…it’s…not getting better

Survival was the topic of conversation today. The hotel’s other guests — all from the West Bank — had decided to leave through the Rafah Crossing Point into Egypt. They held passports, and many had diplomatic clearances. Before breakfast was finished, arrangements had been made with the Egyptian side. My name and Yasser’s were included, and we packed our things. Then, as Mohammed headed to the car, I announced that I’d be staying. This might not prove to be the wisest decision I’ve ever made, but it felt like the right one. I couldn’t flee out of fear, abandoning my father, brothers and sisters Eisha and Asma. I was only 2 months old when my first war broke out, in 1973, and I’ve been living through wars ever since. Just as life is a pause between two deaths, Palestine, as a place and as an idea, is a timeout in the middle of many wars.
[…]
The city has become a wasteland of rubble and debris. Beautiful buildings fall like columns of smoke. I often think about the time I was shot as a kid, during the first intifada, and how my mother told me I actually died for a few minutes before being brought back to life. Maybe I can do the same this time, I think.
[…]
I asked Yasser to stay in his grandparents’ house. The Palestinian logic is that in wartime, we should all sleep in different places, so that if part of the family is killed, another part lives. The U.N. schools are getting more crowded with displaced families. The hope is that the U.N. flag will save them, though in previous wars, that hasn’t been the case.

I went to the Press House, where journalists were frantically downloading images and writing reports for their agencies. I was sitting with Bilal, the Press House manager, when an explosion shook the building. Windows shattered, and the ceiling collapsed onto us in chunks. We ran toward the central hall. One of the journalists was bleeding, having been hit by flying glass. After 20 minutes, we ventured out to inspect the damage. I noticed that Ramadan decorations were still hanging in the street.
[…]
I had to leave. For a long 10 minutes, I cried and cried. Overwhelmed by the horrors of the past few days, I walked out of the hospital and found myself wandering the streets. I thought idly, we could turn this city into a film set for war movies. Second World War films and end-of-the-world movies. We could hire it out to the best Hollywood directors. Doomsday on demand.
[…]
We live in a war film, and the producer doesn’t want it to end. The studio keeps feeding the script with new scenes, keeps adding millions of dollars to the budget. It’s going be a blockbuster, as long as they never stop filming.

I headed to the Press House to charge my phone and watch the news. Last night, this whole neighborhood was hit and everything shattered — windows, floors, ceilings, shelves, doors. The only things that didn’t fall were the photos of Gaza City that hung around the internal courtyard. If Yasser and my brother Ahmed and I had spent the night there, as we did during the first week, we wouldn’t have survived. Nobody knows what is safe and what is dangerous. You have to roll the dice.
[…]
Each day requires a survival strategy. Of course, getting bread is the most important task. Families send one of their kids to queue in front of the bakery before sunrise. They have to wait for as long as five hours before they return with their precious cargo.
[…]
After bread, the second thing you have to think about is clean water. Forget chilled water. Just clean enough to drink. In the Press House, where I’ve spent much of the past 10 days, we’ve had no water at all.

As electricity is off most of the time, even if you do have water, you can’t pump it to the tanks on top of the buildings. And not everyone can afford to buy bottles of water. In the first few days of the war, the price of a small bottle rose to 10 shekels, about $2.50. I need water for Wissam, who is lying in the hospital, burning up. It’s as if she still feels the heat of the explosion.

The third thing you want is batteries. The last time Jabalya Camp had electricity was 13 days ago. Having been subject to daily, rolling blackouts for more than a decade (eight hours on, eight off), most people have learned to adapt. The luckiest have backup generators, but most rely on batteries similar to those used in cars. These provide low lighting at night and some internet access, though they can’t power anything like a cooker, fridge or kettle. Charging one battery can take up to five hours.
[…]
“Is life in Gaza always difficult?” I get asked this question a lot. I struggle to remember a time when it wasn’t. Maybe, for a few scattered moments back in the early ’90s, when the Palestinian Authority established a base in the city, there’d been some calm. Or the promise of calm. For my generation, 20-year-olds at the time, the future seemed open. The peace process signaled a new beginning. Thousands of people took to the streets in support of it. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were clutching at straws. My mother participated in one of the many demonstrations that celebrated the Oslo accords; she believed it might lead to the release of my brother Naeem, who had been sentenced to seven years in jail after a clash with the Israeli army. She died without seeing Naeem free.

