I don't read much here about #JonathanUrich . See e.g.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/purported-whatsapp-correspondence-of-netanyahus-key-aide-jonatan-urich-leaks-online/ .
It's basically a story of what could possibly go wrong if I write a quick and dirty system with Claude and give it my personal Whatsapp account?

Same person's previous "what could possibly go wrong": if I work for a Prime Minister and at the same time have a side gig for consulting other governments?

The said Prime Minister still employs Ulrich. What could possibly go wrong?

#israel #ilpol

The government tried doing a full-blown populist takeover and switching to a Hungarian style "democracy". Initially it tried the Hungarian model of "all at once", and failed. When this failed, it switched to the Polish model: try sneaking in key legislation changes one by one. It was not clear if this was working.

Protest was still boiling. For instance, In the week-long vacation of Sukkot, #Netanyahu was on vacation in Neve Ativ in the north. Many of us camped near by with much noise and rejoice and anger. Because we would not allow Netayahu to have a quiet vacation. At the same time in Tel Aviv religious fanatics were trying to divert the attention by focusing on a issues with prayers in public. One showdown was in the main holiday of Sukkot. Another round was to be held at the end of Sukkot, in Simchat Tora, on Saturday, Oct 7th.

So there were focused on protesting. And the country was torn. And then the attack happened.

Protests stopped. At the day everyone tried to figure out what they could do to help. It became quickly clear that the government doesn't do anything. And therefore civil society had to step in. Part of civil society was the massive network of protest organization. All the energy of protest had to be diverted to healing and rebuilding.

Furthermore, at that time we all worked together (not exactly all. Most. But you could see who was working). People from all sectors, working together. Both in military reserve duty, and also stepping in when there was no government. The ceremony of Kumu preserves this spirit.

The problem is that this could only work if the people in charge would assume responsibility. But Netanyahu didn't. And once again, just like he engineered a destruction of the whole system to escape conviction in his trial, he now had to destroy this spirit and blame everything on scapegoats in order to escape the trial of the public.

Protesters gradually saw this and renewed protest. I personally started it again at early 2024. But protest has lost its momentum. People were also buy in the endless war. And then, protest was also busy in the goal of bringing back the hostages. Indeed we have managed to do that. That was basically the only major achievement of the post Oct-7th protest. Although the government has also mostly failed to continue in its plan of the "Polish model", mentioned above. This is much to the credit of the legal system: the Supreme Court and the Attorney General. The government was still afraid of actively disobeying the Supreme Court.

So this is why we have different types of ceremonies (there were even others, but let's not confuse even further).

#7october #ilpol #Israel

You can see part of what happened there (Hebrew) in my Peertube mirror of our local group's Youtube channel: https://tube.shela.nu/w/hvkibKEvhr3idzNsg6f7im .

This has been but one of many local events in many places all over the country. Our government has failed to prevent that horrible day. Furthermore, at that day and the following months, the government simply did not exist: We the people had to do its job. And so far almost none of them has resigned.

Today is 7.10. Elections are on 27.10. In 20 days. And it is our job now, as the people to replace the failed government.

BTW: The government tried to shift even the memory: the official day of remembrance as set by the government was, according to the Jewish Calendar, two days ago. It is set to two days after the date on the Jewish calendar, as the date is a holiday, and you don't want to mix the two.

But the families of the victims have created their own ceremony. And managed to label it as the "National Ceremony". It has gained more attention than the official one. Broadcasted on major TV channels (not on the BB-TV channel-14, of course. But that one is an anti-press channel).

That ceremony will be held later this evening. The protests today were arranged by "the protesters" (loosely aligned with #TheDemocrats [edit: accidentally tagged 'Democrats'. I meant the Israeli left-wing party]). The ceremony is of a movement called Kumu that is more of a centric movement that aims to unite everyone.

#7october #Israel

Well .... Well .... Well...

#Israel received the passenger and crew list for the flydubai flight that an Omani co-pilot allegedly tried to crash on Wednesday before the plane departed. According to security sources, responsibility for monitoring and vetting foreign flight crews entering Israel lies with the Transportation Ministry's security division and the Mossad, which were supposed to review the list.

