Month: November 2023

Threats to Israel’s Existence

/ ontheoutside / 2 Comments

There is one aspect of the Gaza mess that hasn’t drawn enough attention:  that there was nothing inevitable about the success of the Hamas attack.  There was ample warning, but the defense was too complacent and the government was too preoccupied with its own priorities (the judicial takeover and the draconian measures on the West Bank) to pay attention to what mattered.

There’s nothing new about this statement, but the necssary conclusion doesn’t follow—that the Hamas attacks did NOT put Israel in a war for its existence.  The attack should have been a minor issue with far fewer consequences.  The reason it wasn’t was complacency and government corruption.  The attacks became the horrendous incident they were only because of the past and present failures of Netanyahu governments. The outcome of any subsequent such attack depends primarily on whether Israel addresses those failures—arguably more so than on Hamas. 

It was always strange that Israel would respond to the Hamas attack by doing exactly what Hamas clearly wanted them to do. I won’t say options were easy, but it didn’t have to be this. As we’ve noted before, the only way to understand it is to recognize that Netanyahu’s interests and Israel’s interests were not the same. As a distraction from his responsibility, Netanyahu had every incentive to turn the Hamas attacks into the biggest incident he could possibly create.

At this point it’s not even clear how much all the death and destruction has contributed to the “complete destruction” of Hamas. More generally it’s certainly hard to conclude Israel’s position has become more secure.

We all have to come to terms with that fact that the apparently self-evident statement that Israel was in a war for its existence was actually—primarily—Netanyahu’s self-serving lie. And what’s even worse is that for both Hamas and Netanyahu, the more people who die the better.

Hamas and Netanyahu are still playing each other’s game

/ ontheoutside / 3 Comments

One big revelation (at least to me) to come out of the Gaza war is that Netanyahu provided for major financial support to Hamas as a way of weakening the PLO.   The idea was that weakening the PLO would undermine any efforts for a two-state solution.    Netanyahu hates the two-state solution, because his stock-in-trade is as a strongman protecting Israelis from Palestinian evil.  Hamas hates the two-state solution, because (as they announced) they want all non-Muslims gone.

It’s worth emphasizing that these converging interests are still driving this war.  First of all, there is no question that Israel is playing Hamas’ game.  Hamas launched an infinitely repulsive attack in order to provoke a violent Israel response—one that would undermine efforts for peace between Israel and the Arab world.  That Hamas placed its tunnels and other military installations under civilian institutions (such as hospitals) was not just to provoke outrage in the world in general but most specifically to provoke outrage in the Arab world.  The inevitable horrors inflicted on the population would make any coexistence with Israel intolerable.

If anyone other than Netanyahu were running the Israel government, there would have been at least some consideration for the wisdom of giving Hamas exactly what they wanted.  However for Netanyahu there were no such qualms.  This was a marvelous opportunity for pumping up hatred of the Palestinians as well as an opportunity for redeeming himself politically. “Just imagine how much worse this all would have been if instead of from Gaza this was all coming from a Palestinian state right next door!”  What’s more he could put on a show of irreplaceable toughness.  Any issues with his criminal activities or his treasonous past relations with Hamas would be erased by crushing the Palestinians now.  (And think of the opportunities from a subsequent occupation of Gaza.)

Once Israel started with such a response, they were stuck in it–because they had to succeed no matter what.  And for now there is little incentive for either side to stop.  The well-being of the Palestinians, or even the Israelis for that matter, is simply not an issue.  Things are going just fine, and both sides are delivered from the one thing they hate most—which is a workable (two-state) peace.

Clarifying Some Issues for Climate Change

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

It bothers me how much confusion there still is about what it takes to fight climate change.  A recent article in Bloomberg was a case in point.  They rank new EV’s by “greenness”.  I’m not going to talk about the details of what they call green, but the problem is that the whole idea is wrong.  All EV’s are green in the only way that matters, and a ranking by “greenness” just confuses the issue.

I’ll try to be organized about this.  First of all, the primary change that has to take place is the replacement of fossil fuels by sustainable sources of power.  In practice that comes down to moving everything to the electric grid, with a beefing up of that grid to handle the greatly increased demand and with sustainable sources.

The timescale for this transformation is dictated by a carbon budget—there is only so much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before the consequences become catastrophic.  All that carbon dioxide just adds up, and the results continue to get (exponentially) worse. To succeed we have to stop burning fossil fuels before we hit the carbon budget limit.  That process has three parts:

  1. Make the electric grid what it has to be:  sustainably generated with much more capacity and much better connectivity.
  2. Move all applications to the electrical network. (Note that hydrogen apps fit here since most of the hydrogen will be electrically-generated.)
  3. Cut down on usage for all of the remaining fossil fuel applications.

The first thing to note is that most conservation efforts fit under item #3, so it’s worth stating unequivocally that conservation by itself is not the solution to climate change. It’s only a piece of what has to happen, and the rest is most of the problem.  And conservation for EV’s doesn’t fit here at all. Item #1 has to happen for all energy uses, so “greenness” of particular car models is an insignificant blip on a much bigger issue.  Finally, it should be obvious that despite what the oil companies tell you, climate change is not primarily a matter of everyone’s personal responsibility:  governments have to take large-scale action.

It’s worth saying a little more about items 1 and 2.  There is quite a lot of #1 that can start now:  improving and expanding the capabilities of the network as well as deployments of solar and wind power.  There are of course limitations to what we can currently get done.  The biggest current issue is in-network energy storage, to handle periods where there isn’t sun or wind.  However, this is an area of such active work that one can expect big improvements in the next few years.  For that reason it’s fair to regard item #1 as mostly a matter of money and commitment. (That’s not to say there can’t be big contributions from new technologies—such as fusion—as they become available.)

Item #2 is harder.  This involves not just familiar issues such as heat pumps but also industrial processes, such as for steel, cement, and plastics.  For these there is still research to be done before we can talk about worldwide deployments.  Overall this is an area with many different application-specific issues and deployment scenarios, so lots of work has to be organized and done in parallel.  Again this goes way beyond individual responsibilities. Note that EV’s fit under item #2—changing to an EV is a contribution regardless of whether your electric utility has done its work yet or not.

Finally there is the international aspect to the whole problem.  It’s amazing how much of the discussion of climate change is about us doing our part–as if our atmosphere were somehow detached from everyone else’s.  This really needs to sink in:  there is only one atmosphere, and we will only succeed if everyone else succeeds too.  Helping poorer countries to cope is not a matter of charity; it’s a matter of our own survival.  Obviously there are going to be negotiations over whose money gets spent on what, but rich countries are going to have to do what it takes for poor countries to redo their infrastructures.  Like it or not we are going to have to help with technology development and deployments worldwide.