The Editors Told You So, Again
Israeli hostage deal, Harvard antisemitism settlements were previewed here
When we took a victory lap (“The Editors Told You So,” November 6, 2024) over predicting correctly the results of the 2024 election, we acknowledged some hesitance to do so, owing to what we described as “the risk of taking an overly self-referential and self-promotional approach to the news.” I’m aware of and averse to that risk, yet I am also running a newsletter that I’m trying to promote. So when The Editors get things right, every once in a while we will point it out, not to be insufferably self-congratulatory but to support with some evidence the claim that “trustworthy information and analysis” are on offer here.
Two recent news events fall into the category of “things that careful readers of The Editors would have seen coming, but other people might have been surprised by.”
The first development is the return, on January 19, of some of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. In a December 2, 2024 article headlined “Gaza Hostage Deal in ‘Coming Month or Two,’ Israeli General Avivi Says,” we wrote:
The incremental ins and outs of the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a hostage release haven’t been the subject of a lot of attention here. That’s not because I’m not hoping for the release of the hostages or the return of the bodies of those no longer alive, but rather because I haven’t seen Hamas as interested in a deal. The endless reports that one was coming soon have seemed almost counterproductive, a combination of psychological warfare by Hamas against Israel, wishful thinking by the Biden administration, and an effort by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s enemies in Israel and abroad to smear him by falsely portraying him as the obstacle to the return of the hostages.
Yet the situation has now changed. This morning, Brigadier General (Reserve) Amir Avivi, the founder and chairman of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, said three factors now make a deal for release of the hostages more likely….
Avivi has been consistently accurate and reliable in predicting developments in the war, including Israel’s move into Rafah and into Lebanon.
This morning Avivi said, “We might see, hopefully, hostages released in the coming months or two.”
He went on, “Opportunities are popping, and this is the moment that I really am hoping to see our hostages coming back.”
In retrospect that article was on target.
The second development were the settlements reached this week in some of the antisemitism litigation against Harvard. A December 9, 2024, article at The Editors carried the subheadline, “Shabbos Kestenbaum switches lawyers as antisemitism case against Harvard may settle.”
I wrote, “A series of factors may point toward a settlement….the change of counsel signals that a settlement is likelier than it has been in the past. The NYU settlement involved, among other things, NYU implementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and the accompanying examples. Harvard President Alan Garber is said to be reluctant to do that for fear of faculty complaints that it would interfere with academic freedom. Yet that definition is already in federal guidance and is likely also to become federal law.”
In retrospect, that article was on target, too, and Harvard did agree to use the IHRA definition (which is pronounced like the “Ira” definition, creating an opportunity for some punsters to wonder whether The Editor of the Editors will be the one defining antisemitism).
In that piece about the election results, we concluded, “We don’t always have this level of foresight. As with stock-picking, sometimes you can look smart just by being lucky. But in this case, let’s just say, we saw it coming.”
Recent work: “Harvard’s Settlement of Lawsuits on Campus Antisemitism Are but Modest Steps Against an Entrenched Bigotry” is the headline over my column for The New York Sun: “What may be even more effective than litigation and regulation are the forces of competition.”
“New York Times ‘Ceasefire’ Coverage Laments That Israel Will Exist” is the headline over my column for the Algemeiner. It includes an example from the Times of The Editors Law of Byline Inflation, which states that the reliability of any news article is inversely proportional to the number of named authors.