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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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Almost on a weekly cadence now, a new headline spotlights the growing flow of artillery shells and ballistic missiles from North Korea to Russia and then to the battlefield in Ukraine. On October 23, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed the latest development: North Korea has not only sent materiel to Russia; it is now sending troops. Austin warned that if the North Korean troops become “co-belligerents” in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the impact will go beyond Europe to impact Indo-Pacific security. Given the stakes, how should the United States and its allies understand this deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang?

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Pyongyang—his first visit since 2000—to sign what was called a “mutual defense pact” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At the time, Kim said the agreement amounted to an “alliance.” This likely overstates the character of Russia-North Korea relations. At the same time, it would be an underestimation to view recent weapons and supplies transfers as simply transactional or ad hoc deals. Instead, what is emerging between Russia and North Korea is something closer to a specialized “common market of autocracies.” It’s the marketplace extension of the Atlantic Council’s prior work conceptualizing the “arsenal of autocracy” as well as the “axis of evasion.” The implications of this growing common market are serious for the following reasons.

First, this market works through barter-like deals, which take place largely outside the reach of potent US economic statecraft tools. These bespoke deals operate without the need to settle payments in US dollars, ship through international waters, or transport over foreign territory. As the previous and current targets of some of the United States’ most powerful sanctions, Russian and North Korean entities have accumulated significant experience in evading them. The two partners can increasingly apply those lessons learned to their bilateral transactions and present them with the opportunity to create recurring barter deals. There are concerning gaps now between Putin-Kim bartered deals and the latticed structure of powerful US economic statecraft tools.

What is largely missed is that recurring business deals represent the culmination of partners structuring, testing, and refining business practices. Usually, this takes many years to develop. Moscow and Pyongyang appear to be moving much quicker. One of the unintended consequences of the United States’ application of powerful sanctions is that for some targets, these tools serve as an accelerator for learning how to adapt and evade. These targets develop sanctions resistance by innovating and developing new ways to do business. By pivoting, Russia and North Korea have been able to devise and develop new business practices and form new business networks.

Second, this common market structure presents a serious longer-term threat to the United States and its allies because it bolsters the ability of these autocracies to aid each other in sustaining themselves. Through a barter version of comparative advantage, Kim can provide Putin with an item that Putin urgently needs and that Kim uniquely produces or stockpiles (such as North Korean artillery shells and ballistic missiles). The same is true for what Putin can provide Kim (such as Russia helping to resolve technical setbacks with North Korea’s rocket and missile program, as well as potentially providing war-tested drones for Kim’s deployment on the Korean Peninsula).

The next stage of this common market dynamic would be the Russians directly assisting the North Koreans in modernizing and expanding their munitions industry to meet the ambitious plans for more North Korean-produced artillery shells for the Russian war effort. (As the Russia Sanctions Database highlights, Putin’s primary military vulnerability lies in Russia’s deficient ammunition manufacturing capability.) A scaled-up munitions industry could provide North Korea a considerable industrial base with expanded capabilities that it could apply to other sectors. It could also be a source of economic growth for the Kim regime. As an exclusive supplier to a massive European war zone, the recurring barter trade channels could bring in a widening range of other high-demand items into the country.

Third, Putin and Kim are now out of their respective boxes, which China carefully crafted to try to influence their behavior. China maintained the height and length of these bespoke boxes by becoming a large bulk purchaser of energy resources from Russia and a critical secure supplier of petroleum products to North Korea. With Putin and Kim building more direct channels between their personalistic regimes for recurring specialized barter, the two leaders are, in practice, reducing obstacles and friction as they advance their own urgent national goals. For Putin, the goal is to outlast the Ukrainians on the battlefield. For Kim, it is to further erode deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.

While recent reports of Russian shipments of petroleum products to North Korea garnered only a few sentences in international media, this development likely jolted Chinese leaders. In a relatively short period of time, the potency of Beijing’s main policy tool in managing the complex China-Russia relationship and the dysfunctional China-North Korea relationship has eroded. This dynamic appears to be largely underestimated because it resides outside the scope of an immediate and direct threat to US national security.

However, if this Russia-North Korea trend continues along with other bilateral transactions, crises in Europe and the Indo-Pacific will have a trans-Siberian logistical support dynamic reminiscent of World War II. From a logistical standpoint, the Soviets effectively drew on their resources in the Far East to tip the scales on their western front. A main difference this time is that this logistical support would be two-way, with North Korea now gaining resources that could enable it to tip the scales on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

It is a critical time to fully map out and categorize the host of specialized barter deals between North Korea and Russia. Doing so will enable the United States and its allies and partners to better understand how the common market of autocracies is growing so that policy tools can adapt to this expanding threat. The window to do so is closing quickly at the speed of war.

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 1 month ago

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Brazil arbitration marks ICC milestone

The 29,000th arbitration to be conducted under ICC rules is a domestic Brazilian energy sector dispute.

The ICC International Court of Arbitration (ICC) has reached an auspicious landmark, having accepted its 29,000th case to be administered under its arbitral rules.

The ICC secretariat announced the news yesterday (23 October) that the matter in question involves the power and energy industry in Brazil, where the arbitration was filed and will be seated in Rio de Janeiro. Initially to be administered by ICC on an ad hoc basis under United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) rules, the Brazilian parties later agreed to change this to ICC rules.

The private dispute resolution body’s wider efforts to position itself in the Latin American country in recent years include the hire of dedicated case management personnel in 2017, which have overseen more than 650 cases to date.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #International Court of Arbitration #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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newstfionline · 2 months ago

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Friday, October 4, 2024

The hidden toll taken by tropical storms (The Verge) Tropical storms take many more lives than officially recorded, according to a sobering study published today in the journal Nature. It comes as people across the Southeastern US scramble to find loved ones in the wreckage of Hurricane Helene. The average tropical storm or hurricane leads to the early deaths of between 7,170 and 11,430 people, the researchers estimate. That’s astronomically higher than the average of 24 direct deaths per storm documented in government records spanning more than half a century. Beyond the dangers of floodwaters and hurricane-force winds, people likely face many more insidious health risks in the aftermath of a storm. There’s the heightened physical and mental stress caused by the crisis. There can also be a cascade of added environmental hazards, like chemical releases from damaged industrial facilities. On top of that, storms hit people’s pocketbooks. They might have a harder time paying for healthcare as a result. Disasters tighten government budgets, which also could lead to less funds to spend on public health initiatives. And lastly, big storms can fray social support systems when people are displaced. In other words, these are indirect ways that a storm can lead to higher mortality rates.

