Elections

Preliminary agreements between Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies have raised questions about political interference in the army’s chain of command.JERUSALEM — When a serving Israeli soldier expressed his approval last month of a far-right politician who is set to become a minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely new coalition government, it set off a national furor.The politician, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was deemed too extremist to serve in the army himself. Until 2020, he displayed in his home a portrait of a Jewish gunman who in 1994 shot dead 29 Palestinians inside a mosque.The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, quickly released a rare public letter warning soldiers against getting involved in politics, while the soldier was sent to military jail for several days.“Soldiers are prohibited from expressing political views,” General Kochavi wrote. “They are certainly prohibited from behaving and acting out of political inclination,” he added.The episode was just one of several recent incidents that have threatened the cohesion of an institution, the Israel Defense Forces, that has historically been viewed by Jewish Israelis as an emblem of stability and unity.To Palestinians, the military is the face of Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, raids on West Bank cities and two-tier legal system in the territory that some critics liken to a form of apartheid, a claim denied by Israel.But among Jewish Israelis, the military is among the country’s most trusted institutions, a melting pot in which most of them serve for three years of conscription, shoring up the country against an unusually high range of security threats from across the Middle East.Now, leading members of the Israeli security establishment fear that image and role is under threat. A significant proportion of rank-and-file soldiers voted for the far right in last month’s general election — mirroring a wider shift in the country at large, but increasing the likelihood of friction between low-ranking soldiers and their commanders.Israeli soldiers participating in a military exercise in the Golan Heights this month. Among Jewish Israelis, the military is among the country’s most trusted institutions.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOf voters who cast ballots away from home in a general election last month, most of whom were likely to be serving soldiers, more than 15 percent voted for the far right, according to an analysis by Ofer Kenig of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. That was about 50 percent higher than in the wider population.In a public letter to Mr. Netanyahu last week, a group of more than 400 former senior officers, Commanders for Israel’s Security, warned that recent events could “end in internal divisions and conflict between officers and troops, insubordination, anarchy and ultimately, the disintegration of the I.D.F. as an effective fighting force.”What to Know About Israel’s Latest ElectionThe country held its fifth election in less than four years on Nov. 1.Netanyahu’s Return: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s opposition leader, is set to return to power with a new, far-right coalition that will once again make him prime minister.  But several issues, including his cabinet choices, have complicated the forming of a government.The Far Right’s Rise: To win the election, Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right allies harnessed perceived threats to Israel’s Jewish identity.What’s Next for the Left?: After a near wipeout, the leaders of Israel’s left-leaning parties say they need to change — but disagree on how.Worries Among Palestinians: To some Palestinians, the rise of Israel’s far right can scarcely make things worse. But many fear a surge of violence.Mr. Netanyahu did not respond to the former generals’ letter directly and his spokesman declined to comment for this article. But he has said in other interviews that Israel will remain safe under his leadership.Military strategy is about “deciding on policies that could be quite inflammatory,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a podcast interview last month. “I’m trying to avoid that,” he added.Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc won an election on Nov. 1 but it has yet to enter office because of internal disagreements over policy and legal obstacles to the appointment of two men earmarked for ministerial positions. On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance voted in a new speaker of Parliament, a move that will allow the bloc to pass new legislation to enable those appointments.But while he is not yet back in power, Mr. Netanyahu’s preliminary coalition agreements, which risk diluting the military chain of command — and the fallout from the incident last month in the West Bank — have already drawn concerns about the military’s ability to rise above the political maelstrom.Disparaging comments by far-right politicians about army leadership, and displays of support for the far-right from low-ranking soldiers, have led to rare public comments from the military chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi.Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHistorically, Israel’s military leaders were sometimes portrayed as a moderating force, tempering the most dramatic ideas of civilian leaders — while also cultivating an image of remaining beyond the political fray.That projection of detachment has always been tested, particularly as generations of generals entered civilian politics soon after leaving military service. Staffed mostly by conscripts, the Israel Defense Forces is often described as a “people’s army,” and the social headwinds that buffet the armed forces have long been a microcosm of those that affect society at large.The fallout from the incident last month reflected a wider sociocultural schism between Israel’s centrist establishment, which broadly seeks to maintain the current status quo in Israel and the West Bank — and Mr. Netanyahu’s far right allies, who seek sweeping judicial reforms, an even harder stance against Palestinians in the West Bank, and an even stronger sense of Jewish identity within Israel.Policing a small protest in Hebron, a West Bank city where there is frequent violence between settlers and Palestinians, the soldier was filmed chastising anti-occupation activists, telling them, “Ben-Gvir will fix things here.”While centrist and left-leaning Israelis were alarmed, others on the right felt the soldier had done little wrong. To them, the soldier’s punishment also proved the salience of Mr. Ben-Gvir’s campaign rhetoric, which suggested that rank-and-file soldiers needed greater support, including legal immunity.Palestinians see the Israeli military as far too quick to shoot — Israeli raids in the West Bank have left more than 160 dead this year, according to records kept by The New York Times. But Mr. Ben-Gvir believes the army is too timid.