Passenger and crew data are supposed to include full names and citizenship, meaning the co-pilot's Omani nationality should have been immediately apparent.

Perhaps Mossad knew, and it's all a false flag attack that Mossad got horribly wrong?

Well suspect 🤨

This whole #FlyDubai incident really is extraordinary.

Would it be too tinfoil hat to wonder if it's just a bit too extraordinary?

The idea that a government would stage something like this would definitely be in tinfoil hat territory for most governments, but Israel? I'm not sure I'd put anything past them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjdv7pmj9dno

#Israel

This could be the start of another raft of security checks on commercial flights…this time focusing on pilots and air crew identity.

#Israel
#SaudiArabia
#FlyDubai

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/sep/30/dubai-israel-saudi-arabia-flydubai-flight-diversion-pilots-fight-latest-news-updates#top-of-blog

I wonder what is going to happen in #Yemen soon that #Israel doesn't want us to know about
https://bird.makeup/users/vocalpolitics1/statuses/2098011384701170014
#journacide #EoB

Just returned from a meeting with #YairGolan, leader of #TheIsraeliDemocracts party.

The Democrats would be the left wing of the upcoming coalition. It is clear that winning the elections would only mark the start of a shift. And it also depends how many seats the party eventually gets.

#ilpol #israel #Israeli_elections

One of the only things that #BenGvir managed to actually change (rather than PR stunts) is better control of the police.

He realized that the law requires the minister to sign-off every senior police officer (Chief Superintendent and above) and used it to require all of them to be aligned with him.

However, he faced enough opposition. And now people in police see that he will not stay in power long, and decide not to count on such loyalty.

So even with that #BenGvirFailed.

#israel #police

A short overview of the current parties. See a previous post (not up to date). Generally the main opposition block. or Eizencot's block, is expected to have roughly 60/120 seats. It may need extra coalition members from other parties. This is mainly what pundits write about now, so please go read about it elsewhere.

Israel has a parliamentary system. In the elections the members of parliament (that has a single house), the Knesset are being elected. They will be sworn into office two weeks later, on Nov. 10th, and this will start four more weeks (potentially with an extension of two more weeks) to form the ruling coalition and the government. Negotiations for forming the coalition tend to be painful and mostly happen at the last minute. So we should expect a government to be formed on Dec-8th or even Dec-22nd in case of an extension. And proceeded by many dramatic news items about all of it going to explode. And assuming that there won't be a 2019-style stalemate. But let's hope there won't be any.

The newly-formed government will likely have a wide spectrum of parties, including the Democracts and maybe Ra'am on the left and Israel Beitenu (Liberman) on the right. Most parties are right-leaning. None of them seem to have the fanatic flare of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, but at least some seem to share the sentiment of "the whole world is against us" that you see today in the actions of foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar.

I guess that the base of the expectations of the government is not the current Israel government. Rather, the one before it. That was also a wide coalition, united basically by being anti-Netanyahu, and by parties trying to do good for the whole public. It sounds naive, but it was just that: even the 2021-2022 government of Bennet and Lapid was a breath of fresh air compared to governments before it, let alone the dysfunctional government that followed it.

And then we get to the first problem: most parties in the Eisencot Block want to focus on the "80% we all agree on" and start the healing process. For instance, a lot of attention needs to be given to the whole issue of conscription and the state of Ultra Orthodox communities. The education system may need rebuilding. And taxes may need to be raised.

But the Democracts think that instead of maintaining such a large military force, we should try to close as many fronts ASAP, and that recruiting ultra orthodox to the military as is may have a bad effect on the military now. Although everybody agree that the state-tax-funded autonomies of the ultra orthodox must not be defunded.

And then again, there's also disagreement about Palestine. People on the Right seem to be afraid of that. I tend to think that they will be forced to follow something similar to Trump's Gaza Peace Plan forms a place to rebuild trust among the two parties, that is currently broken.