Sadly, this atmosphere lasted only a few years, after which everything collapsed. Peace became a burden for Palestinians, the cost of it — the presence of Israeli police everywhere — too much. The future was canceled. The economy stagnated, the airport was bombed, people were hemmed in. Even when Israeli settlers and soldiers moved out in 2005, walls went up and the Gazan people knew, once again, that they were prisoners here, not citizens.
[…]
A few years ago, someone daubed a strange slogan on the wall of the U.N. school east of Jabalya: “We progress backwards.” It has a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and our churches. It razes our gardens and parks. Every war takes years to recover from, and before we’ve recovered, a new war arrives. There are no warning sirens, no messages sent to our phones. War just arrives.
[…]
There is no sign of this war ending. No one in power speaks of a cease-fire. On the news, there’s discussion of a few hours’ truce for humanitarian purposes, to let in a little food and medicine. I find it unbearable to listen to the way they talk about us, decide things for us, without ever asking any of us.
[…]
In the past week, many Gazans have started writing their names on their hands and legs, in pen or permanent marker, so they can be identified when death comes. This might seem macabre, but it makes perfect sense: We want to be remembered; we want our stories to be told; we seek dignity. At the very least, our names will be on our graves.

Atef Abu Saif is the author of six novels and since 2019 has been minister of culture for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. [WaPo]

…though quite honestly I dread to think how it could get worse

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, says at least seven Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers since the war in Gaza began; more than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces over the same time period, according to the United Nations. Some 500 Palestinians have been driven from their homes.

The attacks have intensified tensions in the West Bank, where calls for militancy are already surging after a spike in Israeli raids and arrests. Settler groups say they are acting in self-defense. Even before Oct. 7, Palestinian militants had carried out deadly attacks this year in Jewish communities across the territory.

But the victims of settler violence are overwhelmingly civilians. Haunted by memories of displacement, Palestinian families fear they are living through another period of forcible dispossession.

In a rare direct condemnation of the violence, President Biden said last week that attacks by “extremist settlers” amounted to “pouring gasoline” on fires already burning. “It has to stop,” he said. “They have to be held accountable.”

But international attention and Israel’s security forces are focused on Gaza, and Palestinians say they are often targeted by Israeli police officers in charge of protecting them.
[…]
B’Tselem, the rights group, said settlers are using time-tested methods of intimidation and violence to force Palestinians from their homes. In recent weeks, the assaults have been more intense and more frequent.

“The scale has expanded and not just the scale but also the severity of the attacks,” said Dror Sadot, a B’Tselem spokesperson. With the eyes of the international community on Gaza, she said, many settlers feel as though they can act with “impunity.”

“Now it’s like a Wild West.”
[…]
Settlements have begun receiving weapons from the Israeli government, part of an initiative spearheaded by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to arm “hundreds” of communities; local armed volunteer groups are expanding and becoming more formalized.
[…]
The Jewish population in the West Bank passed half a million earlier this year — in land once envisioned as part of a Palestinian state — and settlements have continued to expand under Israel’s right-wing government. Palestinians accuse the movement’s most radical fringe of cynically using the Hamas attack to further their long-held aim of seizing more land.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/30/west-bank-settlers-violence-palestinians/

…I’ve sometimes found humor in the suggestion that we get the governments we deserve…but surely nobody could be said to deserve what’s happening to those people on the ground

The fractured Palestinian elections in 2006 led to a bitter and tragic schism between two factions, Hamas and Fatah. When Israel says it has no one with whom to negotiate a two-state solution, there is a degree of truth to that. Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction, and the Palestinian Authority has become powerless and barely relevant. This is in part because of the decision by Israeli authorities to sideline and marginalize the Palestinian Authority.

But not completely.

The crucial elections in January 2006 were a classic example of using the wrong election methods, which led to disastrous results. In that election, a hybrid approach was used. Half of the Palestinian legislature’s 132 seats were to be selected by a “winner take all” method and half by a “proportional voting” method. Hamas won 44.5 percent of the popular vote, and the Palestine Liberation Organization-backed Fatah won 41.4 percent. So it was a close election.

