homes in face of Israeli warnings

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Hamas leaders called on Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and ignore Israeli warnings of an impending military operation.

“To all of our people who have evacuated their homes – return to them immediately and do not leave the house,” said a statement titled “Urgent call to the residents of the Gaza Strip”  released by the Hamas Interior Ministry, Ynet reported. “You must follow the directives of the Interior Ministry. This is psychological warfare, random messages to instill panic in people.”

The statement came after the Israel Defense Forces on Sunday morning dropped leaflets above areas in the northern Gaza Strip warning Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes in advance of a military campaign to destroy rocket launchers.

“The IDF’s campaign is to be short and temporary,” the messages said. “Those who fail to comply with the instructions will endanger their lives and the lives of their families. Beware.”

Some 4,000 residents of the Beit Lahiya area reportedly left their homes ahead of the noon deadline. Some 75,000 civilians reportedly live in the area.

Meanwhile, a Hamas spokesman took to Facebook to urge Palestinian citizens to remain in their homes.

“We are asking the courageous residents of Gaza not to follow the directives of the Israeli occupation army on leaflets that it dropped from the air and in telephone messages,” Hamas spokesman Eyad al-Bazam wrote on Facebook, according to the Israeli news site NRG.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Sunday morning Cabinet meeting criticized Hamas for putting civilians in harm’s way.

“We are striking Hamas with increasing strength. We are hitting commanders, militants, arsenals and command centers. The IDF, ISA, security services, firefighters, the Israel Police – everyone is doing their part and doing it in the best way possible,” he said.

“But one must understand how our enemy operates. Who hides in mosques? Hamas. Who puts arsenals under hospitals? Hamas. Who puts command centers in residences or near kindergartens? Hamas. Hamas is using the residents of Gaza as human shields and it is bringing disaster to the civilians of Gaza. Therefore, for any attack on Gaza civilians, which we regret, Hamas and its partners bear sole responsibility.”

Hamas tells Palestinian civilians to stay in homes in face of Israeli warnings Read More »

New Iron Dome battery goes operational

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, News /

More Iron Dome batteries will become operational and be deployed in the coming days, the Israeli government said.

A seventh missile defense battery was put into service last week and immediately intercepted five rockets from Gaza, according to Defense News.

Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, met Friday with executives from the Israeli companies Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries, and praised Iron Dome for its “impressive performance” and “strategic significance” as Operation Protective Edge in Gaza goes forward.

“It saves lives and grants us expanded opportunities for managing the campaign against Hamas,” Yaalon said. “And it sends a message to countries and organizations amassing huge quantities of rockets and missiles” for terrorist purposes.

Rafael is working on an eighth Iron Dome battery. Yaalon said both companies are working to produce more interceptor rockets.

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Israel shoots down UAV sent from Gaza

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Israel shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle launched from Gaza after it crossed into Israel’s airspace.

The drone was shot down Monday morning by a Patriot missile near the port of Ashdod.

The drone set off sirens in Ashdod before it was shot down. It is not known if the UAV was carrying explosives. Hamas told Reuters that it has sent several drones into Israel to carry out what it called “special missions.”

Later on Monday morning, an 8-year-old Israel boy was wounded by shrapnel from a rocket fired from Gaza that landed in Ashdod.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Monday said that Israel continues “to smash Hamas and its infrastructure. They have suffered great damage.”

“When Hamas comes out of their hiding places they will discover the extent of the destruction and the damage that we caused the organization that will cause them to regret that they entered this round of fighting against Israel,” he told an IDF briefing.

Also on Monday, several rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel. The IDF responded with artillery fired toward the source of the rocket launch. Israel has notified the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or  UNIFIL, of the incident, according to the IDF.

The IDF targeted over 12 terrorists involved in launching rockets at Israel on Sunday night and Monday morning, and Israel Air Force planes bombed more than 40 “terror sites” in Gaza overnight, according to a statement from the IDF.  On Sunday, more than 130 rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, 22 were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and more than 100 landed on Israeli territory, according to the IDF.

Since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge seven days ago, more than 980 rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. About 760 have hit Israeli territory, and another 200 have been intercepted by Iron Dome. IDF forces have struck some 1,470 terror targets across the Gaza Strip.

At least 172 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and more than 1,200 wounded since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, according to the Palestinian Maan news agency.

On Sunday, the IDF allowed into Gaza over 500 donated portions of blood for civilians in Gaza. In addition, the IDF has facilitated the transfer into Gaza for its civilians 260 trucks containing over 4,400 tons of food, as well as about 900 tons of gas, about 3.2 million liters of diesel fuel and about 500 thousand liters of gasoline, according to the IDF.

Israel shoots down UAV sent from Gaza Read More »

Shin Bet releases details of murder of Palestinian teen

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage /

Israel’s Shin Bet security service released the details of the murder of Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdeir.

Three suspects, one age 30 and the other two minor, from Jerusalem and its environs, have confessed to the murder, according to the Shin Bet, which released a report on the investigation on Monday. The suspects are all part of the same extended family.

According to the investigation, the choice of Abu Khdeir was random, and came after an unsuccessful attempt the previous evening to kidnap an 8-year-old boy, which was thwarted by the child’s mother.

The investigation also found that the decision to kidnap and kill a Palestinian was premeditated, since they had come into possession of supplies, including handcuffs and gasoline, in advance. The suspects also told interrogators that their crime was in retaliation for the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach, whose funerals were held hours before their abduction of Abu Khdeir.