Right now we can hardly expect anything from the current government. We tried replacing it before elections and failed. However, we (including the small me as the fly riding on the horse) managed to stop almost all of the "Judicial reform". Levin, Rotman and co. planned to have this done by May 2023, and hardly any of this got through. We managed to start the process of tearing down the horrible structure of ultra orthodox communities, even though their parties[1] were part of the ruling coalition with a majority in parliament. However, just about the only effective minister in the government was Smotrich, who managed to expand the land grabs in the West Bank. In that front we did very poorly.

So, please wait a bit with steps against Israel. They currently mostly serve to bolster the mentality of "the whole world is against us". However, once a new government is formed - expected in December, it is very much accountable and responsible for its actions.

#ilpol #IsraeliElections2026 #Eizencot

[1] I guess a separate topic on the whole issue of ultra orthodox, conscription, their education system, and the funding of all of that is required. There are two ultra orthodox parties that in practice represent the interests of the corrupt religious elite of them, and that helps keep them very much poor and poorly-educated.

Today we had primary elections for the list at the Israeli Democracts party and an hour ago we got the results (so far the basic list only).

Names are probably going to be meaningless to an international audience. I'll just note that my shorter list included some 30 of the 51 candidates (I had to vote for only 8) and that I'm happy with what we got.

#HaDemocratim #israel #elections

Elections in Israel are nationwide and proportional representation - parties present their list of candidates and each voter may elect a single party (technically it's a list, which is a combination of parties, but never mind that). And no registration is required.

Up until the 1970s, party leaders chose those lists of candidates through committees - "the elders of the party". In 1977 the #Likkud started electing people in party conferences. A while later other parties followed suit. In 1991 the Labor decided to use an even wider body: primary elections. In both cases the new format helped the party win the elections as the older method seemed corrupt.

Primary elections became the norm. Then Tommy Lapid (the father of Yair Lapid) became disenchanted with that idea after it helped kicking hime out of "his" Shinuy party in 2006 in an ugly way. This prompted Yair Lapid to avoid it altogether. Yair Lapid created his own new party in 2012 (Yesh Atid), with himself as the big party boss. And from that point, new parties tended to be "owned" by the figure that headed the party and called the shots.

In previous elections only Labor and Meretz (sort of) on the left and Likkud on the right stuck to holding primary elections. Meretz and Labor merged to forming The Democrats that will hold the primary elections for the list in July 20th.

The primary elections in the Likkud have an aura of corruption around them: workers in various large companies are "strongly encouraged" to join the party. Likewise various political movements, notably from the religious far right (often people who actually don't vote Likkud) will join the party to vote in the primary elections.

On the other hand, primary elections remain a useful channel to keep party leadership accountable to local activists. E.g. recently farmers (including ones supported by Likkud) managed to thwart a suggested milk reform (That was probably badly designed anyway).

However, Netanyahu is not so fond of those primary elections, as it means that there are people noot directly depending on him, and currently trying to select less list members in primary elections.

That is certainly not the case with the Democrats.

I'll note that there was at least one more small party that selected its list through what is described as primary elections: the Reservists (Miluimnikim), that currently fail to pass the voting threshold in polls.

#PrimaryElections #ilpol

Today we marked the 1000th day since Oct 10th 2023. Organizers dubbed it as 7.10000 (following the date 7.10 that we all remember). Because the war that started at that day never ended.

In the morning there were protests in various junctions all over the country. In the evening there was a central rally in Tel Aviv.

#Israel #oct7

Eisenkot is the leader of one of the opposition parties that will run in the upcoming October 2026 general elections in Israel. According to recent polls, his party will likely lead the block of opposition parties and he has a good chance of becoming the next Israeli prime minister.

He had a long military career and eventually served as the chief of staff on 2015-2018. Later has been in the Knesset (parliament) since 2022.

As you can see in his biography, he was born in the city of Tiberias to parents who immigrated from Morocco. That would mark him as Sefaradi. But the "Eisen" prefix sounds German and hence Ashkenazi. Around 2015, as he became the chief of staff, this appeared to be an oddity, and people looked into it.