With No Phones or Wi-Fi, North Carolina Revives the Town Meeting (NYT) How do community leaders provide vital updates when the power is down and cellphone service is out? One North Carolina town devastated by Hurricane Helene has brought back a decidedly low-tech solution: the town meeting. Residents in Black Mountain, N.C., about 12 miles east of Asheville, have pitched in to make signs alerting their neighbors to the daily gatherings, using posters, markers, wooden boards, spray paint and anything else they can get their hands on. It’s working: About 1,000 people are turning out for daily updates in the town square. The disrupted lines of communication have made it hard for relief workers to know where people are and what they need. Being cut off from the modern world has also left many residents feeling frustrated and alone. So they’ve turned to methods that have been out of date for a century or more. The town square in Burnsville, N.C., became an ad hoc communications center for residents. People have scrawled messages in marker on whiteboards to let their neighbors know how they’re doing or what they need. “We are alive, house gone,” read one. “I am safe,” read another.

Dockworkers' union to suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract (AP) The union representing 45,000 striking U.S. dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports has reached a deal to suspend a three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately. The temporary end to the strike came after the union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, reached a tentative agreement on wages, the union and ports said in a joint statement Thursday night. A person briefed on the agreement said the ports sweetened their wage offer from about 50% over six years to 62%. The person didn’t want to be identified because the agreement is tentative.

Mexico’s Sheinbaum keeps doing morning briefings (AP) Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum started her day Wednesday much like her political mentor, ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, began most of his: with an early morning news briefing from the National Palace. López Obrador’s news briefings, known as the “mañaneras,” were marathon affairs, featuring folksy dialogue, verbal jousting with the press, and, frequently, long history lessons. His oratorical skills turned his 2 1/2-hour-long daily mañaneras into a powerful political weapon. Sheinbaum kept her morning briefing shorter, less combative and more concise, in keeping with her character as a scientist and academic. She said she would keep some of her predecessor’s fixtures, like a weekly segment attacking what she called media “lies” about the government. The new president also continued a diplomatic dispute with Spain—which has refused to apologize for abuses during the 1500s conquest of Mexico.

Email Oops (Foreign Policy) It’s every reporter’s nightmare. The BBC had to cancel a prime-time interview with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday after presenter Laura Kuenssberg accidentally sent her briefing notes to the British politician instead of to her team.

Kyiv’s drones (Foreign Policy) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky championed Kyiv’s ability to produce 4 million drones annually on Tuesday, while also announcing plans to boost production of other weapons. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reiterated this sentiment, saying Ukraine tripled its overall domestic weapons production in 2023 and doubled that volume again in the first eight months of 2024. Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, drone manufacturing in Ukraine was largely nonexistent. Now, Kyiv spends about half of its state budget—or around $40 billion—on defense. That does not include military and financial aid from other countries. Yet Kyiv’s forces are still struggling on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s military will pull out of Vuhledar in the east after 2 years of intense fighting (AP) Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the front-line town of Vuhledar, perched atop a tactically significant hill in eastern Ukraine, after more than two years of grinding battle, military officials said Wednesday. Vuhledar, a town Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to keep, is the latest urban settlement to fall to the Russians as the war stretches deep into its third year and the Ukrainian army is gradually being pushed backward in the eastern Donetsk province. It follows a vicious summer campaign along the eastern front that saw Kyiv cede several thousand square kilometers (square miles) of territory as the Russian army hacks its way westward, obliterating towns and villages with missiles, glide bombs, artillery and drones.

In Japan’s Countryside, Century-Old Firms Learn to Embrace Foreign Workers (NYT) Four years ago, Hizatsuki Confectionery hired its first foreign workers. The company, in a mountainous region north of Tokyo, has been baking and frying glutinous dough into rice crackers since 1923. Then it was known as Teikoku Senbei, or Imperial Rice Crackers. Today, the company’s third-generation president, Takeo Hizatsuki, has encountered an existential challenge that his father and grandfather never did. Hizatsuki Confectionery can’t find enough Japanese employees. A shrinking and rapidly aging population has forced Japan, which for centuries was mostly closed off to immigrants, to allow foreign workers to enter the country and potentially stay for good. Most come from other parts of Asia, including China, Vietnam and the Philippines. That transition to employing more foreign workers has proceeded gradually at big companies in major cities over the past decade. But in parts of the countryside, where labor shortages are particularly acute, some of Japan’s storied businesses like Hizatsuki Confectionery are just now figuring out how to accommodate foreign workers for the first time. Whether companies can persuade foreigners to stay may dictate their survival.

Escalating contest over South China Sea disrupts international cable system (Washington Post) Undersea cables below the South China Sea have long provided vital connectivity to countries in Southeast Asia as demand for internet service has surged. To maintain the extensive network of cables and develop new ones, private cable companies have for decades relied on being able to move freely through this waterway, despite conflicting claims over the sea by China and a half dozen other governments. But now, competition for control of the South China Sea is disrupting the repair and badly needed construction of subsea cables, raising costs and at times straining telecommunications. As China presses its claim over most of the strategic waterway, companies have found it harder to get approval from Beijing to operate there and riskier to do so without Chinese permission. Some cable repairs have been delayed months because of lags in Chinese permitting. At least two new cable projects are years overdue. China’s determination to consolidate control over the South China Sea has made the waterway a “wild card” for cable companies, said Kelvan Firman, chief executive of Indonesian company Super Sistem. “The problem is nobody knows how far they’ll go,” he said, referring to Chinese maritime forces. “Who wants to take that risk?”

Typhoon Krathon makes landfall in Taiwan, packing fierce winds and torrential rain (AP) Typhoon Krathon made landfall Thursday in Taiwan’s major port city of Kaohsiung, bringing torrential rains and fierce winds to the island’s south. Trees were brought down by high winds and roads flooded, prompting the closure of schools and businesses. The typhoon is forecast to move slowly north and weaken into a tropical depression by Friday before it reaches the capital, Taipei. It appears to be heading across the Taiwan Strait toward the Chinese coast. The slow-moving typhoon, which has been inching toward Taiwan at a speed of about 4 kph (2.5 mph), doused eastern and southern parts of the island over the past five days, forcing thousands to evacuate from mountainous or low-lying areas.

