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Angry Farmers Are Reshaping Europe
Angry Farmers Are Reshaping Europe
Farm protests are changing not only Europe’s food
system but also its politics, as the far right senses an opportunity.
By Roger
Cohen Photographs by Ivor Prickett
Reporting
from across rural France
March 31,
2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/world/europe/angry-farmers-are-reshaping-europe.html
Gazing out
from his 265-acre farm to the silhouetted Jura mountains in the distance,
Jean-Michel Sibelle expounded on the intricate secrets of soil, climate and
breeding that have made his chickens — blue feet, white feathers, red combs in
the colors of France — the royalty of poultry.
The “poulet
de Bresse” is no ordinary chicken. It was recognized in 1957 with a designation
of origin, similar to that accorded a great Bordeaux. Moving from a diet of
meadow bugs and worms to a mash of corn flour and milk in its final sedentary
weeks, this revered Gallic bird acquires a unique muscular succulence. “The
mash adds a little fat and softens the muscles formed in the fields to make the
flesh moist and tender,” Mr. Sibelle explained with evident satisfaction.
But if this
farmer seemed passionate about his chickens, he is also drained by harsh
realities. Mr. Sibelle, 59, is done. Squeezed by European Union and national
environmental regulations, facing rising costs and unregulated competition, he
sees no further point in laboring 70 hours a week.
He and his
wife, Maria, are about to sell a farm that has been in the family for over a
century. None of their three children want to take over; they have joined a
steady exodus that has seen the share of the French population engaged in
agriculture fall steadily over the past century to about 2 percent.
“We are
suffocated by norms to the point we can’t go on,” Mr. Sibelle said.
Down on the
European farm, revolt has stirred. The discontent, leading farmers to quit and
demonstrate, threatens to do more than change how Europe produces its food.
Angry farmers are blunting climate goals. They are reshaping politics ahead of
elections for the European Parliament in June. They are shaking European unity
against Russia as the war in Ukraine increases their costs.
“It’s the
end of the world versus the end of the month,” Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the
FNSEA, France’s largest farmers’ union, said in an interview. “There’s no point
talking about farm practices that help save the environment, if farmers cannot
make a living. Ecology without an economy makes no sense.”
The turmoil
has emboldened a far right that thrives on grievances and rattled a European
establishment forced to make concessions. In recent weeks, farmers have blocked
highways and descended on the streets of European capitals in a disruptive, if
disjointed, outburst against what they call “existential challenges.” In a shed
full of the ducks he raises, Jean-Christophe Paquelet said: “Yes, I joined the
protests because we are submerged in rules. My ducks’ lives are short but at
least they have no worries.”
The
challenges farmers cite include E.U. requirements to cut the use of pesticides
and fertilizers, now partly dropped in light of the protests. Europe’s decision
to open its doors to cheaper Ukrainian grain and poultry in a show of
solidarity added to competitive problems in a bloc where labor costs already
varied widely. At the same time, the E.U. has in many cases reduced subsidies
to farmers, especially if they do not shift to more environmentally friendly
methods.
German
farmers have attacked Green party events. This month, they spread a manure
slick on a highway near Berlin that caused several cars to crash, seriously
injuring five people. Spanish farmers have destroyed Moroccan produce grown
with cheaper labor. Polish farmers are enraged by what they see as unfair
competition from Ukraine.
French
farmers, who vented their fury against President Emmanuel Macron during his
recent visit to the Paris Agricultural Fair — where politicians regularly pat
the backsides of bulls to prove their bona fides — say they can scarcely dig a
ditch, trim a hedge, or birth a calf without confronting a maze of regulatory
requirements.
Fabrice
Monnery, 50, who owns a 430-acre cereal farm, is among them. The cost for his
electrified irrigation more than doubled in 2023, and his fertilizer costs
tripled, he said, as the war in Ukraine increased energy prices.
“At the
start of the war, in 2022, our economy minister said we were going to destroy
Russia economically,” he said. “Well, it’s Russia’s war in Ukraine that’s
destroying us.”
Farms are
mythologized but misunderstood, he said. The soul of France is its “terroir,”
the soil whose unique characteristics are learned over centuries by those
cultivating it, yet the people living on that hallowed land feel abandoned. The
average age of farmers is over 50, and many cannot find a successor.
Often the
romanticized image of the French farm — cows being milked at dawn as the mist
rises over undulating pasture — is at some distance from reality.
Through Mr.
Monnery’s office window, the Bugey nuclear plant could be seen belching steam
into the blue sky. Urban development and industrial zones encroach on highly
mechanized farms abutting deserted villages where small stores have been
crushed by hypermarkets that offer cheaper imported meat and produce.
“The
graduates of elite schools that run this country have no idea about farm life,
or even what a day’s labor feels like,” Mr. Monnery said. “They’re perched up
there, the successors to our royal family, Macron chief among them.”
‘Punitive Ecology’
Ascendant
far-right parties across the continent have seized on such anger three months
before European Parliament elections. They portray it as another illustration
of the confrontation between arrogant elites and the people, urban globalists
and rooted farmers.