They quickly realized that the name may appear German, but is not really, and such a name is not documented. However, the name Azankot, that seems to be of Berber origin, is documented for Jews in Morocco since the 17th century. At some point someone mis-transcribed the name.

So around 2015 there are multiple stories about that. A harmless anecdote.

And we get to the present times. Netanyahu is a populist leader. That is, also claims to be leader of the people. For various reasons, Sepharadi people (roughly half of the Jewish population) vote more to the Right. But Netanyahu's party, Likkud, has always been under the leadership of Ashkenazy people. And yet, they somehow keep trying to use this as an issue.

So lately we see both Netanyahu's propaganda raising the following two points: that Netanyahu is of partial Moroccan decent (with no basis whatsoever), and that Eisenkot (due to the name) is not really a Moroccan.

Note: This is obviously something that should not have mattered. Eisenkot does not make that identity a campaign topic. But it's interesting to see what issues the propaganda of Netanyahu chooses to pick on.

#israel #Eisenkut #GadiEizenkut #ilpol #netanyahu #propaganda

Someone posted a such a nonsense "theory" about how come there are no new cemeteries in the US (spoiler: this is wrong). So in the short discussion they raised some points:

Land used by cemeteries needs to be close to cities, and therefore is expensive, as it replaces buildings. Therefore, cemeteries have been using the same land more efficiently: use parts that were previously unused, bury more people in the same space, and such. And of course: cremation greatly reduces the space requirements.

And this is why there are way fewer new cemeteries built in the US.

The points above are the ones raised in the show, that I'm just repeating. I'm not as familiar with what's happening in the US. I do know what's happening in Israel. Because it gives an interesting perspective.

In Israel cemeteries are run by non-profits, almost all of them are run by religious institutions. The Jewish ones are called חברא קדישא (Hevra Kadish, literally, "a holy soceity"). Each such non-profit maintains the cemetery. It is funded by payments people pay for new burials. But they have to keep maintaining the cemetery for eternity.

In practice cemeteries do fill up and new ones need to be built. This is a serious issue in the larger cities. Cremation is not socially acceptable by most people. It is also more expensive than other alternatives.

And the price matters here. Decent burial is considered a basic human right and therefore Social Security covers basic costs of burial. The cemetery non-profits still make money from selling pre-allocated plots (for those who want to buried next to their partner, or people who want to be buried near a holy guy).

Any form of more burial that has more graves per area, e.g.: a tower of graves, is way more expensive to maintain, and therefore costs more, even per single grave. Therefore those non-profits prefer to continue using the "good old" single-graves burial. And as it happens, some of them have quite some political power.

There is more to it, but suffice it to safe that land for graves is one of the long-term issues in Israel that will not be solved unless Someone does Something about it:
https://library.mevaker.gov.il/sites/DigitalLibrary/Documents/2024/2024.05/EN/2024-05-205-Burial-Taktzir-EN.pdf

[1] Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast: https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ . Besides the regular weekly podcast they also have a more casual weekly chat that they stream live on Youtube and also release to their RSS feed.

Sde Teiman detention camp was created shortly after the beginning of the war. A place was needed to detain the many new Palestinian prisoners. The civilian Prison Service wanted nothing to do with it. Sde Teiman is an existing military base near Be'er Sheva and the existing emergency military plan for a PoW camp was there. There was no plan for that many prisoners. The camp housed, at the time, several thousands of Palestinians. Some of them were Hamas people. Some weren't (this is where they were supposed to be interrogated, potentially).

While there were technically some plans for the camp, they were not prepared for the scale. And there were no trained prison guards. Therefore regular reserve soldiers were drafted to guard the camp, and a special unit, Unit 100, was created from volunteer reservists, to be the intervention force. They ended up more interacting with the prisoners.

There were rumors of misconduct in the camp, and military police didn't bother very much to investigate them. However, in some cases they had to: when a detainee ended up in hospital (which means that he couldn't be treated in the in-facility clinic) and doctors found signs of brutality, military police had to step in.