Israel attack lays bare deep divisions in Iran (BBC) Not everyone in Iran expressed support for Tuesday night's large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel. The contrasting reactions indicated the disunity in the country, where there is widespread discontent at the clerical establishment and frustration over the economic troubles caused by sanctions. ran’s state television broadcast pictures of groups of people cheering on the streets, waving flags and chanting “Death to Israel”. But the mood was different online. Some shared footage of tense scenes and engaged in heated debates about a possible war between the arch-foes. For many supporters of the Iranian government, the attack represented a proud moment of defiance. Such sentiment frustrated other Iranians. “Please distinguish between the people and the Revolutionary Guards; we are under immense pressure,” pleaded a middle-aged man in a video shared on social media. Some Iranians felt the strike was an unnecessary provocation that would only result in making their lives worse.

In Beirut’s Once-Bustling Suburbs, Smoking Rubble and Eerie Quiet (NYT) There is little life left in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Roads, typically crammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic and the deafening screech of car horns, are eerily empty. Once-bustling sidewalks where people talked politics over coffee and tea are desolate too. In lieu of plastic bistro chairs, there are shards of glass and jagged chunks of concrete splayed across the pavements. Nearly every shop is closed, the apartments above them vacant. The vast majority of residents of the Dahiya—the collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut where the militant group and political party Hezbollah is the dominant power—have fled in recent days amid a barrage of Israeli airstrikes targeting the neighborhood. The near-daily strikes in the predominantly Shia area have sent plumes of dark gray smoke billowing into the sky and concrete blocks of buildings crashing onto the ground, rattling people across Beirut who worry a war could soon consume the entire city. Dozens of civilians have also been killed, according to Lebanese health officials. Thousands more have fled.

‘Wave of Displacement’ (Foreign Policy) Israel ordered residents of more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon on Thursday to immediately evacuate, bringing the total number of towns in the area under such instructions to 70, including the provincial capital of Nabatieh. The Israeli military said its ground incursion, which began on Tuesday, aims to allow tens of thousands of people previously living in northern Israel who have been displaced by Hezbollah attacks to return safely to their homes. Yet the fight to return displaced persons in one country has sparked mass displacement in another. According to Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced in his country by Israeli attacks. This has been the “largest wave of displacement in [Lebanon’s] history,” Mikati said. Around 100,000 people have crossed the Lebanese border into Syria—some of whom had initially fled to Lebanon to escape Syria’s devastating civil war.

#headlines #news

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tower-of-hana · 8 months ago

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Translation of the Vatican Latin Blog's post on Israel-Palestine

Inhuman Massacre of Journalists

In the war, which Israelies brought against Gaza around October journalists, were being killed.

Three more months have passed, as a result of which the Palestinian group who are usually called Hamas, after firing incendiary (the word he uses here appears to be an italian/romance word that means vomiting fire) missiles into Israel and attacking many times inside its borders (lit: making many incursions into its borders), killed 1,200 men and captured 247 civilians and kept the same hostages. Everyone knew the same day that the horrible facts came out that Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, announced a war with Hamas and their troops began to bring weapons into Gaza by land and sea in order to avenge a monstrous and cruel terror attack. And until now all the time, Israeli soldiers, who destroy this city and region and have not stopped killing thousands and thousands of innocent inhabitants, have also killed as many as 79 journalists, the Commision to Protect Journalists has alleged. Because this is a horrible and detestable crime.

Immanis Diurnariorum Strages

In bello, quod Israelitae contra Gazam intulerunt, circiter octoginta ephemeridum scriptores hodie usque interfecti sunt

Tres amplius menses elapsi sunt, ex quo Palaestinorum grex, qui vulgo Hamas appellatur, postquam ignivoma missilia in Israelitas coniecit multasque incursiones in eorum fines fecit, homines mille ac ducentos occidit atque cives ducentos quadraginta septem cepit eosdemque pro obsidibus retinuit. Omnes sciunt eodem die, quo luctuosa facta evenerunt, Beniaminum Netanyahu, primarium Israelis administrum, ut tam infandum tamque crudelem impetum tromocraticum ulcisceretur, Hamasianis bellum indixisse atque copias suas arma terra marique Gazae inferre coepisse. Et ad hoc usque tempus Israelitarum milites, qui urbem illam regionemque vastare ac milia et milia incolarum innocentium necare non cessant, saltem undeoctoginta ephemeridum scriptores, ut Commissio diurnariis tutandis, Anglico sermone Committee to Protect Journalists, asseverat, quoque interfecerunt. Quod horribile est scelus et abominandum.

#latin #linguistics #linguistic #languages #lingblr #latin language #lingua latina #language #classical studies #classics #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #free palestine #from the river to the sea

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nicklloydnow · 1 year ago

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“Today there is a state that, with a bit of challenging hyperbole, offers some interesting analogies to ancient Sparta. This state is Israel. Let's see what these analogies are, trying to present them in a parallel chronological order.

Just as post-Mycenaean Sparta was created by a massive Dorian migration, the new Israel came into being as a result of some fifty years of Jewish relocation there. Both displacements of peoples were the effect of two immense geopolitical upheavals: the Hellenic Middle Ages and World War II. Both the Dorians and the Jews had to fight, the former to conquer the new settlements, the latter to take back their ancestral homeland.

Once the situation was stabilized, the Spartiates created their own system divided into castes, while the Israelis guaranteed equal rights to the Muslim population, preventing at the same time the return of the Arabs who had fled in 1948: this because such a mass return would mean, sic et simpliciter, the end of Israel through its demographic destruction.

Surrounded by enemies and with a fragile internal balance, Sparta transformed the ruling caste into a collective warrior elite. Similarly, Israel was born and developed as a nation in arms, capable of mass mobilization in a very short time. In both peoples the brotherhood of arms has helped to cement equality and internal democracy (internal to the supreme caste the Spartan one, more collective the Israeli one).

Last but not least, both the ancient and the modern nation have found themselves having to be one of the spearheads in the eternal conflict between Western Civilization and the autocratic Eastern masses. The fact that these masses before identified themselves with an absolute God-King and today with a religion that claims world domination and rejects the very concepts of freedom and democracy changes little: geopolitics is the daughter of both geography and anthropology, therefore the enemies of the West remain essentially the same, just as the content of a bottle does not change even if the label is changed.