The proportional half of the vote yielded a fair outcome. Hamas won its share, 29 of 66 seats (roughly 45 percent), as did Fatah with 28 seats (roughly 42 percent). If those were the only election results, they would have produced a broadly representative legislature. But the winner-take-all side of the election broke down badly. There were a dozen political parties, and split votes and spoilers ruled the day. Even though Hamas garnered an average of only 41 percent of the popular vote in the winner-take-all half, it won 68 percent of those seats while Fatah won only 26 percent.

Overall, Hamas won a total of 56 percent of the legislature’s seats, a solid majority but with a minority of the vote. This result grossly overrepresented pro-Hamas sentiment among Palestinians.

If a proportional voting method had been used for all seats, Hamas would not have won a majority and would have needed to form a post-election coalition. Indeed, one analysis found that if proportional voting had been used for the entire legislature, Fatah and like-minded parties and independent partners would have been able to form a majority coalition government. Either way, results with a better votes-to-seats ratio would have provided incentives for bridge-building and possibly even a grand coalition between Hamas and Fatah. This would have established a foundation for a more stable transition to a democratic system — and possibly inaugurated a steadier leadership for negotiations with the Israelis.

Instead, parliamentary democracy ended. Subsequent elections have been repeatedly canceled amid the fratricidal tensions and bouts of conflict among Palestinian factions, as well as periodic wars with the Israelis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/30/hamas-flawed-elections-popularity/

…&…I’d try to take some solace in the part where the covid inquiry in the UK just got to the part where they hammer boris for going AWOL for half-term, running his whole shop over whatsapp…which is a whole not-the-way-any-of-that-works deal in its own right…not to mention the part where some of it there’s a record of…& some bits…not so much…but they wheel out dominic cummings today so there’s almost bound to be stroppy fireworks as middle-aged white guys score points being flippant about decisions that cost hundreds or thousands of lives that might perhaps have been saved if not for their vainglorious escapades & Bring Your Own Booze subverting of their own rules

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/30/boris-johnson-mad-if-he-did-not-think-whatsapps-would-become-public-civil-servant

…so…I’d like to be able to dig out something a bit more comforting

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/30/uk-backs-suspension-of-deep-sea-mining-in-environmental-u-turn

…but…you know that saying about always training to win the last war while anticipating the next one?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/30/more-than-4000-english-flood-defences-almost-useless-analysis-finds

…well…it’s not comforting me, I can tell you that much?

Chinese and Russian military officials on Monday criticized the United States as an agent of global instability at a Beijing military forum, where Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, also threatened grave consequences over Western involvement in the war in Ukraine.

“The Western policy of steady escalation of the conflict with Russia carries the threat of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences,” he said, according to Russia’s state-run Tass news agency.

Shoigu made the remarks at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China’s annual international military summit, where the country’s second-highest-ranked military official, Zhang Youxia, also issued oblique criticisms of the United States — while leaving the way open to improve military ties with Washington.
[…]
The Beijing forum, which state media reported brought together delegations from more than 100 countries, provided a venue for “a second battlefield for Russia and the United States,” said Wan Qingsong, an associate professor at the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “The purpose is to use such a platform to win over public opinion in countries in the Global South and prevent changes that are particularly detrimental to Russia.”

The forum is typically hosted by China’s defense minister — but kicked off Sunday without one, as the most recent occupant of the role, Li Shangfu, was fired last week without explanation following a nearly two-month absence — the latest high-level purge of Chinese defense officials. Li has yet to be replaced.
[…]
In his address in Beijing, Zhang echoed the efforts of China’s powerful leader, Xi Jinping, to portray China as global peacemaker in direct contrast to the United States and its allies.

But Zhang and other Chinese military officials stood firm that the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims is part of its territory, was not up for discussion.

Taiwan was a “core interest” for China, Zhang said, warning that countries should not “deliberately provoke other countries on sensitive issues.”

Lt. Gen. He Lei warned Sunday that if China were to use force against Taiwan, it would be “a war of reunification, legitimacy and justice,” said the Global Times, a state media tabloid.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/30/xiangshan-forum-china-russia/

…context is a bitch

A Hong Kong High Court judge has given crisis-hit Chinese property giant Evergrande one last chance to come up with a new deal over its huge debts or face liquidation.

