Israel’s Prison Scandal Hits New York; Ben-Gvir Disappears!

Ground Blows Up Under Netanyahu’s Withdrawal Deal; IDF Pour More Fuel On The Failure

Right, so this is what a “withdrawal framework” looks like now, apparently. Not a convoy leaving. Not a border post being handed back. Smoke. Lebanon gets told there is a deal. A framework. A peace step. A route back to sovereignty. You can almost smell the conference-room coffee. And then the ground blows up, because Israel’s idea of withdrawal, by the look of it, comes with a detonator in the welcome pack. Yet that’s a problem for Netanyahu here. He needed this to look like withdrawal with a tie on. Careful language, official backdrops, everyone lined up for the cameras. Then the smoke rolls in from southern Lebanon again, and the whole thing starts looking less like diplomacy and more like a demolition job with a press pass. But then there’s this footage. And once you’ve seen the smoke, the sales pitch starts looking a bit less like diplomacy and a bit more like somebody missed - well, something rather important out of it and it stems from this recent event, which you might recall. That was of course in the aftermath of Lebanon’s sell out of a deal to Israel Lovely room. Lots of flags. Important people looking very official, though you can’t escape the feeling somebody’s back might have a knife pressed to it can you? The violence is going on elsewhere. All the death a destruction goes on somewhere else. You put all the conditions you feel like you can get away with imposing here into the appendices at the back. Then you stand back and admire your machinations. A framework. A step forward. A path to peace. Wonderful. And then, once the cameras move from the podium back to southern Lebanon, the whole thing starts coughing up smoke like a clapped-out old van trying to pass its MOT.

Israel’s Prison Scandal Hits New York; Ben-Gvir Disappears!

Right, so Ben-Gvir was apparently meant to be heading to New York. For of all things, a police summit. Yes, Ben-Gvir at a police summit, because apparently irony died and was buried, complete with a judicial badge pinned to the coffin. But then something funny happened. Not so much funny ha-ha, more funny “oh look, there’s lawyers at the airport.” The Hind Rajab Foundation and the Center for Constitutional Rights were ready for him. New York authorities were being asked to look at who was preparing to touchdown on their soil. The prison scandal very much attached to his ministry that he cannot shake off, because the rest of the world isn’t as gone in the head as he is was very much going to be travelling with him.. And suddenly the trip is now reportedly not happening. Bottled it again by any chance Itamar? Well, his office hasn’t confirmed the reason. We can enjoy a mental image of him quivering under his desk clutching a picture of Zohran Mamdani and cursing in his throatiest Hebrew, but we don’t actually know for certain. So no, as much fun as it would be to write a piece where we imagine him sprinting through Ben Gurion Airport with a suitcase full of panic and his tiny hat on sideways. We can’t. However, the sequence is enough. A Police summit. Legal pressure. A prison scandal on the minister for prisons in Israel. And then cancellation. Ben-Gvir is horrible, that’s stating the obvious. The fact that this story is now becoming more and more awkward outside Israel though appears to making the world a much smaller place for him and not without good reason.

Starmer’s YouTube Demands Hit A BBC-Shaped Wall; The Proof Is Brutal

Right, so Keir Starmer’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, a woman who has just now decided to take herself and her department off of Twitter due because despite it being her brief, legislating its behaviour appears to be beyond her has gone to Parliament with a plan for “trusted news” online, because apparently Independent media outlets are a much safer target. What counts as trusted news though? Public service media. The mainstream outlets, legacy news. It must be highly visible. Easy to discover. The sort of news the government likes given a boost over those that actually hold them to account. But the moment a government starts saying certain news outlets should be made more visible on YouTube amongst other platforms, you have to ask who gets picked. You have to ask who gets pushed aside. You have to ask who decides which outlets count as trusted and which ones are apparently just grubby little peasants shouting into the digital ether. People did not wander away from mainstream outlets like the BBC because they couldn’t find it. The BBC is hardly hidden. ITV is not buried in a cave. Sky News has not been living under a tarp behind the bins. People went elsewhere because, on issue after issue, legacy media gave them reasons to go elsewhere. And now the government’s answer appears to be: well, perhaps the old outlets need better placement. Not better trust. Not better accountability. Better placement.

Lebanon Drone Attacks Turn Israel Inside Out; IDF Get Desperate

Right, so Israel’s grand security zone in southern Lebanon has apparently reached the “put a shop-window soldier in the firing line and hope for the best” phase. Despite talks of some miracle new defence system in the offing, this is not a fancy laser, it is not a brand new air defence system to be deployed in Lebanon called the iron scrotum or some such other daft name, not one of those glossy start-up gadgets being presented by a salesman with a glossy pamphlet who says “battlefield ecosystem” far too much. It’s dummies. Fake soldiers. I suppose it goes well with all the fake news that comes out of Israel. Shop mannequins dressed up in military gear, reportedly placed in Lebanon as decoys against drones. And yes, obviously, it’s funny. Look at it. It’s ridiculous. But don’t let the joke distract from the bit underneath it, because the dummy is not just a gag. It’s what happens when the Hezbollah drone problem quite obviously still hasn’t gone away, and the attempts at answering them, from fishing nets as have been used in recent weeks to this now, clearly haven’t been enough, and seemingly such is the desperation now in trying to find a solution to this, that the next line of defence is now apparently Action Man with a death wish. So when Israel’s leaders talk about control, and security zones, and staying until the threat is gone, keep that image in your head, because the answer now is apparently a helmet, a vest, but no pulse.

Leaked Iran Damage Report Shows Israel IN RUINS; Netanyahu’s War Claims Collapse

Right, so this is the bit of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran War victory lap that he’s been running for months now, no it wasn’t all about running away from his corruption trial apparently, that he doesn’t want anywhere near, because you can say “contained” as many times as you like. You can say “localised”, “manageable”, “operational”, all those lovely little words officials use when something is on fire but they don’t want anyone making a fuss. But then there’s the footage. There’s the fire. There’s the smoke. There’s the great big orange clue in the sky – flames and heat haze for those of you thinking Donald Trump’s raided the Red Bull and its given him wings. But now there’s been a leak consisting of a damage report and a repair schedule and it very much doesn’t care about the speech, doesn’t care about Netanyahu’s claims, the boasting of total victory, doesn’t care how heroic the evening news package on Channel 14 was supposed to sound. So what we need to look at here, the question that needs asking is not just what Iran hit. The question is what Israel has also tried to minimise, and why Netanyahu is still selling more war while the last one is apparently still sending him invoices and apparently will be for a very long time yet.