In this brief historical-geopolitical journey of ours, we have analyzed some curious similarities between two state realities that apparently could not seem more different: ancient Sparta and contemporary Israel. Many will find this parallel academic, if not opportunistic. However, it remains undeniable that, in its own way, today's Jewish state has similarities with the homeland that was once Leonidas'.

All the more reason for any Westerner to defend it to the hilt.” - Fabio Bozzo, ‘Israel: a new Sparta?’

“Brooks Adams prefaced his classic study of civilization and decay with the observation that conscious thought plays an exceedingly small part in molding the fate of men. “At the moment of action the human being almost invariably obeys an instinct, like an animal; only after action has ceased does he reflect.” For Israel the moment of action is now, the instinct is self‐preservation, and the time for reflection is yet to come.

When Israelis speak of the future, they generally mean what will happen tomorrow, next week next month. This is true of statesmen and publicists, as it is of the general public. There is no lack of forecasts, but little that rises to the level vision. Political leaders deal in ad hoc solutions to today's (and often, yesterday's) issues. The future will have to wait its turn.

(…)

Ben Gurion was, as events have shown, a premature Cassandra. True to the prophetic tradition, he was giving answers to questions which had not yet been asked. His June, 1967, warnings became relevant only in October, 1973, with the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath. Today, the nearly total diplomatic isolation of Israel, the resurrection of Arab claims to national rights in the entire area of mandatory Palestine, and the readiness of many in the West to bargain away interests of vital importance to Israel have raised, for the first time since the darkest days of Israel's war of independence, the very question of the future of Israel as an independent state.

Certain basic facts of national life obviously need to be reassessed. The increase in strength the Arab world, combining economic muscle with national‐religious fanaticism, and backed by the logistic capacity of the Soviet arsenal, has already affected the global balance of power, let alone the regional one. Perhaps its most significant immediate influence on Israel's military posture in terms of the morale of its foe: Israel today faces an enemy that enjoys a degree of self‐confidence that it never knew before, combined with the motivation that comes with a belief in its cause and in the inevitability of its victory. Loss of life irrelevant, as is loss of equipment, as long as the Soviet Union is prepared to make good the needs in matériel created by renewed hostilities. The major change in Israeli thinking has been with regard to the estimate of the enemy's potential.

There has been no change with regard to the estimate of the enemy's intentions: It is assumed that those intentions remain, as they have since Israel's creation, the destruction of the Jewish State. For this the address of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist leader, before the U.N. General Assembly, provides ample confirmation.

A realistic awareness of the growth of the power of the Arab world has not shaken confidence Israel's military superiority. Another war, in whose inevitability there seems to be general agreement, will bring another Israeli victory, costlier perhaps than its predecessors, but no less (and no more) conclusive. On this subject there is no end of reassurance from those who should be in a position to know, both in Israel and abroad. The unanswered question is, what happens then?

Some see this as the pattern of the future for as long in time as it is worth speculating. There will be an endless series of wars, the lag between them determined by the time required for the Arabs to re‐equip and prepare for the coming round. A small minority accepts the possibility of defeat, to which there are two answers.

One is summed up in the word Masada, a suicidal last stand that would satisfy national honor and redeem the memory of the millions of European Jews who were led to slaughter in the Nazi Holocaust. The other answer assumes that in an extremity the means would be available that would be adequate to the circumstances. On the basis of information in the public domain, the possibility of an atomic Armageddon would seem to he a real one, thus forcing the Arabs to reassess the cost that they would be prepared to pay for the privilege of destroying Israel. There is some indication that such a reassessment may have indeed been undertaken in certain of Sadat's (…)

As answers to the possibility of defeat, Masada and Armageddon are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they have a great deal in common. Desperation, however, is a luxury Israel cannot afford, nor can it serve as a guide to the determination of national policy. Nevertheless, there is some small corner of the mind in which such visions of the Apocalypse are lodged, blocked out from consciousness by their very unthinkability.

Jewish tradition tells us that problems can have a natural or a miraculous solution. To the never‐ending Arab‐Israeli wars, Masada and Armageddon are natural solutions. The miraculous solution is peace. Israel's acceptance by its neighbors remains the cardinal national objective, but its realization would appear to require time of Messianic dimensions. Still, it is sometimes an imperative of realism to seek the impossible.

War and another inconclusive victory are the immediate prospects. Masada, Armaeddon, peace— these define the limits of historical time. Israel lives in that broad range of possible futures that stretch from the here and now to the end of days. And all press into the present at one and the same time.

(…)

It is to be expected that in any garrison‐state society the army will have a dominating political role. In Israel, however, this is apt to be less than might he anticipated. First of all, Israel has been in a virtual state of siege since its independence, and the change as a result of the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath is one of degree rather than of kind. Second, in a state in which the army impinges to such a great extent over such an extended period of time on every facet of society, the society is affected, but so is the army. The Israel defense forces have never constituted a professional elite, divorced from a distinct caste, removed from other decision‐making and opinion‐farming elites. Israel is a nation in arms more than any other in modern history. The Jeffersonian ideal of every citizen a soldier and every soldier a citizen, realized in Israel to a much greater extent than it ever was in Jeffersonian America, makes of military participation in politics something very different than it has been in, say, France or Germany—or even contemporary America.

Nor is there reason to anticipate a breakdown of parliamentary democracy in a Spartan Israel. A continued period of tension is likely to cement further the basic national consensus. Its Achilles' heel has always been the necessity to make decisions on matters on which consensus does not exist and in which any decision is unacceptable to substantial segments of the population (such as territorial concessions, for example). Under siege conditions, decisions need not he made, as options are closed. The result is, on the one hand, immobility and, on the other, a high degree of stability in government, both of which have been characteristic of Israel in the past and will continue in the foreseeable future. A Government of national unity seems a distinct possibility, representing both a response to the demand for a heightened solidarity and the absence of significant issues demanding decision in matters over which the political parties differ fundamentally.

The importance of solidarity and the passage of time itself may help to close the social gap separating Israelis of European and non‐Europe origin, the most significant cleavage in contemporary Israeli society. Generally, it may he safe to assume that equality and fraternity will do better in a Spartan society than liberty. In Israel, however, basic freedoms do not appear to be in any significant danger, beyond those limitations imposed, as Holmes observed, “as long as men fight.” The pluralistic nature of Israeli society inhibits the denial of the right of political dissent, at least for those within the national body which in Israel is virtually coterminous with the society itself. However, tolerance for fringe groups beyond the pale is likely to diminish.