A winding-up hearing, initially scheduled for Monday, was adjourned to 4 December.

Justice Linda Chan said it would be the last hearing before a decision is made.

Evergrande is the world’s most indebted property developer with more than $325bn (£268.4bn) of total liabilities.

It defaulted on its debts two years ago and has been working on a new repayment plan ever since.

Justice Chan said Evergrande had to come up with a “concrete” proposal otherwise it was likely the company would be wound up. A liquidator would still be able negotiate with creditors, she added.
[…]
Evergrande’s plans to rework its agreements with creditors were dealt a major blow last month when it confirmed that its founder Hui Ka Yan and one of its main subsidiaries were under investigation for suspected criminal activities.

The company also said that it was it barred by Chinese regulators from issuing new dollar bonds, which was a key part of its plan to restructure its debts.

It also cancelled planned votes by creditors on its restructuring plan, which were originally scheduled for late last month.
[…]
Most of Evergrande’s debt is owed to people within China, many of whom are ordinary citizens whose homes have not been finished.

When the firm defaulted on its huge debts in 2021, it sent shockwaves through global financial markets as the property sector contributes to roughly a quarter of China’s economy.

Several other of the country’s major real estate firms have defaulted over the past year and many are struggling to find the money to complete developments.
[…]
Until now, the company’s survival has largely been down to the fact that most of the money it owes is to lenders in China, who have limited legal avenues to recoup their money.

By contrast, creditors outside mainland China are entitled to bring lawsuits against the company. This is what Top Shine has done and this is what could trigger a court liquidation order.

However, liquidation would not resolve the matter cleanly. Analysts say it would complicate the situation substantially.
[…]
Apart from deciding which lenders get priority in a liquidation, there is also question of who will finish the homes that more than a million Chinese people are still waiting for Evergrande to hand over.

Ms Danubrata said it is hard to picture a scenario in which foreign creditors receive their money before Chinese homeowners do. Ultimately, any solution will most likely require major cooperation with the Chinese government.

“It will likely be challenging to pursue an onshore enforcement against Evergrande’s assets without some kind of a nod from the relevant authorities,” she said.

Court gives Evergrande one last chance to agree debt deal [BBC]

…for every action

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s immediate and forceful support for Israel in its fight against Hamas has imperiled almost a year of concerted efforts by Kyiv to win the support of Arab and Muslim nations in its war against Russia.

Zelensky’s early statements backing Israel after the surprise attack by Hamas, in which more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, helped Ukraine stay in the international spotlight, and placed it firmly on the side of the United States.

Zelensky’s position also drew attention to the increasingly close relationship between Russia and Iran, which is a main sponsor of Hamas, a sworn enemy of Israel, and also an important supplier of drones and other weapons for Moscow.

Hamas and Russia are the “same evil, and the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a speech to NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly on Oct. 9.

But with Israel’s military operation set to enter its fourth week, and Palestinian civilian casualties mounting, the war in Gaza is posing one of the most difficult diplomatic tests for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which at times have provided crucial support to Ukraine, have accused the West of double standards in Gaza, alluding to the broad condemnation of civilian deaths in Ukraine compared with the muted criticism of Israel.

Tension with Muslim and Arab nations, however, is just one risk facing Kyiv, which must now also contend with the world’s attention shifting largely to a new war in the Middle East, as well as competing demands for U.S. military support at a time when House Republicans just elected a new speaker, Mike Johnson (La.), who has opposed sending additional aid to Ukraine.

…something, something…equal & opposite?

Some experts noted that Israel had already made clear it was not going to reciprocate with greater support for Ukraine.

…& if (as they are) people are finding time to devote column inches to the potential to undermine biden’s vote in muslim demographics…ripples are one thing but waves are quite another in turbulent times

Randa Slim, an expert in peace-building at the Middle East Institute, said Israel had no choice but to maintain its relationship with Moscow, in part because of Russia’s control over Syria, and she pointed out that Israel had rejected Zelensky’s offer to visit after the Hamas attack.