Their
message is that the countryside is the custodian of national traditions under
assault from modernity, political correctness and immigration, in addition to a
thicket of environmental rules that, in their view, defies common sense. Such
messages resonate with voters who feel forgotten.
Marine Le
Pen, the leader of France’s anti-immigrant National Rally party, argues that
true exile “is not to be banished from your country, but to live in it and no
longer recognize it.” Her young lieutenant, the charismatic Jordan Bardella,
28, who is leading the party’s election campaign, speaks of “punitive ecology”
as he crisscrosses the countryside.
Mr.
Bardella often finds a receptive audience. Vincent Chatellier, an economist at
the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, said
that close to 18 percent of French farmers live below the official poverty
line, and 25 percent are struggling.
For the
National Rally, the E.U.’s “Green Deal” and “Farm to Fork Strategy,” which aim
to halve chemical pesticide use and cut fertilizer use by 20 percent by 2030 as
part of a plan to be carbon neutral by 2050, are a thinly disguised attack on
the French economy. In February, under pressure from farmer protests, the E.U.
acknowledged how polarizing its efforts have become, scrapping an
anti-pesticide bill.
A recent
poll by the daily Le Monde gave Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally 31 percent of
France’s European election vote, well ahead of Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party
with 18 percent. Farmers may not contribute many votes directly but they are
popular, even venerated, figures in France, and their discontent registers with
a broad spectrum of voters.
In Germany,
Stefan Hartung, a member of Die Heimat (Homeland), a neo-Nazi party, addressed
a farmers’ protest in January and denounced Brussels and Berlin politicians who
exert control over people by “imposing things like climate ideology, gender
madness and all that nonsense.” Demonstrations by German farmers had not
previously been as violent as the recent ones.
“It’s war
between the Greens and farmers,” said Pascal Bruckner, an author and political
commentator in France. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Cyrielle
Chatelain, a French lawmaker who represents the mountainous Isère region and
leads a group of environmentalist parties in Parliament, said that it was wrong
to say that “all farmers are angry with the Greens.”
“It’s less
the idea of a green transition that angers them,” she said in an interview,
“than the way it’s applied.”
The Green
Deal stipulates, for example, that hedges, home to nesting birds, cannot be cut
between March 15 and the end of August. But in Isère, Ms. Chatelain said, no
bird would nest in a hedge on March 15 because the hedge is still frozen.
Thierry
Thenoz, 63, a pig farmer in Lescheroux in southeastern France, told me he had
replanted miles of hedges on his 700-acre farm. “But if I want to cut a 25-foot
break in the hedge for a gate and a track, I have to negotiate with
regulators.”
Mr. Thenoz,
who invested long ago in a methane unit to recycle pig manure as fertilizer to
make his farm self-sustaining, has also decided to retire and sell his shares
in the farm. His three children, he said, were just not interested.
A Cornerstone Wobbles
The
cornerstone of a uniting Europe for more than six decades has been its Common
Agricultural Policy, known as the C.A.P. As in the United States, where the
government spends billions annually on farm subsidies, mostly for much larger
farms than in western Europe, a viable agricultural sector is seen as a core
strategic interest.
The
European policy has kept food abundant, set certain prices, and helped ensure
that France and the European Union have a large trade surplus in agricultural
and food products, even as it has come under scrutiny for corruption and
favoring the rich. Big farms benefit most.
French
farmers who have led the protests of recent months over what they see as unfair
competition from less regulated countries have themselves benefited enormously
from E.U. subsidies and open global markets.
France has
received more in annual financial support from Brussels for its farmers than
any other country, more than $10 billion in 2022, said Mr. Chatellier, the
economist. The French agriculture-and-food sector had a $3.8 billion surplus
with China in 2022, and an even larger one with the United States.
But
Europe’s agricultural policy is riddled with problems that have contributed to
the farm uprising. An expanding E.U. introduced greater internal competition.
Cheap chickens bred with much lower labor costs in Poland have flooded the
French market. Such problems abound in a bloc that now has 27 members.
Tariff-free
imports from Ukraine — where labor is even cheaper — have given a sobering
sense of what eventual Ukrainian membership in the E.U. would mean. (This
month, the E.U. imposed restrictions on some imports from Ukraine, including
chicken and sugar.)
The C.A.P.
has created an “unhealthy dependency,” Mr. Chatellier said. Farmers rely on
politicians and officials, not consumers, for a substantial part of their
revenue, and they feel vulnerable. Mr. Monnery said he received about $38,000
last year in E.U. aid, a sum that has declined steadily in recent years.
Increasingly,
the money is tied to a raft of rules to benefit the environment. A new E.U.
requirement that farmers leave 4 percent of land uncultivated to help
“re-green” the continent provoked special fury — and has been put on hold for a
year.
Governments
are scrambling to contain the damage. Besides deferring some environmental
rules, France has canceled a tax increase on diesel fuel for farm vehicles. It
has turned against free trade, moving to block an agreement with Mercosur, a
South American bloc accused by farmers of unfair competition.
The
question is how much of a toll such concessions will take on the environment
and whether these are cosmetic changes to what is widely seen as a
dysfunctional, outdated European agricultural system.