Israeli policy in the occupied areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be severely tested by future developments. This has been, in many respects, the most liberal military occupation in contemporary history. It has been based on keeping the peace by making it to the advantage of the local Arab population. Economic prosperity and the lack of reasonable expectation of political change have been far more important in the preservation of order and the prevention of hostile activities against the occupation forces than has the direct application of military force.

The creation of Israeli settlements in the occupied areas has been part of the general conception underlying official policy. The settlements, located along the Jordan and south of Gaza, protect basic strategic interests, without seriously intruding into Arab populated areas. (The one major exception, Kiryat Arha, near Hebron, was not the result of official initiative but rather a concession to the political pressures of coalition politics.) By blocking off possible invasion routes, the settlements make the annexation of areas densely populated by Arabs unnecessary. Wildcat settlement attempts by Jewish nationalist groups within Arab‐populated areas have been dealt with sternly and decisively.

Thus, both occupation and settlement policy have been designed to preserve security interests while keeping open options for a compromise solution. Possible economic difficulties and a fluid political situation could seriously threaten to encourage an increase in opposition to the occupation on the part of the local population, while Rabat and its aftermath appear to have barred, at least for the immediate future, the way to a political settlement. Major assumptions of present policy in the occupied areas may, therefore, cease to be valid. A breakdown of public order in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip would severely tax limited Israeli manpower reserves and might require a drastic change of policy. In this event, Arab propaganda claims with regard to alleged Israeli repression in the occupied areas and the displacement of the indigenous population could prove to he self‐fulfilling prophecies.

(…)

Yet fundamental change in Israel's prospects depends on a basic change within the West. There are other areas of the world besides the Middle East in which the Western powers have not acted in unity. However, there is no other area in which they have so frequently worked at cross‐purposes or to no visible purpose at all. In no other area has the policy of Western governments so frequently subordinated national ideals to putative national interests and in the end resulted in the loss or abandonment both of principles and of interests.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy was not harlot that could be picked up on a street corner by a young man with a tommy gun. He was wrong. It happens all the time, with the most prim and proper, the most matronly democracies, including his own. Instead, a tommy gun is not indispensable; hard cash and the control of oil resources will do just as well. Witness the spectacle of French diplomatic emissaries hustling the Middle Eastern turf, turning their tricks with sheik and terrorist. The sale of arms, encouraged by balance of payments difficulties, has become an aim, rather than an instrument, of national policy: and all fat cats are gray in the night.

Today, the fate of much of the industrialized world, with its masses of workers and consumers, has come to depend on decisions made by minuscule coterie of absolute potentates, their feet firmly rooted in the Middle Ages and their hands at the throat of the industrial civilization of the West. Never before in history has the fate of so many been at the mercy of so few. Oddly, there are still those who persist in seeing this as a victory of anticolonialism and anti‐imperialism, those most durable verbal relics of the long‐lost world of liberal innocence. Surely there must come a point at which the act in unity if its own survival is to be safeguarded. When that day comes, Israel's future will take a new direction.

(…)

Earlier, in the fall of 1962, Henry Kissinger visited this communal village and its regional school. In those days the threat came from the Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights, which dominated the area. Kissinger, then security adviser to Nelson Rockefeller and on a special mission fo. Kennedy, was especially intrigued by the attention devoted to gardening and to the atmosphere of tranquillity. juxtaposed against the network of shelters under the shadow of the commanding Syrian positions, visible even to the naked eye. What he founded in the Jordan Valley tended to disprove the contention of Rockefeller's adversaries that extensive civil‐defense measures would disrupt normal life and create panic.

Today, the children of the Jordan Valley communes play and study in close proximity to armed guards. The massacre at Ma'alot proved that children enjoy a privileged position as a priority target for Palestinian liberation fighters. The danger has become less anonymous and less indiscriminate. Life, however, remains normal in every critical sense, and there is no panic.

November 28 was the anniversary of the 1947 U.N. decision in favor of the creation of a Jewish State. The sixth‐grade pupils in the Jordan Valley elementary school wrote compositions on “What Israel Will Be Like When I Am Grown Up.” One theme is dominant: peace. Many express it by predicting that they will visit the Pyramids in Egypt and travel by train to Damascus. Moran Palmoni, a 12‐year‐old fourth‐generation sabra, concluded his composition in verse:

“I hope that peace will come

I believe that it will come

That we will not have to sit in the shelter

That tranquillity will fall also on us

Every child and every flower will he happy when it comes

Only may it come, only may it come!””

“Buried deep inside a Times report last weekend about Hadar Goldin, the Israeli soldier who was reported captured by Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip, and then declared dead, was the following paragraph:

The circumstances surrounding his death remained cloudy. A military spokeswoman declined to say whether Lieutenant Goldin had been killed along with two comrades by a suicide bomb one of the militants exploded, or later by Israel’s assault on the area to hunt for him; she also refused to answer whether his remains had been recovered.

Just what those circumstances were began to filter out early this week, and they attest to deep contradictions in the Israeli military—and in Israeli culture at large.

A temporary ceasefire went into effect last Friday morning at eight. At nine-fifteen, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces headed toward a house, in the city of Rafah, that served as an entry point to a tunnel reportedly leading into Israel. As the I.D.F. troops advanced, a Hamas militant emerged from the tunnel and opened fire. Two soldiers were killed. A third, Goldin, was captured—whether dead or alive is unclear—and taken into the tunnel. What is clear is that after Goldin was reported missing, the I.D.F. enacted a highly controversial measure known as the Hannibal Directive, firing at the area where Goldin was last seen in order to stop Hamas from taking him captive. As a result, according to Palestinian sources, seventy Palestinians were killed. By Sunday, Goldin, too, had been declared dead.

Opinions differ over how this protocol, which remained a military secret until 2003, came to be known as Hannibal. There are indications that it was named for the Carthaginian general, who chose to poison himself rather than fall captive to the Romans, but I.D.F. officials insist that a computer generated the name at random. Whatever its provenance, the moniker seems chillingly apt. Developed by three senior I.D.F. commanders, in 1986, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the directive established the steps the military must take in the event of a soldier’s abduction. Its stated goal is to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands, “even at the cost of hurting or wounding our soldiers.” While normal I.D.F. procedures forbid soldiers from firing in the general direction of their fellow-troops, including attacking a getaway vehicle, such procedures, according to the Hannibal Directive, are to be waived in the case of an abduction: “Everything must be done to stop the vehicle and prevent it from escaping.”

