The new NFL season officially began with a kickoff in the opening game. That means armchair quarterbacks are back in action throwing their own flags whenever they believe coaches make the wrong play call or field refs botch one. These diehard fans take football battles very seriously, but at its core, football is merely a game. In the Middle East arena, strategizing the play by play for dealing with opposing adversarial ‘teams’ is a real life dilemma. Play calling there carries major consequences. In diagramming ‘X’s and ‘O’s for the country, Israel’s leadership knows full well lives are on the line. Consider this imagined, but relevant scenario in which ‘play calling’ has life and death outcomes.
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| Runaway |
A trolley car has become untethered. It is heading toward a group of kindergarten kids on a school outing. All are likely to be killed in the ensuing collision. The trolley driver frantically searches for a way to avert tragedy.
At T minus 2 seconds he realizes he can switch tracks to spare the group. But diverting the car moves it onto the track where the driver’s parents are awaiting the next trolley. That collision will surely kill them. What should he do?
If Israel’s ‘government trolley’ stays on track continuing its current game plan of destroying Hamas, more if not all the remaining hostages will be executed. Six were murdered not long ago after almost a year in hellish captivity in the bowels of Gaza as IDF troops drew near. If however, the government diverts the ‘trolley’ and agrees to a ceasefire in exchange for return of all hostages, Hamas will get the ‘W’: return of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, an IDF pullout from Gaza, and retention of power. To be sure it will then reconstitute itself and live on to update its game plan to kill more Israelis at a later time.
These are the no-win choices Israel faces on the Middle East field. OK coach, what would you do?
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