“All The World is a Stage”

Accepting her Emmy, Hannah Eisenstein felt compelled, she tells us, as a Jew, to separate Judaism from Israel, simultaneously avowing a connection and a detachment and leaving enormous ambiguity about where or how to draw the line between them. But if her words suggested endless possibilities, the bloody hand pin adorning her dress projected an endorsement of the avatar justifying the murder of Israelis even if they simply took a wrong turn and mistakenly drove into a Palestinian city.

Hannah Eisenstein’s message slots comfortably into the petition drafted by actors, directors and producers calling for a boycott of Israel’s film industry because of its supposed complicity in a presumed ‘apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.’ Denouncing Israel seems irresistible catnip for actors whose chic progressivism instantly seizes center stage. Indifferent to the fraudulent charges and misinformation contained in their statement, the thousands promising to stop working with Israeli film makers are obviously in thrall to a strategy jarringly out of sync with its goals. Their charges are repeated often enough to have become cliches likely to weaken, if not destroy, the careers of the very Israelis marching to stop the Gaza War, return the hostages, and replace the current government. Surprisingly, however, as much as Hollywood has drawn attention to pronouncements disconnected from proclaimed goals, it is politicians who have stolen the show in what has become a run of performances severing words from deeds.

The cavalcade began in Israel with a presumed revelation about Israel’s effort to take out Hamas’ leadership by sending missiles to Qatar and dropping them on the buildings where the men, all of whom reside outside Gaza and distant from the war turmoil and suffering, were presumably formulating a response to the American proposal to release all the hostages in return for a ceasefire and eventual end to the war. Effectively admitting a misstep, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu rushed to acknowledge that he, alone, was responsible for ordering the attack after consultations with the security cabinet. Insisting there was no coordination with the United States nor even prior messaging, Netanyahu’s statements were a mixture of geographic absurdity and technological gibberish. How could Israeli planes carrying missiles across Saudi Arabian territory approaching an area next to the United States Central Command not have been tracked?

Opponents to Israel’s actions immediately charged the Jewish state with putting a stake through American Qatari relations and their public comments ran consistently on hyperventilating prose. A specter, they said, was haunting the region. Israeli military violence was more poisonous than the drone and missile attacks from Iran or from Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and other terrorist groups whose moves were now understood as trying to exorcise this terrifying force. But such a narrative is riddled with misinformation and totally misunderstands the flow of hostilities in the Middle East. Qatar forged its alliance with the United States to counter the capacity of Saudi Arabia to crush the country’s economy and diminish its independence. The United States forces stationed on Qatar’s shores serve as an effective deterrent against Saudi Arabian not Israeli threats. Qatar is, in fact, currently far more concerned about how to sustain its influence in Syria against Saudi pressures than it is  about its interactions with Israel.

Nor have Israeli bombs eroded Qatar’s capacity to negotiate for the return of the hostages. Hostages are still an important source of power for Hamas. Qatar has a record of helping Hamas use hostages as leverage that have brought the movement resources and power—at least until the current two-year war erupting on October 7. If the announcements of  an Arab and Israeli consensus on the American plan to end the Gaza War are correct, it means that Qatar is willing to pull Hamas back from the vortex of violence and destruction it unleashed and from the views of many of its leaders determined to continue holding the hostages even if it deepens the suffering. Such a development should corral the intellectual posturing that has become more akin to fable than to reality.

Israel, not the United States, did lose ground with its failed mission in Qatar. It may have to comply with post-war plans that mention the Palestine Authority and even the ultimate creation of a Palestine state. It might have been able to keep that language more implicit than explicit had its missile strike hit its intended targets. Despite the coalition problems such language is likely to trigger, it is difficult to imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu rejecting a plan that guarantees the return of the hostages. For the event preoccupying the prime minister is not simply the Gaza War and its outcome but also and very importantly its aftermath for the next general election in Israel. That election will come in 2026 either at its beginning or at its end. But it will come. A head of state who has never acknowledged responsibility for the horrors and devastations of October 7 will not want to talk about hostages who incarnated the failures of his governing coalition. Rather, he will want to go to the polls as someone who rotated the history of the region from instability and war to a firm and peaceful axis for the future. To galvanize voters, he will have to offer hope in the future of the Jewish state, not fear of a trajectory it cannot control. He will have to convince Israelis that the terror, wars and wreckage have laid the groundwork for rebuilding a stronger country and were not ominous signs of things to come. There is no way to know now if such an argument will be effective with voters. But only returning the hostages gives him the opening to make it. And only an election can determine if that is a winning claim.