“The time has come for a government that supports its soldiers and allows them to act,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said after the Hebron incident.A soldier voting in the Israeli general elections at a military base on Mount Hermon in October.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe standoff exemplified how Mr. Ben-Gvir and other far right leaders “see themselves as the tribunes of the front line soldiers being hung out to dry by an old-school, defeatist, globalist and ideologically untrustworthy military high command,” said Prof. Yehudah Mirsky, an expert on Israel at Brandeis University.Pushed to intervene, Mr. Netanyahu took a cautious tone. He avoided criticizing Mr. Ben-Gvir, and instead called on “everyone, right and left” to leave the military out of political debate.Such standoffs have precedent: In 2016, Gadi Eisenkot, then the chief of staff, was heavily criticized by the Israeli right after condemning a soldier who shot dead an incapacitated Palestinian assailant.But Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to restrain Mr. Ben-Gvir has left some in the security establishment fearful that soldiers may feel more empowered to take political positions in the future.“The fact that there are soldiers who do not behave according to the ethos of the I.D.F. and the military chain of command is not new,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of military intelligence. “The concern is whether the magnitude of the phenomenon will be higher,” he said.Such fears have been compounded by the agreements that Mr. Netanyahu has made with Mr. Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of another far-right group in the alliance.A member of Mr. Netanyahu’s party, likely to be Yoav Gallant, a former army general, will remain in overall charge of the defense ministry, scotching Mr. Smotrich’s early hope of taking that job.But Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition agreement with Mr. Smotrich gave the latter total control of a department within the defense ministry that is staffed by serving soldiers who oversee bureaucratic aspects of the occupation.Itamar Ben-Gvir, left, and Bezalel Smotrich, at a swearing-in ceremony for the new Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem last month.Pool photo by Abir SultanA separate agreement with Mr. Ben-Gvir would give him control over a special paramilitary police unit that, until now, has worked under the Israeli Army in the West Bank.Some former generals have downplayed the consequences of these decisions and a few have even argued that Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir could provide a welcome new approach to Israeli security strategy.“Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir can challenge existing thought patterns within the defense establishment and provoke fresh thinking, despite not having served in combat,” said Amir Avivi, a reserve brigadier general and the head of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of former officers.But many former generals strongly disagree. In interviews with The New York Times, several said that both moves could undermine the army’s chain of command in the West Bank, creating three separate sources of authority instead of only one.Some also said it could amount to a de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank.By giving civilians greater involvement in military activity in the territory, the new government might undermine Israel’s longstanding argument that its 55-year occupation is only a temporary military measure, in accordance with international law, instead of a permanent civilian annexation.“We’re losing our protection in the international courts,” said Ilan Paz, a former general who helped lead the West Bank occupation during the 2000s.“Israel won’t be able to continue closing her eyes, and the world’s eyes,” Mr. Paz added.Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting. More

Now under arrest, the fallen crypto mogul faces a barrage of charges, including defrauding investors out of billions.Sam Bankman-Fried faces multiple charges, including defrauding investors.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesS.B.F. in custody The spectacular rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, came full circle on Monday, with his arrest in the Bahamas at the request of U.S. authorities, followed by the S.E.C. filing its own charges on Tuesday.The Times reports that federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who are seeking his extradition, will charge Mr. Bankman-Fried with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. A trial could start late next year.“Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” Gary Gensler, the S.E.C.’s chair, said in a statement. His agency has charged S.B.F., as the entrepreneur is known, with defrauding investors in FTX out of $1.8 billion, including $1.1 billion from U.S. entities. A big part of the fraud, it alleges, was keeping backers in the dark about “the undisclosed diversion of FTX customers’ funds” to the exchange’s trading affiliate, Alameda Research.The S.E.C. now asserts that S.B.F. was more involved in Alameda’s operations than he let on. In a major revelation, the agency says he directed $8 billion worth of customer deposits from an Alameda-controlled bank into a separate account, labeled “fiat @ftx.com,” in part to avoid getting charged interest, a move that could suggest intent. From the complaint:“In 2022, FTX began trying to separate Alameda’s portion of the liability in the “fiat @ftx.com” account from the portion that was attributable to FTX (i.e., to separate out customer deposits sent to Alameda-controlled bank accounts from deposits sent to FTX-controlled bank accounts). Alameda’s portion — which amounted to more than $8 billion in FTX customer assets that had been deposited into Alameda-controlled bank accounts — was initially moved to a different account in the FTX database. However, because this change caused FTX’s internal systems to automatically charge Alameda interest on the more than $8 billion liability, Bankman-Fried directed that the Alameda liability be moved to an account that would not be charged interest.”The arrest took many by surprise. S.B.F. had been scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee. The committee’s Democratic chair, Representative Maxine Waters of California, didn’t see this coming: “The public has been waiting eagerly to get these answers under oath before Congress, and the timing of this arrest denies the public this opportunity,” she said. (S.B.F. himself also said he did not expect to be arrested.)“I have never seen a case approaching this scope proceed this quickly,” Renato Mariotti, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and a former federal prosecutor, told DealBook. Given FTX’s scale — with more than 100 companies based around the world — and the lengthy list of creditors, lawyers and extradition experts said the government had moved faster than expected.S.B.F.’s media tour may have played a role: While most executives under criminal investigation clam up, the crypto entrepreneur has spoken out over and over again. That may have pushed prosecutors to act fast, according to Mariotti, to avoid S.B.F. “muddying the waters” of a potential case through repeated assertions that he was misguided and had made mistakes.But has S.B.F. also admitted wrongdoing? On the Unusual Whales podcast on Monday, he initially denied knowing that customer funds had moved from FTX to Alameda without permission, but then professed less certainty: “Like I, like, kind of vaguely knew, kind of, sort of maybe, um, on a qualitative level what was going on.”What could have been: News outlets including Forbes have obtained S.B.F.’s written testimony for Tuesday. It sets the ground for his claim to have simply made mistakes by professing he messed up with a profanity — which he stresses he is using “formally, under oath” — in the first sentence.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The E.U. plans to tax imports based on carbon emissions. The bloc has reached an agreement meant both to protect European products made using fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and to effectively set an international price for carbon. It would also probably irritate trading partners.China begins a W.T.O. dispute over American chip export controls. Beijing accused the United States of trade protectionism by effectively blocking tech companies from selling advanced chips to China, hampering the Chinese tech industry. At the same time, Japan and the Netherlands are in talks to join the U.S. in tightening export controls on chipmaking machinery. More on Elon Musk’s Twitter TakeoverAn Established Pattern: Firing people. Talking of bankruptcy. Telling workers to be “hard core.” Twitter isn’t the first company that witnessed Elon Musk use those tactics.Rivals Emerge: Sensing an opportunity, new start-ups and other social platforms are racing to dethrone Twitter and capitalize on the chaos of its new ownership under Mr. Musk.The ‘Twitter Files’: Mr. Musk and Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist, set off an intense debate with a release of internal Twitter documents regarding a 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Hunter Biden.Hard Fork: The Times podcast looks at Mr. Musk’s two-day clash with Apple, which he had accused of trying to sabotage Twitter before saying the “misunderstanding” had been resolved.Congress scrambles to avert a government shutdown. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, proposed a one-week spending bill to give negotiators more time for a broader government spending deal. Without that, the federal government will begin partially shutting down this weekend.The former C.E.O. of Wirecard moves to suspend his criminal fraud trial. A lawyer for Markus Braun told a Munich court that prosecutors had ignored crucial evidence and relied on an untrustworthy witness. The move is aimed at forestalling one of Germany’s biggest-ever fraud trials; the court is expected to rule on the motion in the coming weeks.U.S. researchers are set to unveil a breakthrough in nuclear fusion. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California are expected to announce on Tuesday that they have successfully used lasers to achieve nuclear fusion whose output exceeded the input from the lasers. It’s a significant step toward making fusion a plausible energy source — someday.What FTX’s new C.E.O. will say about the exchange’s “utter failure” Even with Sam Bankman-Fried in custody, the House Financial Services Committee hearing into the collapse of FTX will go on as scheduled this morning, and its star witness will now be the exchange’s new C.E.O., John Ray III.Though Mr. Ray’s written testimony never calls FTX an outright fraud, the corporate restructuring expert will reiterate that he’s never seen “such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization.”Mr. Ray will detail eight “unacceptable management practices” that he believes led to the downfall of Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire. They include:Evidence that “customer assets from FTX.com were commingled with assets from the Alameda trading platform.”Alameda, FTX’s trading arm, being able to borrow funds held at the non-U.S. business unit, FTX.com, for its trading and investing “without any effective limits.”Shoddy recordkeeping and lax fiscal controls, including no audits and no documentation for “nearly 500 investments made with FTX Group funds and assets.”Evidence that loans and payments in excess of $1 billion were made to company insiders, and that the company went on a roughly $5 billion spending spree beginning in late 2021.Wall Street will be closely watching today’s inflation number U.S. futures have been edging higher on Tuesday and global stock markets