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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   1855 thread views

Transnational Thanksgiving (comes one day early)

Posting this a day early because I won’t be around tomorrow.

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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That is one of two overarching goals of the war

If the other is "no more hostages taken in the future", successful exchanges go against it, I believe.

True, if Israel wanted to reduce hostage-taking to almost zero it would announce that there will be no more hostage deals ever under any circumstances and use only military means to rescue the hostages, even if that might endanger some of the current hostages. It's possible that that would reduce the number of hostages at risk in the long run, even if it would greatly endanger the current hostages. It's not possible politically though, since the plight of the current hostages is a huge political issue that the Israeli electorate cares very deeply about.

The other overarching goal is the elimination of Hamas and its ability to rule in the Gaza Strip.

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