Zelensky’s pro-Israel position “did not make sense,” Slim said, adding that many Arab and Muslim countries see more similarities between Israel and Russia — as aggressive military powers — than they do between Israel and Ukraine.

“This is where the Arab region is,” she said. “They are not going to accept what Biden says, comparing Russia and Hamas. They are more comparing Russia and Israel as far as death toll and as far as targeting civilians.”

Zelensky, she said, could win more friends if he was “ready to say what Russia is doing in Ukraine is what Israel is doing in Gaza.” But, she added, “I don’t see Ukraine ready to do that or willing to do that.”
[…]
The foreign ministers of Turkey and Qatar, which have played instrumental roles in negotiating between Ukraine and Russia on issues like prisoner-of-war exchanges and Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, issued a joint statement alleging Western hypocrisy.

“It is not permissible to condemn the killing of civilians in one context and justify it in another,” said Qatar’s Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. Turkey’s Hakan Fidan added that the West’s failure to condemn the killings in Gaza “constitutes a very serious double standard.”

In an interview with CNN, Queen Rania of Jordan also offered sharp criticism: “Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s okay to shell them to death?”
[…]
Ukraine “has never been at the forefront” for the Arab world, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University who has written on Ukraine-Arab relations. “It is a conflict that does not concern them.”

Ulrichsen added, “Israel is taking up so much bandwidth that I don’t think anybody in the Middle East really is thinking about Ukraine right now.”

This weekend, Ukraine was scheduled to host a third round of talks aimed at fostering global support for its “peace plan” — which calls for a unilateral withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied Ukrainian territory and full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

Unlike at the first Ukraine peace formula meeting in August, which was hosted by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah and attended by delegates from almost all the major unaligned powers, it was unclear if Saudi officials would attend this weekend’s event in Malta.
[…]
China, which in recent days has joined Russia in calling for a return to a two-state solution to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was not attending the Malta event, Bloomberg News reported.

Turkey was planning to send a delegation to Malta, but in recent days Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken out forcefully against Israel and has described Hamas as a resistance movement — a stark contrast to Zelensky’s stated positions.

With Russia stepping up attacks on the eastern front, Ukraine can hardly afford to lose any friends. This is especially true given increasing opposition by Republicans in Congress to sending more aid to Ukraine.
[…]
But the White House must now deal with Johnson, the new House speaker, who has repeatedly voted against further Ukraine funding and told Fox News he intends to separate funding for Ukraine from the assistance to Israel.

Johnson has said Washington will not abandon Ukraine but has questioned the White House’s ultimate goals. Meanwhile, in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who recently met Putin on the sidelines of a conference in China, is trying to shoot down a 50 billion-euro aid proposal for Ukraine from the European Union.

The E.U. package will be voted on in December as part of the bloc’s 2023-2027 budget and requires the unanimity of the 27 member countries to be approved.
[…]
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been preparing for the possibility that U.S. support will taper off, according to Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Ukraine program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

Ukraine’s “Plan B” — evidenced by recent joint ventures with German and Turkish arms companies as well as talks with British and American manufacturers — is to distance itself as much as possible from external foreign politics, Lutsevych said.

“If America completely abandons Ukraine, it would be very difficult,” Lutsevych said. “But Ukraine will keep fighting with the resources it has on its own and it has from European allies.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/29/ukraine-israel-gaza-russia-support/

…& if I can barely believe a lot of what I’m reading…& sometimes not because there’s a better than even chance it’s bullshit…is it really believable that the heads of the states involved are wiser ones?

Until nearly the start of the attack, nobody believed the situation was serious enough to wake up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to three Israeli defense officials.
[…]
The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained.

Despite Israel’s sophisticated technological prowess in espionage, Hamas gunmen had undergone extensive training for the assault, virtually undetected for at least a year. The fighters, who were divided into different units with specific goals, had meticulous information on Israel’s military bases and the layout of kibbutzim.

The country’s once invincible sense of security was shattered.