Tough Road Ahead
Méryl Cruz
Mermy and her husband, Benoît Merlo, who graduated in agricultural engineering
from a prestigious Lyon school, have moved in the opposite direction from most
young people.
Over the
past five years, they built a 700-acre organic farm in eastern France where
they grow wheat, rye, lentils, flax, sunflowers and other crops, as well as
raising cattle. They went into debt as they bought and rented land.
If their
path is to lead to the future of farming, it must be made easier, they said.
Mr. Merlo,
35, sees a “crisis of civilization” in the countryside, where automation means
fewer workers, the work is too arduous to attract most young people, and credit
for investment is hard to obtain. He joined one protest out of extreme
frustration. “We don’t count the hours we work, and that work is not respected
at its just value,” he said.
They are
committed environmentalists, but a crisis in the organic food sector, known as
“bio” in France, has added to their difficulties. Bio boomed for some years,
but hard-pressed consumers now balk at the higher prices. Several big
supermarkets have dropped organic food.
“New norms
for a greener planet are necessary,” Ms. Cruz Mermy, 36, said, “but so are fair
prices and competition.”
I asked if
they might give up the farm life. “We have two children aged 3 and 7, so we
have to be optimistic,” she said. “We want this farm to be an anchor for them.
You look at the future — climate change, war, limited energy — and it feels
ominous, but we go step by step.”
Over a
century, that is what the family of Jean-Michel and Maria Sibelle did, breeding
legendary poultry. Now, with a sense of resignation, they have come to the end
of that road.
“I don’t
have the physical force I once had,” Mr. Sibelle said. “That, too, is nature.”
“You know,
I always wanted to be a farmer and had the good fortune to do that,” he added.
“I would not have gone to a factory to work a 35-hour week even if I worked
double that with my chicken and capons.”
He took me
into his “prize room,” a shed filled with silver cups and trophies, Sèvres
porcelain sent by presidents, framed accolades and other tributes to the
greatness of his blue-white-and-red Bresse chickens, symbols of a certain
France that endures, but only just.
Roger Cohen
is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has
reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza,
in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a
correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about Roger Cohen
Ivor
Prickett is a photographer based in Istanbul. He covered the rise and fall of
ISIS in Iraq and Syria while on assignment for The Times. More recently he has
been working on stories related to the war in Ukraine. More
about Ivor Prickett
Ex-Trump adviser says former president ‘hasn’t got the brains’ for dictatorship
Ex-Trump adviser says former president ‘hasn’t
got the brains’ for dictatorship
Despite disparagement from John Bolton, critics
maintain Trump is clear threat to democracy, given admiration for dictators
Edward
Helmore
Sat 30 Mar
2024 17.42 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/30/john-bolton-donald-trump-dictatorship
A former
national security adviser in the Donald Trump White House has said that the
ex-president “hasn’t got the brains” to helm a dictatorship, despite his
admiration for such rulers.
In an
interview with the conservative French outlet Le Figaro, John Bolton, 75, was
asked whether Trump had tendencies that mirror dictators like the ones he has
previously praised. Bolton not only disparaged Trump’s intellectual capacity,
he also disparaged the former president’s professional background, exclaiming:
“He’s a property developer, for God’s sake!”
Now a vocal
critic of Trump, Bolton served as the former president’s national security
adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton had previously served as US
ambassador to the UN during George W Bush’s presidency, developing a reputation
as a foreign policy hawk.
Bolton’s
remarks to Le Figaro suggesting Trump is not smart enough to be a dictator will
almost certainly do little to allay fears on the political left at home or
abroad about a second Trump presidency.
After all,
Trump has suggested he plans to be a dictator, if only for the first day of his
presidency if he were re-elected.
Meanwhile,
as seeks a second term in the White House, the incumbent Joe Biden has warned
that Trump – the lone remaining contender for the Republican nomination – and
his allies are “determined to destroy American democracy”. Trump recently
provided fuel for that argument by hosting Hungary’s autocratic prime minister
Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump,
furthermore, is known to have lavished praise on leaders considered opposed to
US democratic ideals and foreign policy interests, including North Korea’s Kim
Jong-un and China’s Xi Jinping.
Bolton
nonetheless claimed Trump – who is grappling with more than 80 pending criminal
charges as well as multimillion-dollar civil penalties – lacks the kind of
coherent political philosophy effective dictators require. He also said Trump
does not like to “get involved in policy analysis or decision-making in the way
we normally use those terms”.
For Trump,
Bolton added: “Everything is episodic, anecdotal, transactional. And everything
is contingent on the question of how this will benefit Donald Trump.”
Such
disparagements from Bolton – who advocated for the Trump White House to
withdraw from a deal with Iran aimed at dissuading it from developing nuclear
weapons – are not new. In a new foreword to his account of his work for Trump’s
presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton warns that Trump was limited to
worrying about punishing his personal enemies and appeasing US adversaries
Russia and China.