are up ahead of a consequential Consumer Price Index report due out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.An elevated C.P.I. would probably put the chill back into stock markets. If the inflation measure shows an annual rise above economists’ consensus estimate of a 7.3 percent, that could signal that the Fed’s interest-rate rises aren’t doing enough to slow the pace of inflation — and that more jumbo increases are needed. (Reminder: The Fed’s rate-decision day comes tomorrow.)A tepid C.P.I. could do the opposite. JPMorgan Chase traders have gamed out a few scenarios. They believe a reading of 6.9 percent would lead to a healthy rally in the S&P 500, with the benchmark index jumping 8 to 10 percent. They put the odds of such a low number at about one in 20.Central bankers and Wall Street pros have consistently forecast inflation wrong over the past year. In late 2021, many thought high inflation was a temporary phenomenon. It persisted. But then last month’s reading, which showed prices moderating, surprised many and triggered a rally in risky assets. “The inflation report is arguably the most uncertain of this week’s big macro event risks,” Alvin Tan, a foreign-exchange strategist at Royal Bank of Canada, said in an investor note on Tuesday.“The bet was that free money would last indefinitely, and there doesn’t seem to have been a risk-management game plan.” — Jon Burckett-St. Laurent, a senior portfolio manager at Exencial Wealth Advisors, on the financier Cathie Wood, who shot to prominence by investing heavily in money-losing tech companies. Wood’s flagship fund is trading at a five-year low as investors appear to have lost faith in her strategy.Twitter dissolves its trust and safety council Elon Musk has said that maintaining safety on Twitter is one of his highest priorities, and yet the social network just made a puzzling decision toward that end: On Monday night it disbanded an outside panel of experts that had advised it on matters of hate speech and safety.“Thank you,” began an email sent to members of the council — made up of civil rights groups, academics and others, formed in 2016 — an hour before they were to meet on Monday. The message said the group wasn’t “the best structure” to advise on product and policy any longer; it was signed “Twitter.”The dissolution of the board may have been inevitable, as three members had already quit last week over changes to Twitter’s content moderation. But it suggests Musk may ultimately centralize content policy in the interest of, as the email put it, “moving faster and more aggressively than ever before.”The move adds to critics’ worries that Twitter is becoming less safe. The advisers who quit last week cited the company relying more on automated content moderation: “It is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline,” they wrote in their resignation statement.Meanwhile, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, and his family reportedly went into hiding after Mr. Musk misrepresented his academic thesis about gay social networks online to falsely imply that it supported sexualizing children. (Professors who reviewed Mr. Roth’s thesis also received online abuse.)In other Elon Musk news:The Twitter account that shows the movements of Mr. Musk’s private jet has been “shadowbanned,” according to its owner.The $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares that Mr. Musk donated to charity last year went to his personal charitable foundation.Mr. Musk has lost his crown as the world’s richest person, at least by one measure, to Bernard Arnault of LVMH.THE SPEED READ DealsThe private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Coupa Software, which makes software to manage corporate expenses, for $8 billion, as it seeks to capitalize on declining valuations of tech companies. (FT)Speaking of which, Checkout.com, one of Europe’s biggest privately held tech companies, recently slashed its internal valuation by 72 percent, to $11 billion. (FT)Goldman Sachs reportedly plans to cut hundreds of retail banking jobs. (Bloomberg)Investors’ rush to withdraw from a big Blackstone real-estate fund may have broader fallout. (WSJ)PolicyThe Supreme Court rejected a bid by British American Tobacco to halt California’s ban on flavored tobacco products. (Bloomberg)Chinese authorities arrested 63 people whom they accused of laundering $1.7 billion with the crypto token Tether. (Insider)Hong Kong has lifted more of its bar and restaurant Covid restrictions, as China continues easing pandemic rules. (FT)Best of the restThe Wall Street Journal named Emma Tucker, the editor of London’s Sunday Times, to lead its newsroom, the first woman to hold that role. (NYT)“How Sexism Influenced Corporate Governance” (NYT)Amazon has delayed hiring college graduates to help cut costs. (FT)The back story on Taylor Swift choosing Searchlight, the art-house movie studio, over major streaming services for her debut as a feature-film director. (Puck)The hedge-fund mogul Ray Dalio and the director James Cameron are teaming up to make submarines for the ultrawealthy. (FT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. More

HAIFA, Israel — As the prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu finalizes the formation of Israel’s most extreme right-wing government to date, I, along with other Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories, am filled with dread about what the next few years will bring.Every day since the elections, Palestinians wake up with a what-now apprehension, and more often than not, there’s yet another bit of news that adds to our anxiety. The atmosphere of racism is so acute that I hesitate to speak or read Arabic on public transportation. Palestinian rights have been pushed to the back burner.We Palestinians live knowing that a vast majority of Israeli politicians don’t support an end to Israel’s military rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip nor equality for all of its citizens. We are made to feel as though we are interlopers whose presence is temporary and simply being tolerated until such time as it is feasible to get rid of us.According to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, 48 percent of Jewish Israelis agree that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” I look around in my