The hostage releases hand more power to Hamas

It is joyful to see Israeli (and other) hostages of Hamas returned. But joy should not blind us to other consequences. Here, in short order, are a few points:

1. There is a new, special agony for every hostage (the vast majority) not released. In some cases, Hamas deliberately twists the knife by splitting up families, releasing one member but not another. This increases its power over the fate of those who remain.

2. Hamas is being accorded kudos for its actions by the media, as if it were merciful. In truth, the releases are just as calculatedly ruthless as were the original killings and kidnappings. It is a mistake to see the hostage returns as a mark of Hamas weakness, let alone a change of heart.

3. Numerically and morally, these exchanges are unequal. In return for a small number of its citizens, Israel is freeing far more Palestinians, most of whom are guilty of something. The Israelis Hamas frees are wholly innocent.

4. By announcing that it will extend the releases, Hamas makes itself look virtuous, but in fact is winning more time to regroup. It knows that every day of “pause” damages Israel’s advance and that Israel will be blamed if hostilities resume. Unless Hamas commits a new atrocity – for which it sees no need at present – it will not be.

5. Bargaining over hostages makes the future taking of hostages more likely. This is partly because the kidnappings are seen to work and partly because many of the Palestinians released will resume the fight against Israel which their imprisonment interrupted. In 2011, Israel gained the release of Gilad Shalit, a single soldier held by Hamas, only by freeing 1,027 prisoners, almost all of them Palestinians or Arab Israelis. With such a result, Hamas naturally came back for more. This will happen again.

6. The Israeli state is weakened. As a democracy – which Hamas, of course, is not – it must pay attention to public feeling. As a dependent ally, it also cannot ignore American political pressure. Naturally, many Israelis will do almost anything to get their fellow citizens home. If the Israeli government gives in to this, however, it may well be sacrificing the long-term interests of all Israelis to the feelings of the moment. Hamas has managed to make itself the central player in Israeli politics.
The fact that these points are almost unnoticed in the West is itself evidence of how well Hamas is doing by having taken hostages. 

How many marched?

There was yet another pro-Palestinian march in London last Saturday. The BBC reported, without any attempt at verification, that the march organisers claimed an attendance of 300,000. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Yet I hear from friends who watched Saturday’s march that its numbers were much lower than those of previous ones. The 300,000 figure is about the size of the entire population of Oxford and Cambridge combined. It is incredible, in the accurate sense of that word.

Some years ago, the police gave up issuing their own estimates of march sizes. They complained it involved them in political argy-bargy. But reasonably accurate march estimates are an important public service because it is numbers, more than anything, that the organisers need to strengthen their cause. Many are therefore unscrupulous about the figures they put out. 

For organisational reasons, the police must in fact make private calculations of march numbers. In the era of drones, the tools required must be easy to operate and quite cheap. They should publish what they find.

I notice, by the way, that the BBC behaved quite differently about the march against anti-Semitism which took place in London on Sunday. At one point they gave a figure much lower than the estimate of over 100,000 marchers given by the organisers. Funny how the BBC’s critical faculty was suspended for Palestinians, but not for Jews; or perhaps not that funny. 

Avoiding potholes the 1940s way

The AA is right to warn motorists to “avoid puddles”, since nowadays they so often conceal potholes. My mother is over 90 and disabled. Earlier this month, a kind carer took her for a drive round the neighbouring villages she has known so well for so long. This gave great pleasure, but there was a problem. They were so many potholed puddles to avoid that the constant manoeuvring required made my mother car-sick. Country lanes have become altogether too exciting. 

A couple of days later, the carer brought my mother a yellowed newspaper which she had found at home. It was a 1947 copy of the Sunday Dispatch, a now-forgotten newspaper but which at that time had (as its front page boasted) a circulation of 1,969,790.

“BRITAIN’S ROAD REPAIR SHOCK”, said the splash headline, “Potholes Will Not Be Filled: Winter Chaos Certain”. Councils were being forced to dismiss “roadmen” because of lack of money, the paper reported. Reading the story, we felt almost comforted that some things never change. But on the other hand, Britain in 1947 did have the excuse that the Second World War had ended less than two years earlier, so almost everything needed repair. 

Besides, as the Sunday Dispatch story explained, there were only three million drivers on British roads then. Today, there are more than 10 times that number, so the pothole problem has far more victims.