“Trump is
unfit to be president,” Bolton writes. And though he may not think Trump can
foster a dictatorship, Bolton has warned: “If his first four years were bad, a
second four will be worse.”
Trump has
seemingly leaned into such predictions. He stoked alarm at a campaign rally
earlier in March when – while musing about how foreign car production affects
the US auto industry – he said: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a
bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be
a bloodbath for the country.”
His use of
the word “bloodbath” recalled provocative language Trump has used previously,
including describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country”.
He told a
rally in New Hampshire last year that he wanted to “root out the communists,
Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the
confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.
After that
remark, Biden attacked Trump for his use of the world “vermin”, saying Trump’s
language “echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany” as Adolf Hitler rose to
power and orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
In his
interview with Le Figaro, Bolton said it was “very likely” that Trump would act
on his threat to pull the US out of the Nato military alliance if he were
re-elected. In recent months, Trump has repeated his threat not to protect
countries whom he believes do not pay enough to maintain the security alliance,
and he claimed that European members of the alliance “laugh at the stupidity”
of the US.
“Trump,
when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted,
forgets, but eventually comes back to it and acts on it,” Bolton warned.
“That’s why leaving Nato is a real possibility. A lot of people think it’s just
a negotiating tool, but I don’t think so.”
Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct – and legality – of war in Gaza
Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct –
and legality – of war in Gaza
When the US allowed a ceasefire resolution to pass at
the UN, the warning was clear – and concern is rising elsewhere
Julian
Borger in Washington, Toby Helm, Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum in
Jerusalem
Sun 31 Mar
2024 06.00 BST
When Gilad
Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the security council to rail
against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure
than ever in the cavernous chamber. The US, Israel’s constant shield at the UN
until this point, had declined to use its veto, allowing the council’s demand
for an immediate truce – even though it contained, as Erdan furiously pointed
out, no condemnation of the Hamas massacre of Israelis that had begun the war.
That had
been a red line for the US until Monday, as had making a ceasefire conditional
on a release of hostages. But after nearly six months of constant bombing, with
more than 32,000 dead in Gaza and a famine imminent, those red lines were
allowed to fade, and the American ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, kept her
hand still when the chair called for votes against the resolution.
The message
was clear: time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration
was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed
away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its
appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial
food deliveries.
“This must
be a turning point,” the Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, told the security
council, mourning those who had died in the time it had taken its members to
overcome their differences.
For the
next few days, there were other signs that the west was changing its position,
at least in terms of its rhetoric. On Tuesday, Germany’s foreign minister,
Annalena Baerbock, announced that Berlin would be dispatching a delegation to
remind Israel pointedly of its obligations under Geneva conventions, and warned
the country not to proceed with a planned offensive on the city of Rafah, in
the very south of Gaza. It was a notable change in tone from a country that has
been Israel’s second biggest supporter and arms supplier.
Meanwhile,
in the UK, foreign secretary David Cameron has been ratcheting up his criticism
of Israel – particularly over its blocking of aid into Gaza – while at the same
time being ultra-careful to deflect questions as to whether the Foreign Office
now believes Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been breaching international
humanitarian law. Trying to strike that balance has created real and
increasingly obvious strains within the British government, and the Tory party.
This
definite shifting of international positions has, however, changed nothing as
yet for the 2.3 million people trapped in Gaza. The bombing and sniping have
not stopped. The politicians may be recalibrating, but not fast enough for
those in the line of fire.
In the 48
hours after the security council applauded itself for passing the ceasefire
resolution, 157 people in Gaza were killed. Eighteen of them, including at
least nine children and five women, died when a house full of displaced people
was bombed in northern Rafah. Twelve people drowned trying to reach airdropped
food parcels that had fallen into the sea.
The number
of trucks crossing into Gaza rose slightly to about 190 a day – less than half
the peacetime daily total. Israeli inspectors were still turning back 20 to 25
each day, NBC News reported, on grounds as arbitrary as the wooden pallets
bearing the food not being exactly the right dimensions. Israel has banned
Unrwa, the main UN relief agency in the region, from using the crossing. A US
state department official told Reuters on Friday that famine had already taken
hold in some parts of Gaza, echoing a similar finding last week by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Four days
on from the passing of the security council resolution, more US arms deliveries
were being reported by the Washington Post, including 1,800 MK84 2,000lb bombs
– massive munitions that are implicated in numerous mass casualty events over
the course of the Gaza war.
Furthermore,
despite the UN vote just days before, the Biden administration has made it
clear to its allies that threatening to stop weapons supplies to Israel as
leverage is off the table, at least for now. The president told a fundraising
event on Thursday: “You can’t forget that Israel is in a position where its
very existence is at stake.”
In the UK,
however, there is a growing sense that the legal issues, and related questions
about arms sales, cannot be avoided, or fudged, for much longer.
As the
Observer reports this weekend, the Tory chair of the foreign affairs select
committee, Alicia Kearns – a former employee of the Foreign Office and Ministry
of Defence – told a Tory fundraising event in north London on 13 March that
Cameron’s department has been given legal advice that Israel has broken
international humanitarian law, but has chosen not to make it public.