mixed Haifa neighborhood and wonder which of my neighbors voted for the extremist candidates who have voiced similar opinions. “It is only a matter of time before we are gone,” my friends tell me. To add insult to injury, Israelis blame Palestinians for the rise in extremism and racism, rather than looking at how racism has become normalized in Israeli society. It is blaming the victim rather than the aggressor.Since his recent election, Mr. Netanyahu has been offering important positions in government to vocal anti-Palestinian politicians. The incoming governing coalition includes the extremist and racist Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, party, whose leaders have a history of supporting violence against Palestinians.Itamar Ben-Gvir, a settler who leads the Jewish Power party, has been convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist group. Earlier this month, Mr. Ben-Gvir reportedly hailed an Israeli soldier who fatally shot a Palestinian young man in the West Bank during a scuffle — an act caught on video and widely circulated on social media — by remarking, “Precise action, you really fulfilled the honor of all of us and did what was assigned to you.” Israel’s current police chief blamed him for helping ignite the surge in violence in May 2021. He will now be minister for national security, putting him in charge of Israel’s domestic police and border police in the occupied West Bank, home to roughly three million Palestinians.Over the course of decades, and especially since the erection of the wall along the West Bank, Israelis seem to have become immune to how Palestinians live under Israeli military rule and what it is to be Palestinian in Israel. Conversations with neighbors in Haifa about the nakba — or “catastrophe,” in which hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled with the creation of Israel in 1948 — or Israel’s military occupation that amounts to apartheid or even racism in Israel are always met with denial or with justification, so we have learned never to speak to one another.On Dec. 1, Mr. Netanyahu inked a coalition agreement with Bezalel Smotrich, another settler and head of the Religious Zionism party, naming him minister of finance and giving him control over a Defense Ministry department. Mr. Smotrich has called himself a “proud homophobe” and has said that the 2015 firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank by suspected Jewish militants in which an 18-month-old child and his parents were burned to death was not a terrorist attack. In 2016, he said that he was in favor of segregation between Jewish and Palestinian women in Israeli hospital maternity wards.Last year, Mr. Smotrich mentioned that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, didn’t “finish the job” of expelling Palestinians in 1948. He has also promoted a subjugation plan in which Palestinians (who accept the plan) would be considered “resident aliens” while those who do not would be dealt with by the Israeli Army. As part of his Defense Ministry post, Mr. Smotrich will have unprecedented authority over the policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and over Palestinian construction, and will be able to appoint the heads of the administration responsible for the government’s civil policy in the West Bank.Both the Jewish Power and the Religious Zionism party platforms are almost exclusively focused on Palestinians and about ensuring that Jewish supremacy reigns. The Religious Zionism party aims to retroactively legitimize settlements in the West Bank.I fear that Israel’s violent repression of Palestinians will only increase in the near future as I consider the record of Mr. Netanyahu and his previous coalitions — a history of relentless race-baiting and incitement of prejudice against Palestinians in Israel, the passage of the Jewish Nation-State law (which enshrines the privileging of Jewish citizens), the open fire policy, Israel’s policy of destroying Palestinian homes, its continued colonization of the West Bank and repeated mass bombings of Gaza.With Mr. Ben-Gvir, Mr. Smotrich and other extremists in his coalition, Mr. Netanyahu will very likely continue in this path, particularly since he has been the enabler of so many of these policies. Jewish Power and Religious Zionism are natural extensions of Mr. Netanyahu’s policies. Failing to recognize this is akin to putting one’s head in the sand.If there is any silver lining to our grim situation it might be that the rise of Mr. Ben-Gvir and his fellow extremists will open the eyes of more Americans. Some former State Department officials and diplomats have already called upon the Biden administration not to deal with the most extreme members of the new Israeli coalition. American Jewish groups have also expressed alarm at the new coalition. But American policy is unlikely to change in response to these dark tidings. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken of “equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, justice and dignity” for Israelis and Palestinians, but what guarantees will he be offering to ensure that Palestinians live in freedom and security with this new government?As Israel lurched further to the right, the United States and other Western governments continued to normalize and legitimize extremists once deemed beyond the pale — from the notorious former general Ariel Sharon, when he became prime minister, to the race-baiting ultranationalist and settler Avigdor Lieberman when Mr. Netanyahu, during his second run as prime minister, made him a cabinet minister in 2009.At the time, the appointment of Mr. Lieberman — who had called for loyalty oaths for Israel’s Palestinian and Jewish citizens and a redrawing of borders that would strip Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship — was widely criticized. But soon enough American and European officials were meeting with Mr. Leiberman.There is little hope that this won’t happen this time, too, and what was unthinkable but a few years ago will become a reality, with Palestinians inevitably paying the heaviest price for Israel’s electoral choices.Diana Buttu is a lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

