Yair Rosenberg

Looks like Trump is accepting Hamas's offer to negotiate the details of his proposal and wants to get the hostages out while that happens. It's past midnight in Israel on Shabbat, hope Bibi's up!

In short: Hamas said they won't release the hostages within 72 hours, they won't disarm, and they want to negotiate over Trump's proposal that he has repeatedly said is non-negotiable. But otherwise, they accepted the plan.

Thanks, I should have included that!

In case you are wondering, we are here
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

I feel sad that you go through life constantly afraid that secret death squads are coming for you and anyone else for saying the same thing millions of people say without incident every day. It sounds exhausting and depressing.

How the conspiratorial race to the bottom works: Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets that she is not suicidal and implies Israel would try to kill her but doesn't name them. Days later, Theo Von just says it straight out, because you need to keep upping the antisemitic ante to shock.

I have to watch it yet again, because there's so much there that's prescient. In some ways, one can look at our wild west influencer-dominated discourse as what happens when you have many Stephen Glasses and no Chuck Lanes -- or any editorial oversight structure at all.

Both Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) and Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) in Shattered Glass, the best movie about journalist (though the latter, perhaps, is not the ideal model for your purposes).

Art of the deal

Key point: Trump has more leverage over Netanyahu than any other American president, because Bibi has based his electoral argument on his alliance with Trump. He can't afford to break with Trump without shattering the image he has crafted for himself. But Trump has to actually use that leverage.

What’s Missing From Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan Announcing a peace plan is the easy part. Executing it is much harder.

Trump presented his peace plan as a done deal. But it's not even close. Qatar and Turkey need to get Hamas to agree to things it has refused. Trump must ensure that Netanyahu adheres to the agreement, even if it threatens his coalition. I wrote about what's missing from Trump's plan (gift link):

The Real Reason to Recognize Palestine Absolutists have attempted to kill the two-state solution for years. The international community just called their bluff.

"The Israeli right has spent decades trying to prevent people from conceiving any alternatives to its ultimate victory," writes @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Some settlers can more about living on land they consider holy than who governs it (look up Rabbi Menachem Froman). Many would prefer to move back to Israel. Either option ought to be open.

Survey: Israelis support Trump plan, but are skeptical it will be implemented * * *

"71% of Israelis back the US framework, the survey finds. Support is particularly high among Arab citizens, with 93% backing the plan." This has been true of every attempt to end the war with a hostage deal for months. Most Israelis and Palestinians want the war to end. The question is leadership.

The Real Reason to Recognize Palestine Absolutists have attempted to kill the two-state solution for years. The international community just called their bluff.

"The Israeli right has spent decades trying to prevent people from conceiving any alternatives to its ultimate victory. The countries now recognizing a Palestinian state and committing themselves to the prospect are rejecting that premise and denying the settler right’s attempt at a fait accompli."

The Real Reason to Recognize Palestine Absolutists have attempted to kill the two-state solution for years. The international community just called their bluff.

Palestinian recognition is symbolic and will have little immediate impact on the ground. But in the long term, it could have dramatic consequences for Israel's relationship with the world. I wrote about the real reason Palestinian statehood recognition matters. Gift link to full story:

The Worst-Kept Secret of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Trump turned a far-right fantasy—ethnic cleansing in Gaza—into U.S. policy. He needs to reject it.

Back in July, I wrote that getting anywhere on a lasting Gaza deal would require Trump to "disown his biggest blunder" of Gaz-a-Lago. We'll see if the new position holds, but the position matters.

Notable from Trump's Gaza plan: It's the first time he's officially repudiated his prior proposal to empty out the Strip to build his "Riviera on the Middle East." That plan emboldened Israel's settler right seeking to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Now Trump says Gazans should stay.

Both are correct! Pretty sure that "holiday" etymologically derives from "holy day" so they are basically the same thing.

Will be back on the road again after the High Holidays, joining both local communities and campuses! Calendar is pretty packed, but if you'd like to bring me to yours, drop a line and we'll see what we can do: yairrosenberg.com/speaking/

Have You Considered Not Polluting the Water? The tech industry will do anything to solve our loneliness epidemic except stop causing it in the first place.

As tech companies rush to create devices they can sell as interventions in America’s loneliness epidemic, @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social argues that they are bound to fail, “because they are the same technologies fueling it in the first place.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Netanyahu and his people will probably try to find a formula for partial annexation that they can sell to Trump as "not annexation," but with Trump's Arab allies pressing him to save the Abraham Accords, it will be a lift. Meanwhile, it puts Bibi in a bind between Trump and his far-right coalition.

We'll see if this holds, but as I wrote this month, Trump had actual reason to stop Israeli annexation of the West Bank: it threatens the Abraham Accords, which he considers one of his greatest accomplishments. If he sticks to this position, Bibi will have to swallow it. My story on all this here:

The arc of conspiracy is short and it bends towards the Jews.

This may seem wild but it was in fact inevitable. Conspiratorial people animated by grievance and grift invariably land on one of the oldest and most lucrative conspiratorial grifts of all. You can set your clock by it.

They are not hiding it, people who don't see it at this point are choosing not to

Have You Considered Not Polluting the Water? The tech industry will do anything to solve our loneliness epidemic except stop causing it in the first place.

Silicon Valley spent years replacing real world human communities and interactions with poor digital facsimiles of them. Now, they are marketing AI friends to alleviate the loneliness epidemic that their products continue to cause. I wrote about why this is destined to fail. Gift link:

At this point, if you do not see what is going on here, you are dumber than a Nazi

For years, Silicon Valley has built products that cause downstream social problems, then marketed new products as the solutions to those problems, from loneliness to misinformation. But it doesn't have to work this way. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Have You Considered Not Polluting the Water? The tech industry will do anything to solve our loneliness epidemic except stop causing it in the first place.

With AI friends, "Silicon Valley is trying to sell a cure to a disease that it causes—the equivalent of a cigarette company hawking cutting-edge cancer treatments. Presented with a malaise of its own making, the industry’s answer is more of the same."