Israel PM Netanyahu coalition member calls for Hawara to be 'burned and closed'

The New Arab Staff
28 February, 2023

Zvika Foget, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, spoke approvingly of Sunday's settler violence against Palestinians as 'deterrence'.

Israeli settlers burned dozens of homes and cars in the occupied West Bank on Sunday

 [Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

A senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition called for Hawara to be "burned and closed", whilst approving of a settler rampage in the same occupied West Bank village on Sunday.

"Yesterday a terrorist came from Huwara – Hawara is closed and burnt. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence," said Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party in an interview with Radio Galey Israel.

"The act that the residents of Judea and Samaria (referring to the illegal settlers living in the occupied West Bank) carried out yesterday is the strongest deterrent that the State of Israel has had since Operation Defensive Shield. After a murder like yesterday, villages should burn when the IDF [Israeli military] does not act."

Operation Defensive Shield was the Israeli assault in the occupied West Bank during the Second Intifada in 2002 when nearly 500 Palestinians were killed.

He also said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio that he "looks favourably upon" the results of violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers, who, flanked by members of the Israeli army, had killed one Palestinian and set dozens of homes and vehicles on fire in Hawara on Sunday.

Foget said the violence - which was described as a 'pogrom' - acted as a 'deterrent'.

"The effect of deterrence that was achieved yesterday following these so-called 'pogroms' hadn't been achieved in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield," he said, referring to the Israeli army’s actions during the Second Intifada in 2002 when several Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank were invaded and nearly 500 Palestinians killed.

The extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party is led by Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir who has repeatedly encouraged settler violence against Palestinians and asserted that Israel should annex settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.

Palestinians count cost of Israeli violence in West Bank

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid criticised Fogel’s remarks, saying: "This is not a full right-wing government, this is a full-anarchist government. MK Fogel must go to jail for inciting terror."

Settlers rampaged through Hawara on Monday, starting fires and attacking Palestinian homes. At least one Palestinian was killed on Sunday and Monday, and more than 350 Palestinians were injured, most suffering from tear gas inhalation, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.

The settler violence came after two Israelis were shot dead by a Palestinian in the West Bank, just days after an Israeli massacre in Nablus, which left at least 11 Palestinians killed.

Sixty-three Palestinians - more than one a day - have been killed by Israeli forces so far this year.

Israeli military calls settler attacks on Palestinians ‘actions of terror’ after weekend of violence

By Hadas Gold, CNN
 Mon February 27, 2023

An aerial view shows a building and cars burnt in an attack by Israeli settlers, near Huwara in the West Bank, on February 27, 2023.Ammar Awad/Reuters

JerusalemCNN —

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sees the previous day’s attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank as “actions of terror,” an IDF official said Monday, as tensions in the region simmered after a weekend of violence.

At least one Palestinian man was killed, a Palestinian fire engine was stoned by a crowd of about 50 settlers, and other Palestinians were injured with stones or metal bars, Palestinian medical officials said Sunday, blaming Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

The attacks followed the fatal shooting of two Israeli brothers earlier in the day in the town of Huwara, south of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, just days after a massive Israeli military raid into Nablus in search of wanted militants left at least 11 Palestinians dead.

“Last night there was revenge activity done by people that live in the area. I wanted to say we see these actions as actions of a terror, these violent riots,” the IDF official said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. “It’s been a horrible night,” the official added.

The official said the reason the IDF was sending three additional battalions to the area was to keep the Palestinians and Israelis apart.

About 160,000 people protest against Netanyahu's judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv

“More forces will de-escalate” the situation, the official said. “This morning we’ve sent in another Givati (reconnaissance) battalion – the Givati Special Forces battalion – into the area in addition to two Border Patrol companies, basically trying to de-escalate and keep the two sides apart.”

Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant vowed to arrest the individual or individuals who killed the settlers and called for calm while allowing military and security forces to work and apprehend the perpetrators.

“It is neither legitimate nor possible to operate individually,” Gallant said Monday, while visiting the location where the incident took place. “We cannot allow a situation in which citizens take the law into their hands. I call on everyone to follow law and order and to trust the IDF and security forces everywhere, across the country.”

The IDF detained eight people in connection with the attacks in Huwara, some of whom have since been released, Israel Police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told CNN Monday.

People attend the funeral of the brothers Hillel and Yagal Yaniv at the Mount Herzl 

military cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday.Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Cycle of violence

Sameh Hamdallah Mahmoud Aqtash, 37, was shot in the abdomen and killed in the town of Za’tara, between Huwara and the Israeli settlement of Kfar Tapuach, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Sunday night. In Huwara itself, at least one person was stabbed and another assaulted with an iron bar, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

The Israeli settlers who were killed earlier were named as brothers Hillel Menachem Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaakov Yaniv, 19, according to the local settler council.