Although the order specifies that only selective light-arms fire should be used in such cases, the message behind it is resounding. When a soldier has been abducted, not only are all targets legitimate—including, as we saw over the weekend, ambulances—but it’s permissible, and even implicitly advisable, for soldiers to fire on their own. For more than a decade, military censors blocked journalists from reporting on the protocol, apparently because they feared it would demoralize the Israeli public. In 2003, an Israeli doctor who had heard of the directive while serving as a reservist, in Lebanon, began advocating for its annulment, leading to its declassification. That year, a Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

(…)

To be clear, there is no evidence that Goldin was killed by friendly fire. But military officials did confirm that commanders on the ground had activated the Hannibal Directive and ordered “massive fire”—not for the first time since Operation Protective Edge began, on July 8th. (One week into the ground offensive, in the central Gaza Strip, forces reportedly** **enacted the protocol when another soldier, Guy Levy, was believed missing.) Since the directive’s inception, the I.D.F. is known to have used it only a handful of times, including in the case of Gilad Shalit. The order came too late for Shalit and did not prevent his abduction—or his eventual release, in 2011, in exchange for a thousand and twenty-seven Palestinian prisoners. That year, as part of the military’s inquiry into the circumstances leading to Shalit’s capture, the I.D.F.’s Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, modified the directive. It now allows field commanders to act without awaiting confirmation from their superiors; at the same time, the directive’s language was tempered to make clear that it does not call for the willful killing of captured soldiers. In changing the wording of the protocol, Gantz introduced an ethical principle known as the “double-effect doctrine,” which states that a bad result (the killing of a captive soldier) is morally permissible only as a side effect of promoting a good action (stopping his captors).

Whether soldiers have heeded this change in language, and how they now choose to interpret the directive, is difficult to assess. If past experience is any indication, the military hierarchy’s interpretation remains unequivocal. During Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in 2011, one Golani commander was caught on tape telling his unit: “No soldier in the 51st Battalion will be kidnapped, at any price or under any condition. Even if it means that he has to detonate his own grenade along with those who try to capture him. Even if it means that his unit will now have to fire at the getaway car.”

On Sunday, a decade after its initial investigation of the Hannibal Directive, Haaretz revisited the subject with a piece by Anshel Pfeffer that tried to explain why, despite the procedure’s morally questionable nature, there hasn’t been significant opposition to it. Pfeffer wrote:

Perhaps the most deeply engrained reason that Israelis innately understand the needs for the Hannibal Directive is the military ethos of never leaving wounded men on the battlefield, which became the spirit following the War of Independence, when hideously mutilated bodies of Israeli soldiers were recovered. So Hannibal has stayed a fact of military life and the directive activated more than once during this current campaign.

Ronen Bergman, author of the book “By Any Means Necessary,” which examines Israel’s history of dealing with captive soldiers, further explained this rationale in a recent radio interview: “There is a disproportionate sensitivity among Israelis [on the issue of captive soldiers] that is hard to describe to foreigners.” Bergman traced this sensitivity back to Maimonides, the medieval Torah scholar, who wrote: “There is no greater Mitzvah than redeeming captives.”

This line of argument, while historically true, is worth pausing over—if only to unpack the moral paradox within it. In essence, what this “military ethos” means is that Israel sanctifies the lives of its soldiers so much, and would be willing to pay such an exorbitant price for their release, that it will do everything in its power to prevent such a scenario—including putting those same soldiers’ lives at risk (not to mention wreaking havoc on the surrounding population). This is the dubious situation that Israel finds itself in: signalling to the military that a dead soldier is preferable to a captive one, while at the same time signalling to the Israeli public that no cost will be spared to secure a captured soldier’s release. (It’s worth recalling that, three years after Shalit was traded for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, the captive U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was traded for five Taliban prisoners. This isn’t to suggest that Israel cares more about its troops than the United States does, but rather that no crime is greater, in the eyes of Israelis, than the kidnapping of “our boys.”)

(…)

Sharon added that the mixed consequences of the directive are typical of the behavior that now characterizes the Israeli public at large. “On the one hand, we are willing to risk soldiers’ lives recklessly and without need, but on the other hand we have zero tolerance for the price that this might entail.”

#israel #sparta #spartan #war #hamas #western civilization #hannibal #hannibal directive

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sweetbaloonsriseboldly · 2 years ago

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Nakano Takeko (中野竹子, April 1847 – 16 October 1868) was a Japanese female warrior of the Aizu Domait, who fought and died during the Boshin War. During the battle of Aizu she fought with a nagitana (a Japanese polearm) and was the leader of an ad hoc corps of female combatants who fought in the battle independently. After taking a bullet in the chest she had her sister behead her, so that the enemy would not take her as a war trophy!

#women soldiers #japanese #samurai #aizu #boshin war #female warrior

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oneminutemoneymagazine · 1 year ago

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The Pensions Dashboard: A Constructive Alternative

The Pensions Dashboard is a UK government plan to set up one large database from which every person can access their UK occupational pension data from all of their past and present employers. The previous post on this blog criticised it on the grounds of complexity and greatly increased risk of fraud. It could also have mentioned the lack of consent. The government has not asked me whether I want my personal data put on their new database!

Having said this, there is a risk that, when a pension plan member reaches retirement age, the employer and administrators may have lost contact with them. There are ad hoc arrangements whereby administrators can ask the DWP to help trace a missing member. This should be formalised and expanded. Only small amounts of data such as names, dates of birth and national insurance numbers would be needed. Either individuals or plan administrators could contact the new government agency and the resources needed would be a mere fraction of those for the proposed Pensions Dashboard. It should also be possible to implement it well before the current dashboard target date of October 2026.

In the meantime, employees should carefully keep their own records and advise plan administrators of changes of address etc. There is also a government website called “Find pension contact details”. It isn’t perfect, but it can often be helpful. The link is

https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details

(24/07/2023)

#pensions dashboard #retirement #financial fraud #money #DWP

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bagog · 1 year ago

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Nightmare Walk

Ryan could hear the crack of the flail in the next room, Patrick's mournful groans and austere sounds of agony. There was a syrupy tendril of false blood that was beginning to drip from Ryan's false beard, about to fall and join the puddle of red-dyed cornstarch at the foot of the cross.

