Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Connections

[Brexiter]

We begin today with David Remnick of The New Yorker and his brilliant yet, ultimately, bleak post-Oct. 7 report from Israel.

Mosab was not inclined to defer to the intelligence assessments of the Israelis, any more than Israeli officials were apt to accept discussions of the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank as “context” for the massacres in the south. There were, of course, facts—many of them unknown—but the narratives came first, all infused with histories and counter-histories, grievances and fifty varieties of fury, all rushing in at the speed of social media. People were going to believe what they needed to believe. And so, while the Israelis and their allies were relieved by the intelligence reports of a disastrous misfire by Islamic Jihad, the Palestinians and most of the Arab world were having none of it. The funerals went on. The Israeli bombing of Gaza—with thousands dead, hospitals at the brink of collapse, infrastructure crumbling—intensified. So did the mobilization for an Israeli ground offensive. There were skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon, threats from the ayatollahs in Iran, American warships in the eastern Mediterranean. [...]

The task of holding in one’s head multiple thoughts—multiple facts—was nearly impossible, particularly in the face of sloganeering and the allure of militancy. There is the thought that Israeli settlers, many of them armed, have stepped up their daily violence against Palestinian villagers, egged on by ministers in the Netanyahu government. That, though Israel is well armed and has powerful allies, it is also the size of New Jersey and faces multiple enemies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—whose leaders speak regularly of the elimination of “the Zionist entity.” That the unemployment rate in Gaza is forty-five per cent, the water barely potable, electricity and food in short supply, the health-care system in ruins. That antisemitism has, yet again, grown in breadth, intensity, and violence. That contempt for Palestinians is practically a norm in the current Israeli government, as when Smotrich, the finance minister, spoke at a memorial service in France and, standing in front of a map with Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan melded into “Greater Israel,” declared, “There is no Palestinian history,” or when Ben-Gvir, the national-security minister, told journalists, “My right, my wife’s, my children’s, to roam the roads of Judea and Samaria are more important than the right of movement of the Arabs.” That many thousands of Palestinians have already been killed in the recent air strikes and well over a million have been internally displaced. There will be no end to it anytime soon: the funerals, the recriminations, the threats, the fear, the assaults.

There was also the grim fact that Hamas had, in the most brutal fashion, shattered the illusion that a state could provide Israelis the guarantee of security. As Yonit Levi, the news anchor of Channel 12 put it to me, “Every single Jewish nightmare came true.” And so what would come in return? The air strikes on Gaza were proceeding at an unprecedented pace every night—lethal and incessant—and a ground incursion could lead to a hellscape of urban warfare, another Fallujah. It was a familiar nightmare, reminiscent of what followed 9/11, in which a stronger nation pursues a policy that, while trying to defeat an enemy for carrying out an unspeakable massacre, kills countless civilians and ultimately inflicts untold and lasting damage on itself.

One thing that I didn’t really understood until reading Remnick’s reporting is that Netanyahu and Hamas really need each other to exist at a political level.


Paul Krugman of The New York Times says that Speaker Mike Johnson’s extremism extends beyond election denial and Christian nationalism to economics.

Until his sudden elevation to speaker, Johnson was a relatively little-known figure. But he did serve for a time as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group that devises policy proposals. And now that Johnson has become the face of his party, people really should look at the budget proposal the committee released for 2020 under his chairmanship.

For if you read that proposal carefully, getting past the often mealy-mouthed language, you realize that it calls for the evisceration of the U.S. social safety net — not just programs for the poor, but also policies that form the bedrock of financial stability for the American middle class.

Start with Social Security, where the budget calls for raising the retirement age — already set to rise to 67 — to 69 or 70, with possible further increases as life expectancy rises.

Lauren Aratani of the Guardian writes that Trump’s juggling of his legal and political circumstances is proving to be increasingly difficult.

The official trial, for which Engoron is the judge, is focused on whether Trump knowingly inflated the value of his properties to boost his net worth. Engoron has already ruled that the Trump Organization cooked the books – a ruling that could end Trump’s New York business empire. The court case is about what punishment Trump his adult sons and other Trump executives should face. This is a civil case, Trump will not go to jail no matter what the judge rules. Nor is there a jury to impress. Engoron is making the final decision based on the court hearings.

The second – unofficial – trial is being fought in the court of public opinion. The media circus arrives every time Trump appears in court. He attacks the “witch-hunt”. His lawyers cry foul, shout at witnesses and demand the case is thrown out. The facts of the case seem almost incidental. For Trump and his lawyers, it is clear – often to the anger of the judge – that the official trial is less important to them than the political one.

“A lot of him thinks that the trials are how he’s going to win re-election,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton and author of The Presidency of Donald J Trump: A First Historical Assessment. “He is going to be there and show himself under attack again and again to make the point that he’s an anti-establishment figure wherever they get him.”

But even for someone as media savvy as Trump, juggling the trials is proving difficult and may point to real problems ahead. Treading the fine line between the judicial and political dynamics demands restraint, a quality Trump has never displayed. If he goes too far, the consequences could be serious.

Isobel Koshiw of The Washington Post says that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s support for Israel in its war for Hamas has made his diplomatic efforts in appealing for support of Ukraine in its war with Russia more difficult.