Video from the scene showed that their car had crossed a median, and hit a vehicle going the other direction, suggesting they were shot while driving.

Late Sunday, the IDF announced that the older brother, Hillel, was a serving soldier and expressed condolences in a statement.

A view over the town of Huwara on February 27.Amir Levy/Getty Images

Peace talks

Following rare talks on Sunday brokered by Jordan, Egypt and the United States, Israeli and Palestinian representatives “affirmed their commitment to all previous agreements between them, and to work towards a just and lasting peace.”

Israel and the Palestinian Authority confirmed their “joint readiness and commitment to immediately work to end unilateral measures for a period of 3-6 months. This includes an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for 4 months and to stop authorization of any outposts for 6 months,” a joint statement read.

However, in response to the announcement of a halt on settlement construction, far-right Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich firmly rejected a pause, “even for one day.”

In a post on Twitter, the Israeli finance minister appeared out of alignment with his government, writing: “There will not be a freeze on settlement building and development, not even for one day (this is under my authority). The IDF will continue to act to counter terrorism in all areas of Judea and Samaria without any limitations (we will reaffirm this in the cabinet). It’s very simple.”

Israeli soldiers ride in a military vehicle in Huwara, near Nablus in the West Bank, on Monday.

Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Israeli cabinet approves bill allowing death penalty for ‘terrorists’

Also on Sunday, Israel’s cabinet approved a proposed law to impose the death penalty on “terrorists.” It is officially a private member’s bill sponsored by the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, rather than government-backed legislation.

The law would give courts the power to “impose the death penalty on those who have committed the crime of murder on nationalistic grounds against the citizens of Israel,” a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ben Gvir said.

Israeli incursion shatters lives in ancient Middle Eastern city

After a preliminary vote in the Knesset, or parliament, Israel’s political-security cabinet will next discuss the language in the bill, before it goes to the committee stage. If it passes the committee stage, it will require three Knesset readings to become law.

There have been previous attempts to introduce the death penalty in 2016 and 2018, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, but they did not become law.

In response to the moves, the Palestinian government on Monday condemned “in the strongest terms” the Israeli cabinet’s approval, according to a statement from the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The death penalty violates the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people to life, non-discrimination, and self-determination. It is a cruel, barbaric, and inhumane bill rooted in Jewish supremacy and precisely aimed to deny the Palestinian people their right to exist and their humanity,” it said, while also calling on the international community to take “concrete actions to pressure Israel to rescind its bill.”

CNN’s Amir Tal, Abeer Salman, Caroline Faraj, Hamdi Alkhshali, Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Kareem El Damanhoury contributed to this report.

Huwwara riots: Israel's leaders stoke flames by lauding settler attacks

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich among the senior politicians seen supporting the unprecedented attacks on Palestinian towns in the West Bank

Israeli settlers confront a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Huwwara, 27 February (AFP)

By Elis Gjevori
Published date: 27 February 2023

Hours before Israeli settlers set the occupied West Bank town of Huwwara ablaze on Sunday, several Israeli politicians called for the Palestinian village to be wiped out.

In a since deleted tweet, David Ben Zion, the deputy head of the Samaria Council that governs illegal settlements in the northern West Bank, called for Israeli politicians to show no mercy and that the “village of Huwwara should be erased today”.

The tweet was liked by the country’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and followed the fatal shooting of two Israeli settlers carried out by a suspected Palestinian gunman on Sunday in the town.

Ben Zion, who represents more than a dozen Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank including where the attack occurred, later said that he had written the comments in the “heat of the moment”.

Smotrich’s liking of the tweet by Ben Zion also drew condemnation and was viewed by some as the state sanctioning of mob violence.

“Our minister of finance, minister of the defence ministry and a member of the security cabinet supports erasing an entire village when the only sin of its inhabitants is that they are Palestinians,” Shir Nosatzki, a social media entrepreneur, said on Twitter.

On Sunday, Smotrich escalated rhetoric himself, demanding that the Israeli army "hit Palestinian cities, with tanks and helicopters, mercilessly, in a way that would convey that the owner of the house has gone mad".

With buildings in Huwwara still smouldering and the Palestinian gunman still on the run, Smotrich took to Twitter on Sunday evening to promote a thread that recommended the “collective punishment of the terrorist's family and environment as an effective and necessary tool in asymmetric warfare”. Collective punishment of occupied populations is illegal under international law.