…yeah…so…if you’re one of those people who keeps finding a quote from bibi bobbing to the surface of your recollections…he does indeed seem to have been on the record as saying “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas” a while back…& he’s now talking about how it’s “time for war”…so…might be tough to sort the shocking from the surprising all round

Warning: Benjamin Netanyahu is walking right into Hamas’s trap [Guardian]

Opinion | Why Did Netanyahu Want to Strengthen Hamas? [Haaretz]

…I’m sure I don’t know the answer…but…there’s some cynical voices in my head who are starting to sound like they have some trenchant opinions so I can only imagine the way that looks if you’re on the inside looking out at this thing

Many senior officials have accepted responsibility, but Mr. Netanyahu has not. At 1 a.m. Sunday in Israel, after his office was asked for comment on this article, he posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, that repeated remarks he made to The New York Times and blamed the military and intelligence services for failing to provide him with any warning on Hamas.
[…]
The last time Israelis’ collective belief in their country’s security was similarly devastated was 50 years earlier, at the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was caught off guard by an assault by Egyptian and Syrian forces. In an echo of that attack, Hamas succeeded because Israeli officials made many of the same mistakes that were made in 1973.

The Yom Kippur War was “a classic example of how intelligence fails when the policy and intelligence communities build a feedback loop that reinforces their prejudices and blinds them to changes in the threat environment,” Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in a 2017 research paper about the 1973 war.

In an interview this month, Mr. Riedel said that Mr. Netanyahu was reaping the consequences of focusing on Iran as the existential threat to Israel while largely ignoring an enemy in his backyard.

“Bibi’s message to Israelis has been that the real threat is Iran,” he said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “That with the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, the Palestinian issue is no longer a threat to Israel’s security. All of those assumptions were shattered on Oct. 7.”

…one way or another it sure does seem like churchill was right about democracy

On July 24, two senior Israeli generals arrived at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to deliver urgent warnings to Israeli lawmakers, according to three Israeli defense officials.

The Knesset was scheduled that day to give final approval to one of Mr. Netanyahu’s attempts to curb the power of Israel’s judiciary — an effort that had convulsed Israeli society, ignited massive street protests and led to large-scale resignations from the military reserves.

A growing portion of the Air Force’s operational pilots was threatening to refuse to report to duty if the legislation passed.

In the briefcase of one of the generals, Aharon Haliva, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate, were highly classified documents detailing a judgment by intelligence officials that the political turmoil was emboldening Israel’s enemies. One document stated that the leaders of what Israeli officials call the “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — believed this was a moment of Israeli weakness and a time to strike.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to one of the documents, said that it was necessary to prepare for a major war.

General Haliva was ready to tell the coalition leaders that the political turmoil was creating an opportunity for Israel’s enemies to attack, particularly if there were more resignations in the military. Only two members of the Knesset came to hear his briefing.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly.

Separately, Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, tried to deliver the same warnings to Mr. Netanyahu. The prime minister refused to meet him, the officials said. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment about this meeting.
[…]
The officials’ concerns grew through August and September, and General Halevi went public with his concerns.

“We must be more prepared than ever for a multi-arena and extensive military conflict,” he said at a military ceremony on Sept. 11, just weeks before the attack.

Mr. Netanyahu’s allies went on Israeli television and condemned General Halevi for sowing panic.

In a series of meetings, Shin Bet gave similar warnings to senior Israeli officials as General Halevi. Eventually, Mr. Bar also went public.
[…]
But Jordan found that when Mr. Netanyahu formed a government late last year, the most far right in recent history, it was less receptive to their warnings that the incidents at the Aqsa Mosque compound was stirring up sentiment inside Palestinian territories that could boil over into violence, according to two Arab officials with knowledge of the relationship.
[…]
Publicly, Mr. Netanyahu used blunt rhetoric about Hamas. His election slogan in 2008 was “Strong Against Hamas,” and in one campaign video at the time he pledged: “We will not stop the I.D.F. We will finish the job. We will topple the terror regime of Hamas.”

Over time, however, he came to see Hamas as a way to balance power against the Palestinian Authority, which has administrative control over the West Bank and has long sought a peace agreement in Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state.

Mr. Netanyahu told aides over the years that a feeble Palestinian Authority lowered the pressure on him to make concessions to Palestinians in negotiations, according to several former Israeli officials and people close to Mr. Netanyahu. An official in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied this had been the prime minister’s policy.
[…]
In a conversation with military investigators two weeks after the attack, soldiers who survived the assault testified that the Hamas training was so precise that they damaged a row of cameras and communication systems so that “all our screens turned off in almost the exact same second.” The result of all this was a near total blindness on the morning of the attack.