Ryan wore a long brown wig and a false beard and little else besides a blood-stained cloth around his boxers: in the semi-dark of the haunted attraction, he was the spitting image of the crucified Christ. His arms were strapped into the cross-beam of a large cross which held him high above the extras in Bible-clothing who were milling around waiting to be jeering onlookers. He was covered in fake blood, and occasionally as it trickled down over an eyebrow and he would waggle his head, unable to free his arms to brush it away.

The things you did for the Kingdom.

"Every 'hit' you take, every person you defile yourself with outside of marriage, every Sunday you slept in: each of those is another crack of the whip onto Jesus' flesh."

Ryan could hear the guide narrating through the scene right before they were supposed to enter this room and see that Jesus on the cross, dying for their sins. The attendees had been through the drugs room, the suicide room, the school shooting room, and were proper scared and ready to see some Biblical violence.

And so, next door, Patrick, dressed almost identically to Ryan, was being 'whipped' by a costumed Roman soldier: tortured. Then, with their trespasses still rising in their throats, they'd walk through the door and BAM: cross.

He was sweating beneath the fake blood and cold everywhere else, but it didn't matter too much to him. It was a big honor, he'd been doing Nightmare Walk all through high-school, and finally he was allowed to play Jesus. Still, as he hung there, Ryan thought that he was glad this would be his last year. It had turned out that, since meeting Patrick especially, he more looked forward to hitting the local Denny's with the other actors once the night was over.

"AGH!"

Ryan shook himself from his reverie, tried to stretch his arms which were quickly becoming numb. He heard it again, another shout. This one wasn't austere and Biblical, it was Patrick, and he was actually screaming.

"The fornicators, the idolators, the thieves, and the homosexuals will not be permitted to enter the kingdom of heaven!"

The narrator was 'preaching' at a fever pitch now, and Ryan didn't recognize the voice or the script they seemed to be using. His stomach sank.

"Oww! Hey, time-out, stop! STOP! Davis--AUGH!--stop!" Patrick was sounding panicked now.

"This one is guilty of lying with another man. He is abomination. Play-acting as our Savior with this unrepented sin still upon him!"

Ryan began to struggle with the bindings that held him fast to the cross, but they wouldn't budge. Patrick's cries had grown softer, broken, pleading. The door opened, and a crowd of people in fall-coats and scarves sidled in, led by a woman Ryan did not recognize.

"And here's the other one, the other homosexual. Dressed up like the Son of God, mocking the almighty with his iniquity." The woman proclaimed. Ryan couldn't make out the faces of the crowd in the darkness, but when the woman stepped forward, he saw she was carrying a brick. Maybe everyone in the crowd was.

Ryan pulled at his bonds, tried to twist out of them and off the cross. The sounds of a whip splitting flesh continued in the next room, and the woman raised her brick, eyes fiery and grin alive. The extras jeered and booed. The dark crowd stepped forward, arms raised.

#original characters #character sketch #ad hoc october #aughtober #spooky story #religious trauma #anyone ever go to one of these #scared-straight christian halloween haunted house things?#you should look into them if not #they're wild #anyway this is a little on the nose #but whatever #scared me

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cyarskj1899 · 2 years ago

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CONTAINED OUTRAGE: Outgoing Arizona Gov. Ducey tries one last MAGA stunt before he leaves

Sent from my iPhone

CONTAINED OUTRAGE: Outgoing Arizona Gov. Ducey tries one last MAGA stunt before he leaves

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We’re all familiar with the Great Wall of China. And some of you may have heard of the Great Hedge in India, used by the British to control the salt trade. Well, now another type of barrier – in Arizona – may go down in the history books. Decrying an “invasion” from Mexico, outgoing Governor Doug Ducey has tried to contain it with – well – containers.

Using 9’ by 40’, 8800-pound shipping containers owned by the state, Ducey has been plugging holes in Donald Trump’s notorious border wall.

The containers are topped with razor wire and currently stretch for some 3 miles. Ducey had started around Yuma, but now has plans to spend $95 million adding another 10 miles – likely a complete waste of money, considering that incoming governor Katie Hobbs has promised to remove the ad hoc barrier.

Ducey is also almost certainly trespassing on federal land.

“There’s just no question that this is federal property,” Dinah Bear, formerly with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told The Guardian. “There’s no legal difference between the land they’re putting the shipping containers on and Grand Canyon national park.”

Ducey filed a lawsuit in October disputing this fact, which is now before Judge David Campbell. The U.S. Forest Service is looking for a court order to avoid any conflict with local authorities.

In addition to the U.S. government, the Cocopah Indian Tribe has also spoken out against Ducey’s wall, saying that some of it encroaches upon their reservation.

And there’s been criticism from scientists as well: the Center for Biological Diversity has noted that the containers hurt certain migratory species that typically cross over the area.

Of course, keeping out migrating animals and keeping out humans are two entirely different balls of wax. Generally, such obstacles don’t pose much of a challenge to human crossers, especially since they can be extraordinarily difficult to guard.

It’s reported that the Great Hedge in India took some 12,000 British officers working in shifts to maintain

Also worth noting is the fact that – despite Republican claims to the contrary – the overwhelming majority of illegal drugs that come over the border – more than 90% – come through legal points of entry and through the mail.

Fentanyl isn’t being carried by undocumented workers trying to sneak into the country; it’s going through the ports of California and being delivered by the USPS.

Ducey is probably just trying to stand out in a field of Republican hardliners (some might say “assholes” is a more apt description).

There’s Greg Abbott of Texas, who has been shipping out migrants by bus. And Ron DeSantis, who is so intent on being an asshole that he literally goes to other states to find undocumented workers to abuse.

Douchey (whoops! – meant Ducey) is competing against them and perhaps trying to distinguish himself, even if it means wasting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on an eyesore that won’t do anything to change the situation.

Good job, Douchey!

Sent from my iPhone

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ariesgamesandminis · 1 month ago

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First round of pre-orders for new goodies & restocks are up from Catalyst for BattleTech!

Pre-Orders Shipping the week of October 30th Battlefield Support Deck Revised Field Commander Case Force Manual: Kurita Technical Blueprints

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mariacallous · 6 months ago

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On Sunday, June 9, Israeli minister Benny Gantz, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet and Netanyahu’s main putative challenger for the position of prime minister, resigned from the government along with his fellow party member Gadi Eisenkot. The resignation comes at an awkward time for the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has been making a significant effort to promote a cease-fire and hostage release deal, proposed by Israel, outlined by Biden in a speech on May 31, and adopted by the U.N. Security Council as Resolution 2735. Gantz and Eisenkot, major proponents of such a deal within the Israel war cabinet, are now out of decisionmaking circles. Should Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, accept the deal, which he has not so far, Netanyahu would now have heightened political incentive to balk at his own proposal. But the resignation may also serve to catalyze political changes in Israel that may hasten a change of leadership, something the Biden administration would welcome. While there is no guarantee that Gantz’s resignation will bring Israel’s elections any closer, it was a necessary step for any major political change.