That claim
will send shudders through London and Washington, as it strikes at the heart of
one of the most sensitive issues in international diplomacy.
In January,
appearing before Kearns’s committee, Cameron dodged questions on the issue of
whether he had seen such legal advice, saying “I cannot recall every single
piece of paper that has been put in front of me … I don’t want to answer that
question.”
Even then,
in that same hearing – and before he became as vocal as he is now – he did
concede that he was “worried” that Israel might have been in breach.
It is not
difficult to understand why the Foreign Office and Cameron may be being opaque.
The existence of such advice, and any open acknowledgment of it, would trigger
a series of requirements on ministers, not the least of which would be the duty
to halt all British arms sales to Israel.
Indeed,
even if the legal advice suggested there was a “risk” of Israel having been in
breach, it would have to stop exports. Some say the UK would even have to cease
sharing intelligence with the US because the US might hand it on to Israel.
In a recent
letter to Cameron, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, homed in on this
same point about arms exports, referring to criterion 2c of the UK’s Strategic
Export Licensing Criteria, which requires the government to “not grant a
licence if it determines there is a clear risk that the items might be used to
commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
Criterion
2c adds that “the government will also take account of the risk that the items
might be used to commit or facilitate gender-based violence or serious acts of
violence against women or children”. Lammy said that this was “particularly
relevant, given that women and children constitute a majority of the victims of
the war in Gaza”.
Many Tory
MPs are worried that Cameron might be about to announce an embargo on the sale
of arms to Israel. At a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Conservative
backbenchers on Monday, the foreign secretary denied he was thinking anything
of the sort, although Foreign Office officials say it cannot be out of the
question if Israel carries out its threat to attack Rafah.
Just as in
the US, the UK’s tone may be shifting to one that is more critical of Israel.
But creating the political space to match this with openness about the legal
advice being given, and then taking consequent action, will prove far more
difficult.
For its
part, Israel has been roundly criticised, but it is still far from a pariah.
Netanyahu and his war cabinet continue to insist that Israel will press ahead
with an offensive on Rafah, where more than a million displaced civilians have
taken shelter, shrugging off US warnings that it would be a “mistake” which
would backfire on Israeli security.
Many young Americans have jettisoned the pro-Israel
reflexes of their parents, and have made Gaza an issue with protest votes in
the Democratic presidential primary
Two Israeli
ministers are due in Washington to discuss the planned offensive in the coming
week, on a visit which Netanyahu had initially cancelled in protest at the
Biden administration’s abstention at the security council.
American
officials say they will use the meetings to present an alternative blueprint
for counter-insurgency against Hamas in Rafah, focusing on precision raids on
senior Hamas figures, but they admit they have no way to oblige their visitors
to take the suggestions seriously.
“They are a
sovereign state. We will not interfere with their military planning, but we
will outline in general terms what we think is another way to go to better
achieve the same aims,” a US official said.
In further
apparent defiance of Washington’s views, the Israeli military are carving out a
buffer zone around Gaza’s borders which would take up 16% of the whole coastal
strip, according to Haaretz.
Israeli
public opinion has to date shown itself largely impervious to US and other
international pressure, and support for the Gaza war currently hovers at around
80%. Even more concerning for Washington’s hopes of containing the conflict,
there is also more than 70% Israeli public support for a large-scale military
operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon – something Washington has so far
managed to forestall.
In Israel
itself, pro-war demonstrators are far more in evidence than anti-war ones.
Israeli settlers and rightwing activists have focused their protests on Unrwa
over the past week, blocking the entrances to its Jerusalem office. The
protesters portrayed the UN ceasefire resolution as an attack against Israel.
“If you
look at the number of UN condemnations against Israel versus the number of
condemnations against North Korea or Syria, you can see how they are obsessed
with us, and this is another proof of their obsession,” said Roei Ben Dor, a
21-year-old from the central Israeli town of Gedera. “We should be in Gaza, not
just because of Hamas but because Gaza is ours. We have every right to take
Gaza, to take Rafah. This is our land.”
Aynat
Libman, a 52-year-old Israeli settler from Efrat, argued the resolution simply
proved the UN’s inherent antisemitism.
“How could
the UN possibly say we should stop the war before we are done protecting
ourselves?” Libman said. “We can do this on our own. But, of course, it would
be nice if we had the support.’’
The absence
of bite in the international community’s reprimands has emboldened the current
Israeli coalition’s sense of immunity from global public opinion, but the onset
of full-scale famine, or an offensive on Rafah, could bring a much sharper
response from Israel’s friends and adversaries. And there are signs that the
real damage done to Israel’s global standing could worsen over time, with
possibly far-reaching consequences.
Israeli
families call for the immediate return of hostages taken by Hamas. Photograph:
Hannah McKay/Reuters
As in the
UK, tension in the US is building around the question of international law.
Last week, a state department human rights official resigned, saying that the
government was flouting domestic legislation prohibiting military assistance to
any foreign army units implicated in atrocities, or to any country which
impedes “the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.
The
official, Annelle Sheline, said the state department had evidence of
violations, but it was being suppressed. “I think some of these internal
processes are not going to become public until the White House is willing for
them to come out,” Sheline said.