After the fighting had stopped, Israeli soldiers found hand-held radios on the dead bodies of some of the Hamas militants — the same radios that Israeli intelligence officials had decided a year ago were no longer worth monitoring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/middleeast/israel-intelligence-hamas-attack.html

…&…well…I’d go hide somewhere inside a convenient abstraction

“If it ain’t a capitalist market, what in the sweet Lord’s name are we stepping into when we enter Amazon.com?” a student at the University of Texas once asked me. “A type of digital fief,” I replied. “A post‑capitalist one, whose historical roots remain in feudal Europe.”

…however mickey-mouse-looking it might be

Under feudalism, the overlord would grant so-called fiefs to subordinates called vassals. These fiefs gave the vassals the formal right to exploit economically a part of the overlord’s realm – to plant crops on it, for example, or graze cattle – in exchange for a portion of the produce. The overlord would then unleash his sheriff to police the fief’s operation and collect what he was owed. Jeff’s relationship with the vendors on Amazon is not too dissimilar. He grants them digital fiefs, for a fee, and then leaves his algo-sheriff to police and collect.

Amazon was just the start. Alibaba […& there’s always temu & shin & all that suspiciously cheap stuff those ads keep pushing when I sit there waiting for a youtube video to work off its advertising allotment] has applied the same techniques to create a similar digital fief in China. Copycat e-commerce platforms, offering variations on the Amazon theme, are springing up everywhere, in the global south as well as the global north. More significantly, other industrial sectors are turning into digital fiefs too. Take for example Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car company. One reason financiers value it so much more highly than Ford or Toyota is that its cars’ every circuit is wired into the cloud. Besides giving Tesla the power to switch off one of its cars remotely, if for instance the driver fails to service it as the company wishes, merely by driving around Tesla owners are uploading real-time information (including what music they are listening to) that enriches the company’s cloud-based capital. They may not think of themselves as serfs but, alas, that’s precisely what the proud owners of new, wonderfully aerodynamically gleaming Teslas are.

It took mind-bending scientific breakthroughs, fantastical-sounding neural networks and imagination-defying AI programs to accomplish what? To turn workers toiling in warehouses, driving cabs and delivering food into digital proles. To create a world where markets are increasingly replaced by digital fiefs. To force businesses into the role of vassals. And to turn all of us into digital serfs, glued to our smartphones and tablets, eagerly producing the capital that keeps our new overlords on cloud nine.

Technofeudalism erects great barriers to mobilisation against it. But it also bestows new power on those who dare dream of a way to topple it – a capacity to build coalitions, organise and take action via the cloud: what I call cloud mobilisation. None of this is either easy or inevitable, but is it harder or less likely than what the miners, the seamstresses and the dockworkers envisioned and sacrificed their lives to achieve in the 19th century? The cloud takes – but the cloud also gives to those who want to reclaim freedom and democracy. It is up to us to prove which is greater.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/30/the-big-idea-has-the-digital-economy-killed-capitalism

…quite the provocateur that yanis lad…although

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/30/a-goldmine-at-our-fingertips-the-promise-and-perils-of-ai-in-africa

Discussions about AI often focus on the futuristic threat posed by superhuman intelligence. But AI is already woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The way we travel, the food we eat, how we spend our money, the news we read and our social interactions – the influence of AI is everywhere …

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2023/oct/25/a-day-in-the-life-of-ai

The Chief Ideologist of the Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas [NYT]

Military spending is up and global conflict is looming. Intellectuals, scientists and the public must speak out for the future of the planet [Guardian]

…because we for sure can’t count on the wisdom of crowds

An uprising in southern Russia, where rioters stormed an airport tarmac apparently searching for Jewish passengers on a flight from Israel, has shocked Jews in Russia and beyond, drawn condemnation from the Israeli government and prompted the Kremlin to call an unscheduled meeting to address the clashes.

Hundreds of young men stormed the main airport in the predominantly Muslim republic of Dagestan on Sunday night, searching for a commercial flight from Tel Aviv. Videos and some images on social media showed some of the rioters holding Palestinian flags and carrying signs opposing the war in Gaza, possibly spurred on by a Telegram messaging channel that urged them to “catch” the passengers of the incoming flight from Israel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/world/europe/dagestan-airport-mob-russia-israel-plane.html

…& the whole truth-to-power thing?