There were several reasons Republicans struggled to translate votes into seats, including candidate quality and strength in the wrong places.The Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, backed by Donald Trump, lost his race.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesHere’s a figure about the 2022 midterm elections that might surprise you: Republicans won the national House popular vote by three percentage points — 51 percent to 48 percent. They still won by two points after adjusting for races in which only one major party was on the ballot.Yes, that’s right: Republicans won the popular vote by a clear if modest margin, even as Democrats gained seats in the Senate and came within thousands of votes of holding the House.If you’re looking to make sense of the 2022 election, the Republican lead in the national vote might just be the missing piece that helps fit a few odd puzzle pieces together.The national polls, which showed growing Republican strength over the last month of the campaign, were dead-on. On paper, this ought to have meant a good — if not necessarily great — Republican election year.Imagine, for instance, if the Republicans had run seven points better than Joe Biden’s 2020 showing in every state and district, as they did nationwide. They would have picked up 21 seats in the House, about the number many analysts expected. They also would have easily won the Senate, flipping Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and holding Pennsylvania.Yet for a variety of reasons, Republicans failed to translate their strength into anything like a clear victory.Real Republican strengthThe Republican win in the national House popular vote is not illusion. It is not a result of uncontested races. It is not the result of lopsided turnout, like Californians staying home while Texans showed up to vote. The Republicans would still lead even if every county or state made up the same share of the electorate that it did in 2020.It is not just about one or two Republican shining successes, like Florida or New York, either. Republicans outran Donald J. Trump’s 2020 showing in nearly every state. The exceptions are all very small states with one or two districts, where individual races can be unrepresentative of the broader national picture.Under a lot of circumstances, this Republican showing would be impressive. Consider, for instance, that Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House in all four of the crucial Senate states where Republicans fell short: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. More

Ms. Boebert defeated Adam Frisch in Colorado’s Republican-leaning Third District to win a second term in the House.After a recount in a remarkably close race, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, known for heckling President Biden during his State of the Union speech, arming herself on Capitol Hill and ignoring Covid mask rules, won her bid for a second term. Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, announced the results on Monday.Ms. Boebert, 35, staved off a fierce challenge from Adam Frisch, a Democratic businessman and former Aspen, Colo., city councilman, in the state’s Republican-leaning Third District.Mr. Frisch, who faced a deficit of roughly 500 votes out of more than 327,000 cast, gained just two votes in the automatic recount. In the end, Ms. Boebert won with 50.06 percent of the vote, to Mr. Frisch’s 49.89 percent.On Twitter on Sunday, before the recount was made official by the secretary of state, Ms. Boebert said: “Our conservative policies will help all Americans to overcome the challenges we face so each of us has the opportunity to live our very best life. Thank you for entrusting me to help lead the way. I’ll be working every day to prove I can get the job done right.”Mr. Frisch had sought to cast Ms. Boebert as a flamethrower in an increasingly polarized Congress, saying she was focused more on placating the Republican Party’s far-right Trump wing than on reducing inflation and adding jobs.He presented himself in a television ad as not a typical Democrat, saying that he would not vote for Representative Nancy Pelosi for House speaker and that he supported border security. He showed footage of himself hunting with a shotgun.But a disadvantage in name recognition and the makeup of voters in the district proved too much for Mr. Frisch to overcome against Ms. Boebert, who has drawn national attention for her incendiary actions.On Monday evening, he released a statement on his loss. “While we hoped for a different outcome,” Mr. Frisch said, “we defied incredible odds with the closeness of this race.” He added, “I am confident that the coalition of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters we built throughout this campaign to reject hate and extremism in Southern and Western Colorado will grow into the future.”Along with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a fellow Republican also in her first term, Ms. Boebert brought a no-holds-barred brand of politics to the House, feeding off a social media echo chamber of loyalists who backed former President Donald J. Trump. That has put Ms. Boebert at odds with platforms like Twitter, which temporarily suspended her account after she spread the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged.Her rhetoric and her style of politics also made her a target of Democrats during the Republican primary, many of whom crossed party lines to support her Republican challenger, driven by fears of her extremism.Ms. Boebert won her seat in Congress in 2020, when she unseated a five-term incumbent in the Republican primary before going on to win the general election. Until then, she had run a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado’s ranch country — the Shooters Grill — where she encouraged staff members to carry firearms and defied restrictions by staying open during the pandemic. More