The state
department has said in the past week that its review process had so far
provided no reason to doubt that formal Israeli assurances that it is complying
with international humanitarian law, as required under US statute, are
“credible and reliable”. But a full report on those assurances is not due until
8 May, which could become a point of leverage on Israel if there is no
breakthrough in the provision of food relief to Gaza.
“That is
what you have to look for,” said Aaron David Miller, a former state department
negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But Miller
added: “I would be stunned if the administration made a judgment that the
Israelis are out of compliance.”
But the
other potential shift with long-term ramifications for Israel’s future is the
changing attitudes of young Americans, many of whom have jettisoned the
pro-Israel reflexes of their parents, and have made Gaza an issue with protest
votes in the Democratic presidential primary. A recent Gallup poll found 63% of
Americans aged 18-34 disapproved of Israeli military action, as did 55% overall
of those questioned.
“We are
witnessing an unprecedented moment of collective awareness about the ongoing
occupation and apartheid conditions in Israel-Palestine,” said Rae Abileah, a
progressive US Jewish activist. “I have never seen this level of people
consistently taking to the streets. For years, you could say: ‘You can be
progressive except on Palestine.’ We can’t say that any more.”
She added:
“The writing is more on the wall than it’s ever been.”
sábado, 30 de março de 2024
Conservatives set for worst election result yet, research shows
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Conservatives set for worst election result yet,
research shows
Survey of 15,000 people suggests even party leader
Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire seat is at risk
Nadeem
Badshah
Sat 30 Mar
2024 21.19 GMT
The
Conservatives are on course for their worst election result, winning fewer than
100 seats, according to a new poll.
The
seat-by-seat analysis gives the Tories 98 constituencies compared with Labour’s
468, giving Sir Keir Starmer a 286-seat majority, the Sunday Times has
reported.
The
15,000-person poll, conducted by agency Survation on behalf of Best for
Britain, gives Labour a 45% vote share with a 19-point lead over the
Conservatives.
Rishi
Sunak’s party is on track to win 98 seats with none in Scotland or Wales,
according to the research. It also suggests the prime minister is at risk of
losing his own constituency, the new Richmond & Northallerton seat in North
Yorkshire, to Labour with his lead less than 2.5 percentage points.
The
analysis forecasts that Reform UK will come second in seven seats and achieve
an overall vote share of 8.5%, just behind the Liberal Democrats on 10.4%
The poll
also suggests the Scottish National Party would pick up 41 seats, the Liberal
Democrats 22 and Plaid Cymru two.
Naomi
Smith, Best for Britain’s chief executive, said: “With the polling showing
swathes of voters turning their backs on the Tories, it’s clear that this will
be a change election.”
In 2019 the
Conservatives had 365 seats, Labour 203, the SNP 48, the Lib Dems 11 and Plaid
four.
The
findings come after Labour sources said the party’s overall financial position
remained strong despite membership subscriptions falling off because donations
were healthy and unions were expected to give very substantial backing to the
election effort.
Labour has
suffered more than a 23,000 fall in membership over the past two months after
controversies over its policy on Gaza and its U-turn on green investment,
according to figures released to its National Executive Committee (NEC).
The party’s
general secretary, David Evans, revealed that membership, which had stood at
390,000 in January, had plummeted to 366,604 at the latest count, with more
than 11,700 of these being in arrears. Labour membership reached a peak at the
end of 2019 when it hit more than 532,000.
Luke
Akehurst, a member of the NEC, said: “Party membership is still at historically
high levels. Labour only had 150,000 members at the end of its last period in
office [in 2010],” he said.
“The state
of the opinion polls suggest there is no correlation between membership and
electoral popularity.”
Dispute Over Conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews Presents New Threat to Netanyahu
Dispute Over Conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Presents New Threat to Netanyahu
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is divided
about whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be required to join the Israeli army.
March 30,
2024, 12:01 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-haredi-military-conscription.html
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing his most challenging political threat
since the start of the Gaza war because of a disagreement among members of his
coalition about whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should retain their longstanding
exemption from military service.
An unwieldy
right-wing alliance of secular and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, the coalition’s
members are divided about whether the state should continue to allow young
ultra-Orthodox men to study at religious seminaries instead of serving in the
military, as most other Jewish Israelis do. If the government abolishes the
exemption, it risks a walkout from the ultra-Orthodox lawmakers; if it lets the
exemption stand, the secular members could withdraw. Either way, the coalition
could collapse.
The
situation poses the gravest challenge to Mr. Netanyahu’s grip on power since
Hamas raided Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to invade Hamas’s stronghold in
the Gaza Strip. Criticized by many Israelis for presiding over the October
disaster, Mr. Netanyahu is trailing in the polls and faces growing calls to
resign. But until now, there were few obvious ways in which his coalition might
collapse.
The end of
the coalition would most likely lead to new elections, and polling suggests
that Mr. Netanyahu would not win.