The Israeli war cabinet is formed

As the details and magnitude of the October 7 terrorist attack became clear, there were immediate calls in Israel for a national emergency government that would include centrist opposition leaders alongside Netanyahu. Israelis shared a sense of historic crisis and were prepared for a major war. The official leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, offered to join the cabinet, but he demanded that Netanyahu exclude Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two far-right ministers, from his security cabinet. Netanyahu refused, with the rationale that after the emergency government eventually dissolved, he would have lost his base. It was an early sign that politics would continue to play a substantial role in the prime minister’s decisions, even in the depths of the crisis.

Gantz, the other major opposition leader, joined the cabinet nonetheless, satisfied instead by the creation of a “mini” war cabinet that excluded the two far-right ministers from the management of the war.

In the Israeli system, the prime minister is not the commander in chief of the military. Rather, the cabinet serves in that role, as a committee, with most powers bestowed on a smaller security cabinet (formally, the “ministerial committee for national security affairs”) of which Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are members. Netanyahu and Gantz thus formed an ad-hoc forum, the mini-war cabinet, with three official members: Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant of Netanyahu’s own Likud party, and Gantz. They were joined by three observers, Eisenkot; Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s confidante and former ambassador to the United States; and Aryeh Deri, the most veteran minister and leader of the Shas party. Notably absent were the far-right ministers.

Resignations and consequences

Gantz and Eisenkot joined the emergency cabinet on a temporary basis, for the duration of the war’s initial phases, and with the public expectation that they might resign by the end of 2023 or early 2024. Months past that, their resignations now have implications for Israeli policy and politics.

By May, as tensions with the Biden administration over Israel’s Gaza strategy had grown, Gallant publicly called out Netanyahu and criticized the latter’s lack of strategy for what Gaza might look like after Hamas. Without defined strategic goals, no operational or tactical objectives could succeed. Gallant demanded that Netanyahu state that he does not plan for a return to Israeli occupation, as existed before the Oslo II Accords of 1994. This dramatic challenge to Netanyahu also created an opening for Gantz.

In May, Gantz finally signaled his intent to resign. He laid out conditions for his staying in the government and set an ultimatum that he would leave if they were not met, which Netanyahu rebuffed the same day. In policy terms, his most notable demand echoed Gallant, demanding that Netanyahu elucidate the beginning of a strategy for the day after in Gaza.

Gantz, Gallant, and Eisenkot are all retired generals with a long, shared history in the military. Ganz is the former chief of staff of the military, a high-profile role that is more influential in Israel than the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in the United States, for example. As the only lieutenant general in the Israeli military and the commander of everyone in uniform, the chief of staff commands a great deal of attention from a public who face, in theory, universal conscription. When Gantz was appointed to the top military post in 2011, he was, in fact, the second choice of the cabinet. Netanyahu, the prime minister at the time, and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak had preferred Gallant, who was considered more hawkish on Iran, but was disqualified by a public committee due to ethical concerns. Eisenkot was appointed as Gantz’s deputy in 2013 and eventually succeeded him at the top military post.

Now in government and civilian clothes, the former generals were at times allies in the war cabinet, despite representing different parties. Their demand for strategic thinking about the day after also reflected their desire to see some role, even if limited, for the secular, West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza, which Netanyahu has rejected. The centrist ministers’ departures weaken that prospect, possibly strengthening the hands of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who would prefer to see the collapse of the PA altogether.

Elections are not imminent … probably

The resignations also had political motivations. Gantz has led Netanyahu in the polls ever since October 7, but his lead has narrowed significantly. If elections were held today, polls now suggest the possibility of an inconclusive election, though still with a clear advantage to the opposition. If these were the results of the next election, Gantz would need to cobble together a coalition reminiscent of the coalition headed by Lapid and Naftali Bennett, an act of political acrobatics that only held together for slightly over a year.

Elections are not scheduled for over two years, however. Even with Gantz’s resignation, Netanyahu’s original coalition, which consists of 64 out of 120 members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, still holds a clear majority. It could fracture in different scenarios, but none of them is very likely in the short term.

First, with Gantz’s and Eisenkot’s resignations, centrist Likud members, such as Gallant, may opt to defect and try to replace Netanyahu. This would be a very risky move for them politically, but it may become more likely if demonstrations against the government, already growing, return to the large scale that Israel had seen before October 6. Gantz’s presence in the government, and especially the war’s continuation, made the environment less conducive to such public pressure until now.

Netanyahu’s far-right partners may also bring about his downfall if he veers to the center. In particular, they have already warned that should Hamas accept the cease-fire and Netanyahu move forward with the deal (a “surrender,” as Smotrich termed it), they would topple the government. This, of course, makes such a scenario less likely.

Finally, there is a small chance that Netanyahu’s Haredi partners, who are the most conservative religiously but not the most hawkish in terms of national security, might destabilize his coalition. Haredi men are exempt from military service, due to political maneuvering, a highly emotive grievance for the majority of Jewish Israelis who do serve, especially in a time of war and bereavement. With the Supreme Court now demanding a legislative basis for the exemption, Netanyahu’s coalition is struggling to put one in place. Seeing a political opening, Gantz made conscription, in some form, one of his central demands of Netanyahu. Should such a legal standing not be found, the Haredim may follow through on their threats to resign, though they are unlikely to get a better deal with another prime minister later, and so have incentives to remain.

One final option remains: Netanyahu could call for elections himself if he found an opportune moment or excuse. Netanyahu has identified his opposition to a Palestinian state as a winning ticket in a population traumatized by October 7 and loath to take any security risks in negotiations with Palestinians. Netanyahu would hope to portray himself as the one man able to withstand international pressure on Palestinian sovereignty. He will undoubtedly hope to return to the theme of his recent election campaigns, portraying himself as being “in a league of his own” in global diplomacy. One opportunity for a campaign image of Netanyahu on the global stage will come soon, currently scheduled for July 24, when he speaks before a joint session of Congress.

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