At least one Palestinian was killed and nearly 400 wounded in the attacks on Huwwara and other West Bank towns and villages, Palestinian health officials said. Settlers completely burnt down at least 35 homes and 40 others were partially damaged, and many of the buildings were set on fire while their Palestinian inhabitants sheltered inside. More than 100 cars were burnt or otherwise destroyed.
'Act with an iron fist'

Smotrich and Ben Zion were not the only Israeli leaders, politicians and commentators pouring fuel on the fire and seeking to legitimise the actions of the settlers.

Aryeh Erlich, an editor at the ultra-orthodox magazine Mishpacha, downplayed the riots, by writing:

“The thought now should not be of boys whose blood boiled after seeing the bodies of their two friends lying in their blood on the road.”

Whereas Limor Son Har-Melech from Jewish Power, the party of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that is part of the ruling coalition, called the riots “the righteous cry of hundreds of Samaria residents who came out to protest and demand security”.

Similarly, another MP from Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu’s Likud party sympathised with the settlers, urging the state to “act with an iron fist!”.

As videos of violent lawlessness spread on social media, with Israeli forces seemingly unwilling to stop rioters, settlers were more than happy to share their plans.

One settler filmed himself in Huwwara as Palestinian houses burned in the background, predicting the coming end of the Israeli army and the transition to Jewish militias, going on to laud the “very exciting revenge operation”.

 
'Immune to the law'

Yet the scenes also frightened many on the right, even drawing a comparison to Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass", the state-directed pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party in Germany in 1938, from a seasoned commentator.

“The government needs to decide if it acts as a sovereign in the territories, if it is determined to impose law and order on Arabs and Jews alike, or if it serves as a fig leaf for the hilltop youth,” wrote Nahum Barnea for the right-wing Israeli news outlet Ynet, referring to the radical settler group.

'Huwwara is closed and burned. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence'
- Zvika Fogel, Jewish Power politician

While Israeli settlers have regularly committed attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, Sunday's attacks were “almost unprecedented”, warned Barnea.

Rioting settlers feel “immune to the law. Fear of the state does not apply to them,” said Barnea.

“Smotrich and Ben-Gvir observe the rioters in Huwwara and probably remember themselves: when they were their age, they behaved like them.”

With Huwwara largely abandoned by its Palestinian residents, Israeli settlers rallied in the town, singing in unison under the protection of the army.

“Huwwara is closed and burned. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence,” said Jewish Power politician Zvika Fogel, celebrating last night’s riots.

At least 62 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis this year, at a rate of more than one fatality per day. Meanwhile, 12 Israeli civilians and one police officer have been killed by Palestinians in the same period.

This follows a steep increase in violence in 2022 when at least 167 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the highest death toll in those territories in a single year since the Second Intifada. Palestinian attacks killed 30 Israelis last year.

Huwwara riots: Eyewitness account of Israeli settler attack on Palestinian town

Hussein al-Suwaiti describes scenes of violent Israeli settler attack across his town, which has left cars, buildings and scrapyards burned to the ground


A Palestinian man walks between scorched cars in a scrapyard, in the town of Huwwara, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on 27 February 2023 (AP)

By Hussein al-Suwaiti in
Huwwara, occupied Palestine
Published date: 27 February 2023 19:05 UTC | Last update: 14 hours 51 mins ago

As told to Ola Marshoud.

Israeli settlers had gathered at an intersection of a settlement, descended on Huwwara on foot, and set the whole town on fire.

They had come holding flags and seeking revenge because earlier that day, a Palestinian shot dead two Israeli settlers.

The settlers burned homes, shops, and scrapyards. They moved towards the town's mainstreet, where we live, and first attacked our neighbours. They burned my neighbour's car showroom, and the scrapyard facing it.

In pictures: Homes burn and cars are torched as Israeli settlers take 'revenge' in West Bank

Read More »

Then they came for my family.

They attacked our home with rocks and metal and tried to storm in. They hurled anything they could find at our house.

We started praying and my children were crying and screaming.

Huwwara has experienced settler attacks before, but not in this way, not at this level of violence. It was indescribable.

In the past, some settlers would stand outside our house, shout and throw a few rocks. They would attack one or two houses at a time, but yesterday, more than 250 settlers spread out across the town.

You couldn't even seek your neighbours for safety, because they, too, were under attack.
Burnt to the ground

I have a scrapyard nearby, with about 25 cars inside.

The settlers lit tyres on fire, threw them at the cars, and burned the scrapyard to the ground.

They also burned another nearby scrapyard, which was bigger than mine, and smoke filled the street. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at the settlers, but most of it went into our house.

Our home disappeared under all of the smoke and tear gas; we were suffocating. We couldn't do anything except pray, scream for help, and shout at the settlers.