They already did this once in March 2024. And they we get to the events of April 2024 when another detainee ended up in hospital and an investigation was launched.

BTW: initially a sexual assault was suspected, but pretty soon the findings were re-examined and the allegations were changed to "merely" brutality. The MP investigators looked at video footage of the event and could clearly see that the event is hidden: the detainee was taken by 8 soldiers of Unit 100 who stood as a wall hiding the event from the camera. And afterwards he ended up badly injured.

So after a while the MPs came to investigate those soldiers. And at that point all hell broke loose. The soldiers did not want to go to jail. So they decided to overrule the MPs. Now don't get me wrong, soldiers overruling MPs by the way of brute force is a well honored military tradition, but not when done in plain sight.

In this case they called for all of their friends to come and help them. Not only for other soldiers in the base: everybody. Most of the people in Unit 100 happen to be settlers, and this is who they called. And thus not long afterwards there was a whole mob outside the gates of the base.

There was several politicians, including a (government) ministers and two members of parliament present. And they were heading the mob. Eventually the mob broke into the military base. Much so because the (civilian) police didn't do anything. Some of the MPs have managed to escape with detained soldiers, and a mob was waiting for them in their home base in Beit Lid (and again, the civilian police did nothing).

At this point a major outcry started in the right wing circles claiming that those poor soldiers did nothing and that they are being wrongly accused. Israel has already been heavily polarized, with an efficient propaganda machine that spreads lies of Netanyahu and co. and now that propaganda machine set its target on the (investigative) military police and the military prosecution, because it's obvious that that case is bollocks and why won't they release our heroes?

So at that point we finally get to Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi: the head of the Military Advocate General. She gets crisped by the right wing propaganda machine, including outright lies, merely for doing her job. And now she does her big mistake: she leaks the video footage. The footage shows the guards standing as a wall and hiding all the event from the camera. It is not a complete proof, but it shows that this was not "nothing happened".

It is stupid, because at that stage only the prosecution has that evidence, and therefore that leak can only come from a small set of people. And should could have released that footage in a simpler method: directly. she makes a further blunder by not admitting it was her.

Leaking the footage was a minor offense. The really bad thing she did was claiming to not have leaked it to various forums, including eventually to the (civilian) supreme court. This is something a high-ranking officer, let alone the Advocate General, must not do. When this was found, she was immediately forced to resign.

However, this is not the end of the story, because this affair lives on in the politically charged investigation to see who else knew (but I'll leave that one out).

All along, the minister and the MPs who broke into the base refuse to be interrogated regarding their part. People on the right try to shift the whole affair to be the issue of the military prosecution. And it's not. This case was very effective in deterring the military police and military prosecution from further probes into those fields.

Another thing to take from it is that people on our side are not always perfect, and that's OK. Tomer-Yerushalmi was right to press on the investigation. She was wrong in the way she leaked the video and later tried poorly to cover it up. But the fact that she was wrong, does not make our case wrong (and this likewise should apply on the other wise and to people we disagree with).

#Israel #Sde_Teiman

The stated goal of the Israeli government is a "complete victory over Hamas" using military power. And to release the Israeli hostages. Hamas basically tries to survive.

There are currently 58 hostages (not all alive) held by Hamas in the #Gaza Strip. Specifically, for all we know, they are probably mostly in an area in the center of the Strip. The IDF thus avoided and ground assaults into those areas, leaving them as generally safe areas for Hamas.

Therefore in the last year or so, Israel has not been getting much closer to defeating Hamas by military force. Those goals are very clearly conflicting.

And then again, people call for a "deal" to release all hostages. And ignore the fact that Hamas has just about no interest in doing so. Those hostages are all that keep Hamas afloat (That said, I hope to be wrong on that).

So basically for over a year we have a stalemate between the Israeli government and Hamas. Hamas won't release hostages. The Israeli government won't consider alternatives. And people of Gaza bear the consequences.