They snatched Abu Khdeir at nearly 4 a.m. on July 2 and took him to the Jerusalem Forest where they beat him on the head and then set fire to him.

A court-imposed gag order has been lifted on all details of the case except for the identity of the suspects, in order to prevent revenge attacks against the family.

Haaretz reported that the suspects likely will claim temporary insanity. An indictment is expected to be filed by Friday.

Shin Bet releases details of murder of Palestinian teen Read More »

What Can Israel Gain From This Round of Violence?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, Rosners Domain-mobile /

Ask what the Israeli government is saying about its goals in Gaza and the answer is “nothing”. The government, for good reasons, hasn’t stated its goals. When you do such a thing, there's a good chance you’ll later have to explain why the stated goals weren't met. So Israel is more or less mum about its objectives. You can get the usual platitudes: quiet, calm, no rockets, no terror. And of course, peace on earth is what we all want. But the actual achievement Israel is striving for is unclear – it is unclear to the public, and, I suspect, unclear to the leadership as well.

At times one gets the sense that they are just playing it day by day – and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. A cautious government is testing the waters and trying to assess what goals it can realistically hope to achieve. To do that, it will use tactical means – for example, Israel can decide to send forces into Gaza to occupy a less dense area in the north part of the Strip. And it will talk to mediators – Egypt is the mediator that Israel is counting on (the US is the country from which it would like to get quiet backing and as little disruption as possible). And it will measure the temperature within Israel – to make sure it has the backing of the public and the political system.

Working slowly and cautiously is usually a good thing, but in this case it has one caveat. The more the days pass, the more likely it becomes that an incident, in Israel or in Gaza, will force the parties to change their calculations. That is to say: if one rocket passes through and kills many Israelis, the government might be forced to respond in ways that will alter the state of the battle. On the other hand, if the Israeli air force will erroneously target a large group of Palestinian civilians, the pressure on Israel from the outside to curb its actions can become much more significant.

Thinking about the overall possible objectives, there are three groups of possibilities for Israel:

1. To go back to the status quo ante – that is, to have a ceasefire and go back to the understandings following the Pillar of Defense operation a year and a half ago. That is to say: Hamas doesn't get anything from this round, and Israel doesn't get anything from it. The disruption, the loss of life and property, the anxiety, all that for nothing. But Israel can still say that Hamas was the aggressor, that it achieved nothing, and hence that it has possibly learned a lesson. Since Israel didn't initiate the fight, maybe ending it with a result that is essentially a tie is acceptable.

2. To agree to give Hamas something in return for a ceasefire: I don't think Israel is in such a mood, but theoretically speaking, the “something” might not have to be something that Israel will give in return for calm, it can be “something” that Hamas will get from the Egyptians, or from Qatar, or from other international players. This will give the organization an incentive to calm the waters without Israel having to feel that it made concessions. The downside, obviously, is that for Hamas it doesn't really matter which country made the concession to appease it – all that matters is that the round of violence was fruitful. If this round is fruitful it is only a matter of time until Hamas starts another one.

3. To insist on change, and here there are many options. For example, to insist that Hamas loses power. This isn't what Israel wants right now. But there are more modest and possibly more realistic goals. One is to forcibly destroy a large chunk of Hamas' arsenal of rockets. To achieve such a goal Israel would have to launch an expensive and bloody land operation. Another possible goal is to disarm Hamas by diplomatic means – that is, to make it get rid of its arsenal under the threat of force, in a way similar to the one used against Bashar Assad's chemical weapons in Syria. For such a thing to happen, an international front is going to have to back Israel, or do the job.

The likeliest outcome of the current round is the first one. It is more likely because it is the easiest to achieve, and the most convenient for mediators to talk about. It provides for the shortest route from the beginning of talks to the end of hostilities. Of course, that it is likely doesn't necessarily make it desirable to either side. When people go to war they usually hope to get something from it. And they want to win and to feel that the other side, the aggressor, has lost.

In Israel, the notion of Hamas losing has changed its meaning in the course of a couple of years. Not so long ago, it was still common for officials to contend that Israel's goal is to end Hamas rule in Gaza, supposedly replacing it with Fatah rule. Israel, for good reasons and bad reasons, is no longer striving for this goal – not in the short run. (The bad reason is that Israel is less hopeful about the prospect of having a reasonable Palestinian counterpart. The good reason is that Israel has become more realistic about its limited ability to manage the internal politics of its neighbors).

If managing the internal politics of Gaza is no longer a goal, this means that Israel is willing to live with Hamas and is trying to make its presence less of a burden (for example, by forcing it to partially disarm). This is an idea that’s gaining supporters in Israel, because it’s a good one. Whether it is practical for Israel to hope to achieve such a thing is another matter.

The international community, if it were serious about helping to create a more stable situation in Gaza, should have supported such an objective and could have made it more likely to be achieved. It doesn't even need to do much, other than let Israel keep attacking Hamas until it caves. But I don't think the international community is serious about having stability. All it wants is for the scenes of exchanges of fire to disappear as quickly as possible from the TV screens – also for good reasons (stopping the killing) and bad ones (it has little interest in truly understanding the Gaza situation). 

What Can Israel Gain From This Round of Violence? Read More »