I am a very good negotiator -- for other people. I'm a bad negotiator for myself (though I'm getting better).
The reason I'm a bad negotiator for myself is that I want to be liked. When you want people to like you, you can't negotiate properly. You're vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation. You end up losing every time.
When I negotiate for other people, I don't care if the people I'm dealing with on the other side of the bargain like me or not. I just want to get the best deal for the person I'm representing. And I'm damned good at it, if I do say so myself.
This brings me to the Middle East.
The Biden administration has provided a textbook example of bad negotiation in the ceasefire/hostage deal. It is committing a rookie mistake, "bidding against yourself." This is when you offer a price, get rejected, and then -- instead of doing something different -- offer a new price. The other side has made money without giving anything up or even doing anything other than being rude. It will keep doing that until it bleeds you dry.
In the Israel-Hamas situation, Biden ended up saying that he agreed Israel had to destroy Hamas. Then he said there had to be a "ceasefire" -- which was a word Israel refused to use. Israel preferred "pause." Biden offered "ceasefire." So Israel, being dependent on American ammunition, moved to "ceasefire."
Then Biden said any ceasefire had to be tied to a release of hostages. Israel was fine with that, and it worked for a November deal in which Hamas released most of the women and children it held (which made sense, in PR terms, for Hamas.) Hamas then broke the ceasefire and everyone went back to war.
Biden was desperate -- more so than Israel or Hamas -- to end the war, so eventually he dropped the idea that a ceasefire had to depend on the release of hostages. That was a major step toward the Hamas position -- which the White House denied, but reality is what it is: Biden was bidding against himself.
Israel, by now, was pissed. Israelis know how to negotiate in the Middle East bazaar; Americans do not. You see -- Americans, particularly liberals, want to be liked. And Americans of a particular social class believe that if they just come up with the best solution, everyone can be persuaded to adopt it.
I met lots of people like that in law school. In fact, when I am negotiating for myself, I am kind of one of those people. But when I'm negotiating for a third party -- and I don't care about being liked, or being smart, just winning -- I eat the polite problem-solvers -- for lunch. Or I did in law school, anyway.
Fast-forward to May 31, when Biden announced what he claimed was the "Israeli" proposal -- a three-part Rube Goldberg machine that failed to 1) guarantee the release of all the hostages 2) disarm Hamas 3) ensure Hamas did not come to power again and attack Israelis (and oppress Palestinians).
The Biden Administration admitted its proposal was "nearly identical" to Hamas's own proposals -- in other words, Biden was bidding against himself. The geniuses at the State Department seem to have thought their generous offer should have been gratefully accepted by the bloodthirsty terrorists.
Guess what? Bidding against yourself always produces the same result. Hamas pocketed the concessions in the Biden proposal -- full withdrawal from Gaza, no territorial changes, etc. -- and raised the offer: not only did it want Israel to end the war completely (its demand from the start), but it also wanted control of the Egypt-Gaza border -- a strip known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
This was rather clever: that idea is a "poison pill," a demand Israel cannot possibly accept, because it means allowing Hamas to smuggle arms in again.
So Hamas cast itself as the more reasonable party, ensuring that Israel would either have to cast itself as the villain by rejecting a ceasefire that Biden had (falsely) described as the Israeli proposal, or else accept a terrible deal.
And all because Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, among others, don't know the first thing about negotiation, and want to be liked more than they want to win.
In the end, they'll get neither: nobody likes a loser.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