A new
Israeli government led by centrists is unlikely to take a markedly different
approach to the war in Gaza, but it may be more open to allowing the
Palestinian leadership in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to play a bigger role
in Gaza after the war. That arrangement could create a more conducive
environment for Israel to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, which had
edged closer to sealing diplomatic ties with Israel before the war broke out.
The
ultra-Orthodox have been exempt from military service since the founding of
Israel in 1948, but as the numbers of the ultra-Orthodox have grown — and
especially in the months since the war began — so have resentment and anger
over these privileges.
The issue
came to the fore on Thursday evening when the government announced that the
coalition had not agreed on an extension to the exemption by April 1, when the
current exemption elapses. That news prompted the Supreme Court to instruct the
government, as soon as the deadline passes, to suspend special educational
subsidies that support seminary students if those students have failed to
answer their military call-ups.
The court’s
decision spurred outrage among ultra-Orthodox leaders who fear for the
financial future of their education system, which depends largely on state
subsidies, and are concerned that the funding freeze is the first step toward
mandatory military service for their community.
For now,
some ultra-Orthodox leaders have said that their parties will remain in the
coalition while they wait to see what happens.
The
standoff reflects how a decades-long battle over the character and future of
the Jewish state has become graver since Oct. 7. Secular Israelis have long
clashed with the ultra-Orthodox minority, known in Hebrew as Haredim, about how
religious the state should be and how much autonomy the Haredim should have.
Now, a
growing number of soldiers, including those from religious backgrounds, are
returning from the front lines in Gaza and questioning why they should be
risking their lives for a minority that receives vast educational subsidies,
contributes less to the economy than other parts of society and mostly does not
serve in the military.
Significant
sections of the Haredi public have displayed a greater sense of shared destiny
with mainstream Israelis since the attack, with some expressing greater support
for the army and a small minority showing more interest in joining it. Roughly
1,000 Haredi men currently serve voluntarily in the military — less than 1
percent of all soldiers — but more than 2,000 Haredim sought to join the
military in the first 10 weeks of the war, according to military statistics.
But the
Haredi leadership remains deeply opposed to mandatory military service, fearing
that it might disrupt their conservative way of life, which is centered around
intensive Torah study in seminaries, or yeshivas.
“If a
yeshiva student has to leave the yeshiva to be drafted, for whatever the
reason, then we will not stay in the government,” said Moshe Roth, a Haredi
lawmaker.
“This is a
make it or break it,” he said.
“The only
way to protect the Torah and to keep it alive, as it has been for the last
3,500 years, is by having yeshivas,” Mr. Roth added.
.
The dispute
is rooted in decisions made in the years surrounding Israel’s founding, when
the country’s secular leadership promised autonomy and privileges to the
ultra-Orthodox minority in exchange for their support for a largely secular
national project. As well as exemption from the draft, the Haredim are allowed
to run their own autonomous education system.
When their
numbers of the Haredim were relatively small, their privileges mattered less to
the Israeli mainstream. But as their population has swelled to more than one
million people, roughly 13 percent of Israel’s population — up from 40,000, or
5 percent, in 1948 — even many observant Jews who serve in the military have
expressed resentment.
The
exemption has prompted numerous legal challenges, the most significant of which
was upheld by a Supreme Court decision in 2017. Its implementation has been
postponed repeatedly to allow successive governments to find a compromise, and
the latest deferment will elapse on Monday.
In
practice, few expect military police officers to start searching Haredi
neighborhoods to arrest seminary students who should be serving in the army.
The army is not logistically prepared to absorb large numbers of highly
conservative men who, for religious reasons, will refuse to serve in units
alongside women.
The Supreme
Court has also given the government another month to reach a middle ground
acceptable to both its religious and secular members. Officials and lawmakers
say a compromise is under discussion in which a few thousand seminary dropouts
would be required to serve, but not those still studying.
“There is
an understanding that something should be done, especially after Oct. 7,” said
Danny Danon, a secular lawmaker in the governing coalition who supports ending
the exemption. “We respect religion, and tradition, but at the same time, we
realize that we have to change the current situation,” he added.
The threat
of a financial shortfall for Haredi schools has injected a greater sense of
urgency into the negotiations.
The court
order did not say how many students would be affected by the freeze, and Mr.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on whether the government would enforce
the order.
But court
documents suggested that up to roughly 60,000 student subsidies could be at
risk — a sizable part of the seminary system’s budget.
Dozens of
yeshivas “won’t last if they don’t have money from the government,” said Yanki
Farber, a prominent Haredi commentator.
Still, the
Haredi leadership could yet decide to stay in the coalition: It can wield more
influence inside a right-wing coalition than by triggering elections that could
be won by a more centrist and secular alliance in which it might play no part.
While still
in government, Haredi leaders could press their cabinet colleagues to find
workarounds to their funding shortfall, Mr. Farber said.
“It’s a
very big disaster for the Haredim,” Mr. Farber said. But, he added, “at the
moment they have much more to lose by leaving than staying.”