Tory ministerial aide sacked over call for Gaza ceasefire [Guardian]

…judging by how that’s going in your textbook liberal democracy not personally at war officially speaking & with plenty else to be occupying its political attention span

America’s electric grids may need to expand by two-thirds by 2035 to handle future growth in clean energy, the agency said. The nation isn’t on track. [NYT]

Five years and change. That’s how long humans can keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere at our current rate before we’re likely to push global warming past the most ambitious limit set by the Paris Agreement, according to new estimates released Monday by a team of climate scientists.

The calculations add weight to a dismal conclusion that many researchers already take as foregone: that we are cutting emissions far too slowly to have much hope of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit. Already, human activity has raised average global temperatures by about 1.2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial conditions.

The most promising paths for avoiding 1.5 degrees are clearly gone, Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who worked on the new projections, said at a news briefing. “And they have been gone for a while, to be honest,” he added.

Even so, having an up-to-date picture of emissions and warming can still help governments figure out how to meet less ambitious climate goals, including the Paris pact’s second-best limit of 2 degrees Celsius. Every extra increment of warming increases the risk of dangerous heat waves, floods, crop failures, species extinctions and wildfires.

Window for Meeting Key Climate Goal Is Even Narrower Than Thought [NYT]

…&…I ain’t any kind of expert or nothin’…but…I have a sneaking suspicion that giving it the ol’ boom & bust on legions of data-centers, server swarms & other rare-earth-intensive substrate upon which that potential AI bonanza could strip-mine out the african continent…might not come down on the helpful side of that equation…which is rough…& conjures not a few obscenities to mind…though…I’ll be honest…even the most densely expletive filled attempts I could muster fell a long way short of what is apparently today’s bar for that sort of thing

During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war between Israel and Hamas.

The death toll – which so far includes more than 8,000 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis – wasn’t top of mind for TD Cowen’s Cai von Rumohr, managing director and senior research analyst specializing in the aerospace industry. His question was about the upside for General Dynamics, an aerospace and weapons company in which TD Asset Management holds over $16m in stock.

…never mind the part where the GOP want to take every penny they’d offer israel out of the IRS budget…quiet in the back…the money is speaking

“Hamas has created additional demand, we have this $106bn request from the president,” said Von Rumohr, during General Dynamics’ earnings call on 25 October. “Can you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?”

“You know, the Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that’s just evolving as we speak,” responded Jason Aiken, the company’s executive vice-president of technologies and chief financial officer. “But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

That next day, Von Rumohr assigned a “buy” rating to General Dynamics’ stock.

Morgan Stanley’s head of aerospace and defense equity research, Kristine Liwag, took a similar approach to the conflict during Raytheon’s 24 October earnings call.
[…]
“So how much of this opportunity is addressable to the company and if the dollars are appropriated, when would be the earliest you could see this convert to revenue?”

Greg Hayes, Raytheon’s chairman and executive director, responded: “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking … on top of what we think is going to be an increase in the [Department of Defense] top line [budget].”

The comments are seemingly in contradiction of each company’s “statement on human rights” and explicit endorsements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Aside from the callousness of casually discussing the financial benefits of far-off armed conflict, the comments raise questions about whether these major institutional shareholders of weapons stocks are abiding by their own human rights policies.
[…]
But the UN won’t be the legal arbiter of whether US companies have participated in human rights violations, a key loophole for institutional investors and the weapons firms.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is only as good as how it’s interpreted by the host government, which in this case would be the US,” Shana Marshall, an expert on finance and arms trade and associate director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University explained.

“These analysts can feel safe in the knowledge that the US government is never going to interpret that law in such a way that they will be prevented from exporting weapons to a country that the US doesn’t have an outright embargo on, which probably won’t have anything to do with human rights law anyways.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/wall-street-morgan-stanley-td-bank-ukraine-israel-hamas-war

…how’d that song go, again…nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong…think that was it…well…anyway…guess it’s time to face the music & try to get on about my day…best of luck with yours?