Ronna McDaniel, the longtime chair of the committee, has become a vessel for discontent over the party’s losses in 2022.As anger and frustration ripple through the Republican Party over its underwhelming performance in this year’s midterm elections, Republicans are offering a number of explanations for their losses.Bad candidates. Weak fund-raising. The looming presence of Donald Trump. Election denial. The Democrats’ edge in the mechanics of running campaigns. Strategic and tactical errors by Republican leaders. Too much cultural red meat and not enough serious answers to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans.Some in the Trump wing of the party have settled on their own scapegoat: Ronna McDaniel, who has been the chair of the Republican National Committee since 2017. Coming after McDaniel reshaped the committee in the former president’s image — it was even paying his considerable legal bills until recently — this discontent is a striking turn of events.The committee’s 168 members from across the country will vote on McDaniel’s re-election in January. And the race has heated up over the last two weeks.She has already deterred one challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, this year’s Republican nominee for governor of New York, who briefly explored a run — but pulled back days later after finding only a few dozen potential supporters within the committee.While McDaniel appears to have shored up her internal position, she is also contending with a hunger for change from outside the party’s formal structures. And the one person who might be able to secure her standing — Trump — has told aides that he is staying out of the race.Roughly two-thirds of committee members are already backing McDaniel, according to a letter circulated by her allies.The letter praises McDaniel’s investments in state parties, community centers and “election integrity units”; her decision to cut ties with the Committee on Presidential Debates, which hosts those much-anticipated events every four years; and her “ongoing investments in data, digital, and in a permanent ground game in key locations around the country.” McDaniel’s allies also credit her with raising $1.5 billion as party chair, including $325 million for the 2022 midterms, and for making gains in party registration in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.The race for R.N.C. chair is just one window into the Republican Party’s post-midterm demolition derby — with governors and senators leading an increasingly vocal anti-Trump chorus — but a revealing one. It’s proving especially useful for those who would prefer to change the subject from Trump, whose third presidential run has landed in the party with a mixture of trepidation and condemnation.But it would be mistaken to see this as a proxy war over Trump, party insiders say. McDaniel’s supporters include longtime Trump backers like David Bossie, a Republican operative and committee member from Maryland — and she has declined to fault the former president in recent interviews. Her critics include members like Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, who has been one of Trump’s most vocal detractors.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

The money largely went to state and local organizations that often focused on turning out young voters and people of color, including with messages about threats to freedom and democracy.Two organizations quietly spent $32 million in last month’s midterm elections on organizing meant to combat election denialism and promote voting access, according to a progressive strategist behind the effort.The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign put that money into 126 organizations across 16 states, with a particular focus on Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as toward a range of national organizations, some of them left-leaning. The effort also connected donors with key organizations, resulting in an additional $16 million investment, said David Donnelly, the initiative’s lead strategist. The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign did not directly spend on specific candidates or buy advertising, he said. The initiative did, however, engage around retention of Supreme Court justices in Arizona, he said.Mr. Donnelly said the groups invested in organizations that focused in particular on turning out young voters and people of color, two key parts of the Democratic coalition, and often recommended messages about threats to freedom and democracy.“If you roll back the clock to the beginning of this year, there was a lot of ink and pixels spilled about the possibility of democratic collapse, and all that didn’t happen,” Mr. Donnelly said. A number of Republicans who made names for themselves as election deniers lost high-profile races. “It’s not the full story, but you can’t understand why without lifting up some of the groups that were doing organizing and mobilizing in communities of color and among young people.”Mr. Donnelly would not name the donors behind the groups, which as nonprofits are not required to disclose their contributors. Politico first reported on the efforts from Pro-Democracy Center and Pro-Democracy Campaign on Monday.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

More from our inbox:As History Shows, Incumbents Have the EdgeBlack HomeownershipAn Opera Fan’s DreamAlone, and FreeKyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator, plans to keep her committee posts.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Leaving Party, Sinema Rattles a Race in 2024” (front page, Dec. 10):Senator Kyrsten Sinema is being deceitful in justifying her decision to leave the Democratic Party in favor of being an independent. This isn’t a principled decision. It’s a self-serving and strategic move on her part.Ms. Sinema is unpopular with Democrats in her home state, many of whom feel betrayed by her failure to support the progressive agenda she led them to believe she was committed to. In fact, she’s been a self-absorbed political opportunist primarily serving special interests and not the good of average citizens whom she pretends to care so much about.She claims that she wants to escape the partisanship and extremism that afflicts Congress, creating a false equivalency between the two parties. Reality check: It’s only the Republican Party under the thumb of Donald Trump that has sunk into corruption, hyperpartisan conduct and extremism.Ms. Sinema has been an obstacle to even the most widely popular and beneficial legislation, playing games with the Senate leadership and trying to position herself as someone needing to be courted for her support again and again.If she cared half as much about the citizens she represents as she cares about her wardrobe styling and need for