Patrick
Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied
territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and
previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley
Gazans watch the skies to spot planes dropping US aid | BBC News / ‘Death at any moment’: fights break out as Gazans compete over airdropped aid/GUARDIAN
‘Death at any moment’: fights break out as Gazans
compete over airdropped aid
Armed gangs take food and water from desperate locals,
as critics say airdrops are dangerous and merely designed to divert public
anger
Jason Burke
in Jerusalem and Malek A Tantesh in Gaza
Sat 30 Mar
2024 12.00 GMT
Airdrops of
humanitarian aid are leading to fatal fights in Gaza as the desperate and
hungry battle to reach parachuted food and essentials, amid fears that little
of the much-needed assistance is reaching those most threatened by a looming
famine.
Eyewitness
accounts, images and interviews with aid workers in Gaza suggest the
high-profile airdrop operations are of limited help, and have contributed to
growing anarchy there.
Yousef Abu
Rabee, a strawberry farmer in northern Gaza before the conflict, said he had
given up trying to reach aid drops to provide for his family after being shot
at by unidentified armed men during a recent chaotic struggle around one
parachuted pallet of assistance.
“Since
then, I have stopped going as it is not worth all this risk, as a person is
vulnerable to injury and death at any moment,” Rabee, 25, said.
Others have
reported deaths by stabbing, as well as in stampedes. Twelve people drowned
trying to get to aid dropped by plane off a Gaza beach last week, Palestinian
health authorities have said. Earlier last month, five were killed near the
coastal refugee camp known as al-Shati, one of the most devastated parts of
Gaza, after a parachute failed to deploy properly and aid fell on a group of
waiting men, teenagers and younger children.
On 25
March, the UK parachuted more than 10 tonnes of aid, including water, rice,
cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula, to civilians along Gaza’s
northern coastline, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
Critics say
the airdrops by the UK, US, France, Spain, Jordan and other countries are
“inefficient, dangerous and expensive” and primarily aimed at diverting public
anger as international powers fail to convince Israel to allow more aid to
reach Gaza.
Aid
agencies said only about a fifth of required supplies are entering Gaza as
Israel persists with an air and ground offensive, triggered by Hamas’s 7
October attack which killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and that deliveries by air
or sea directly on to beaches are no substitute for increased supplies coming
in by land via Israel or Egypt.
Last week
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel must act immediately “to
allow … urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.
Israel
initially imposed a total blockade on Gaza after the Hamas attacks but then
allowed a small amount of strictly controlled aid into the territory.
Aid convoys
have to traverse up to 25 miles(40km) of smashed roads strewn with rubble to
reach the north, where the threat of famine is greatest. Many convoys have been
blocked or delayed by Israeli forces. Some have been looted by organised gangs
or desperate individuals.
Israel said
it puts no limit on the amount of aid entering Gaza and blames problems on UN
agencies, which it said are inefficient.
Rabee said
he had fled his home in the town of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, in the first
days of Israel’s offensive, which has so far killed 33,000, mostly women and
children, according to officials from the Hamas-run health ministry. Earlier
this month, he returned to Beit Lahia, which is now reduced to rubble.
“At one
stage, aid began to arrive by airdrop, and people began to track and watch for
this aid where it was landing near the beach. People were gathering in large
numbers in unimaginable scenes … fighting to get a single item any way they
could,” Rabee said.
When he
managed to reach an aid parcel, he was surrounded by men with guns. “Many armed
men gathered around me and started shooting to keep me and the others away from
the aid, which forced me to leave it in the end and go away without getting
anything,” Rabee told the Observer.
Jalal
Muhammad Harb Warsh Agha, a 51-year-old livestock trader, now in Rafah, said
the airdrops had “led to the outbreak of many troubles with fighting and crimes
among the citizens there, through which I lost one of my relatives”.
Nariman
Salman, 42, said that her eldest son had been stabbed to death in a fight over
assistance airdropped to northern Gaza.
“We fled to
Rafah but left my son in our home in the north. This was a terrible mistake.
When he went with his cousin to find the airdropped assistance, there was a big
fight and the two of them were attacked and someone stabbed him straight in the
heart,” Salman said.
“These
airdrops not only caused the death of my son, they also caused lot of trouble
and fighting amongst people as there isn’t enough and everyone wants to take
what they need. So someone with a gun or a knife will get the aid for himself
and leave most people helpless.”
Aid
officials in Gaza are already seeing deaths caused by acute malnutrition among
the most vulnerable – young children, the sick and the elderly. There are acute
concerns for those left without protection, such as widows or orphans.
David
Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary and chief executive of the
International Rescue Committee, said at the start of March that airdrops were a
measure of desperation.
“The simple
truth is that we wouldn’t need airdrops if the crossings were properly open,
there were more crossing points, the bureaucracy was reduced and above all that
the humanitarian case for a ceasefire was recognised. This is where all
diplomacy must be urgently focused”.
Juliette
Touma, the communications director at the UN Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said reports of fatalities underlined that the best
way to deliver aid to people in Gaza is by road and with the United Nations,
including UNRWA, which Israel recently banned from travel to northern Gaza.
“This is
the most efficient, fastest, cheapest and, most importantly, safest way to
reach people with much-needed humanitarian assistance,” Touma said.
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