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.

Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack write for Lawfare about the strange new relationship between Tehran and Moscow.

From Tehran’s perspective, an informal alliance with Russia is ideologically and historically odd, but it is strategically enticing. Iran and Russia have been rivals for almost two centuries, and Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini hated the Soviet Union almost as much as he hated the United States, scorning godless communism and seeing the Soviet Union as an aggressive power that sought to undermine Iran’s revolutionary regime. But, today, the Islamic Republic needs a great power backer—and Russia fits their bill. Even if Russian arms are deficient compared with their Western counterparts, Moscow can provide the full range of weapons that Iran desperately needs. Add to this a friend on the UN Security Council that gives Iran diplomatic clout, as well as their mutual rejection of democracy and human rights, and Iran’s infatuation with Russia becomes even more understandable.

Moscow’s interest in Tehran is a bit harder to explain. It starts with a range of common interests that are generally anti-U.S., opposed to democratic values, and wary of Sunni Muslim fundamentalism. Indeed, the modern Iran-Russia relationship initially grew from cooperation between their respective intelligence services looking to keep an eye on various Sunni fundamentalist groups that emerged in the Caucasus and Central Asia after the collapse of the USSR. In the Middle East, they share a sense of fear and opportunism, worrying that regional unrest could topple anti-Western partners like Bashar al-Assad but hoping that the strife will allow them to undermine their enemies and expand their own influence. [...]

But then Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, Vladimir Putin needed Iran in ways he never had before. In a shocking role reversal, it is now Iran supplying weapons to Russia, particularly its crude, but highly functional suicide drones, which have become the bane of Ukraine’s cities. Iran is also providing Russia some additional munitions, technicians (for its weaponry), diplomatic and moral support, and some sanctions relief. There have even been unconfirmed reports that Iran has offered to send members of its league of Middle Eastern Shiite militias to man the front lines in Ukraine.

All of a sudden, Russia seems to need Iran almost as much as Iran needs Russia.

Borja Andrino and Montse Hidalgo Pérez of El País in English says that data taken from various countries in Europe and Latin America show that the women’s vote is the only thing prevent a lot of countries in these regions from going full-on extreme far-right and “populist.”

At a glance it can be seen that, in most countries, more men report voting for populist or extreme right-wing parties and candidates. In some countries, such as Brazil or Austria, the differences are up to 16 points. In the recent Argentine elections the gap was 12 points, according to the pollster CB Consultora. Conversely, presidential candidate and current Minister of Economy Sergio Massa told EL PAÍS in a press conference with foreign journalists that among women he reached 45% of support, against less than 25% for Milei.

In European countries such as Italy or France the differences seem smaller, but one or two points between parties with many supporters at the polls can mean hundreds of thousands of votes. In Spain, if Vox had had the same support among men and women at the July 23 elections, it could have grown by about half a million votes, a very important variable considering how close the result was. [...]

But gender differences in voting have been documented in academic studies since the 1990s and have no clear, single origin. Women tend to express themselves more moderately than men, even when they value issues in the same way. And this is also true when it comes to voting, according to research by Eelco Arteveld and Elisabeth Ivarsflaten of the departments of political science at the universities of Amsterdam and Bergen. Similarly, men are more likely to express their extreme positions by voting for radical parties.

Finally today, Justin C. Key writes for Los Angeles Times about how he, as a Black writer, found refuge and peace in horror stories even as a child.

...I grew up in a single-parent home in Washington, D.C. Despite being the loved and valued baby of a big Southern family, early encounters with death made me an anxious kid. My godmother died of lupus when I was 7. I remember her lying there in her coffin, eternally still and cold. During my summers in southern Virginia, I made note of how often my grandmother attended funerals. Death seemed to lurk just around the corner; its peeping eye kept me up at night. When would it come? For my grandmother, for my mom, for me? What was on the other side? Would it hurt?

I found refuge in horror. As a kid, I read R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” fiction series filled with monsters, haunted masks and shrunken heads. But I knew they weren’t real. The ghouls and goblins I let into my mind didn’t make an already sleepless night worse. They didn’t lurk underneath my bed. Instead, they offered wonders and “what ifs.” How might I escape a haunted house?

The possibilities were endless. And with them, I found some peace. For a while.

I was 14 when 9/11 smoke rose from the Pentagon, something I could see clearly from my Northeast D.C. high school. As my fears sprouted into nightly worries of a sudden, blinding flash ushering in a wall of nuclear wind, my taste for horror also expanded with Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub and other writers. I consumed scary movies and horror novels to occupy myself with a range of emotions that felt safe. Because I was ultimately in control. Because I chose them. Again, I found some peace. For a while.

From reading Mom’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents magazines to a summer at vacation Bible school where I wondered about the painting on the wall in the farm’s main house which, reportedly, had moving eyes to wondering what would happen if I went to the lake that the Devil, reportedly, inhabited to wishing that I could stop dreaming about Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman from coming out of the closet at my grandmother’s house, I know that my mind has a bit of a macabre twist.

And as far as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman dreams, I now have a cheat sheet for that!

Try to have the best possible day everyone!