attention, she might be more credible in declaring herself an independent.T.R. JahnsHemet, Calif.To the Editor:Senator Kyrsten Sinema officially ditched the Democratic Party and announced that she has registered as an independent. The move wasn’t entirely a shocker, yet it was still a gut punch for Arizona Democrats who worked hard to send a Democrat to Washington.I understand that she is ditching the Democratic Party because she knows that she can’t win a primary as a Democrat. Her past behavior suggest she’s adept at ditching anyone or anything no longer useful to her.She began her public life as a Green Party activist. She ran for the State Legislature as an independent, which didn’t work. Her big break came when she became a Democrat. In that role she created all sorts of drama and attention-grabbing stunts such as her thumbs-down vote on raising the minimum wage for hardworking Americans.Her antics were guaranteed to garner attention and annoy. For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday ripped into Ms. Sinema: “Not once in this long soliloquy does Sinema offer a single concrete value or policy she believes in. She lays out no goals for Arizonans, no vision, no commitments.”Kyrsten Sinema appears to be the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time.Richard A. FrenchPasadena, Calif.To the Editor:Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to go independent may be a healthy sign for U.S. politics. The Australian federal election in May saw a decline in the vote for both major parties, and a historic wave of votes for independents who were capable, professional women. Their presence is injecting new vigor and accountability into our Parliament.Ray EdmondsonKambah, AustraliaTo the Editor:The only politician more self-centered, selfish and self-aggrandizing than Kyrsten Sinema is Donald Trump.Michael K. CantwellDelray Beach, Fla.As History Shows, Incumbents Have the Edge Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Strong Election Showing Eases Democrats’ Fears of Biden ’24,” by Katie Glueck (Political Memo, front page, Nov. 28):A key reason that Democrats should support President Biden for re-election is that history shows that a sitting president has the best chance of winning. Several recent Democrats have run again despite low approval ratings halfway through their first terms, including Harry Truman in 1948, Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012. Each was re-elected.In contrast, incumbent presidents who voluntarily give up the White House or are subject to a primary challenge are almost always a political disaster for the party in power. L.B.J.’s 1968 decision not to run left the nation in political turmoil, resulting in a Nixon presidency that undermined Americans’ faith in government. Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy in 1980 and never recovered. George H.W. Bush was weakened by Pat Buchanan in 1992, then lost to Bill Clinton.In any event, America needs Mr. Biden to deal with a series of problems, including an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party, a delicate U.S. economy, Russia’s war on Ukraine and the growing climate crisis — problems that he has proved well qualified to address.As long as Mr. Biden remains healthy and able to perform as president, Democrats would be crazy to nominate anyone else.Paul BledsoeWashingtonThe writer is a lecturer at American University’s School of Public Affairs and served as a staff member for the Senate Finance Committee and Clinton White House.Black HomeownershipNearly 45 percent of Black households own their homes, compared with more than 74 percent of white households, a new report has found.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Racial Gap Begins at the Mortgage Application” (Real Estate, Dec. 4):It’s encouraging to see The Times cover the continuing racial discrimination in homeownership. As your headline aptly states, our unacceptable disparities result from discrimination in every aspect of home buying for Black people — from loan approval to interest rates to home appraisals.In New Jersey, like across the U.S., this problem stubbornly persists. About four in 10 Black families in the state own their homes, compared with more than three-quarters of white families. High-income Black families are more likely to be denied a loan than low-income white applicants.Appraisal discrimination, one piece of the puzzle, is finally getting due attention in the Garden State with the Legislature poised to pass a bill to combat it early next year.If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that racism is baked into our policies. It’s time for the federal government, as well as states like New Jersey, to step up and design policies that root out ongoing barriers to homeownership and other drivers of wealth for Black and other households of color.Laura SullivanNewark, N.J.The writer is director of the economic justice program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.An Opera Fan’s Dream Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Reviewing the Opera? Nah, I’m in It” (Arts, Dec. 8):I send my deepest gratitude to the critic Joshua Barone for the immersive and entertaining account of his experience as an extra in the Metropolitan Opera’s extravagant production of “Aida.”Some little kids dream of being an astronaut, a U.S. president, a famous movie star. But since first being brought to the opera at age 4 to see “Tosca,” and staying awake through its entirety, I’ve had the fantasy dream of somehow being on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage (or, alternately, in the orchestra pit).I’ve been a lifelong operagoer since then, and now, well past middle age, I found myself in a state of complete vicarious joy reading Mr. Barone’s “inside scoop.” Bravo!Jane Garfield FrankQueensAlone, and Free Ben WisemanTo the Editor:Re “I Live Alone. Really, I’m Not That Pathetic,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion, nytimes.com, Dec. 9):I am someone who grew up with seven siblings. My own “alone home,” for me, represents freedom and euphoria.To cope with societal expectations, we one-member households need to remember: The most important thing about living alone is that it’s not your job to worry about what other people think.Ted GallagherNew York More