When settlers were at our front door trying to break in, I started throwing shoes at them, from a shoe rack near me, through the window. While this was taking place, Israeli soldiers were just standing there, watching.

We couldn't do anything except pray, scream for help, and shout at the settlers

I yelled towards the soldiers and told them that the settlers were trying to force their way into my house. They pointed their weapons at me and told me to go inside.

No one was there to help. The fire was inching closer, and we were going to burn inside our home. My biggest fear was that they'd burn my car, which I had parked in the courtyard, in front of our entrance. If they had, we would have been stuck in the house.

I wrote a distressing message on Facebook: For the love of God, we need an ambulance and a fire truck.

The fire had taken hold of the scrapyard. Palestinian officials arrived at the scene and called on us and our neighbours to leave our buildings. They put us in Palestinian ambulances and took us to hospital.

My seven-year-old had to be put on oxygen from smoke inhilation, while I received emergency treatment because I have asthma.
Audacity

I have three other children, aged 15, 14, and 13. The panic that we felt cannot be described.

The attack yesterday has compromised the security one feels in their own home, in their own town. We are in a state of alert now and expect them to return at any moment.

Before the attack started, settlers had come to Huwwara with their families, including their children, some of whom were in strollers, and walked around the town.



When I yelled out to the soldiers that we couldn't breathe, they pointed their guns at me

The army is behind their audacity.

The settlers know they are backed by soldiers, so of course, they will do whatever they want to do. They entered the town under the protection of the army, which had given them the green light.

In the past, when soldiers arrive at the scene, they contain the situation and the settlers disperse. Not this time.

When I yelled out to the soldiers that we couldn't breathe, they pointed their guns at me. We need to have international observers on the ground.

As the saying goes, "the judge and the executioner are one and the same". There's no one to save us.

Palestinian killed as Israeli settlers rampage through West Bank in 'revenge' attacks

Nearly 400 Palestinians are wounded while scores of homes, shops and cars are destroyed

A Palestinian woman stands outside a house burnt in an attack by Israeli settlers in Huwwara (Reuters)

By Fayha Shalash , Sheren Khalel
Published date: 26 February 2023 

Ramallah, occupied Palestine - Israeli settlers rampaged through towns in the occupied West Bank on Sunday evening in revenge attacks, burning and attacking Palestinian homes and property for hours.

At least one Palestinian was killed and nearly 400 wounded in the attacks, Palestinian health officials said.

Sameh Hamdullah Aktech, 37, was shot dead in Za'tara town near Nablus. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said its staff treated someone for stabbing wounds and at least two others suffered head injuries.

Homes, shops, cars and agricultural land were set ablaze by settlers who roamed the streets of several Palestinian towns, mainly near Nablus. Attacks were reported in Ramallah and Salfit.

PRCS said at least 35 homes were completely burned down and 40 others were partially damaged. More than 100 cars were burnt or destroyed, it added.

The riots followed a shooting earlier in Huwwara town earlier in the day by a suspected Palestinian which left two Israeli settlers killed.

An image shared on Twitter of the chaotic scene in the northern West Bank town of Huwwara during an attack organised by Israeli settlers following an earlier fatal shooting (Twitter)

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian activist monitoring the expansion of Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, told Middle East Eye at least one shop was burned down as of 9:15pm local time.

"What the settlers are doing tonight are war crimes similar to the events of the Nakba and the attacks of the Zionist gangs," Daghlas said, referring to the violent "catastrophe" of 1948 that lead to the creation of the State of Israel.

Nine Palestinian families have had to be rescued from their burning homes, Israel's Channel 12 news reported.

'Our lives are in danger'

One Huwwara resident, Ziyad Dmaidi, told MEE that he barely got his family to safety before his home was set on fire.

Dmaidi was returning from work when he saw a group of settlers heading towards his house, he said, recalling a feeling of panic as he rushed inside to gather his family.

Within minutes "dozens of settlers" began smashing in windows, breaking into the house. The family escaped just as burning rubber tyres were thrown inside. His home was completely destroyed.

'Sounds of assault were louder than everything: swearing in Hebrew, smashing windows, burning ... It was very terrible'

- Fida Hamad, Huwwara resident

"I never thought about the house or all our stuff, I was only thinking about my children and how to save them from this nightmare," Dmaidi said.

"We got out of the house and off to safety with the help of the ambulance crews who were also attacked while trying to evacuate us.

"Our lives are in danger and all this is happening while the Israeli soldiers stand around waiting only to protect the settlers," he continued.

Fida Hamad, another resident, told MEE that the settlers' attack was the largest she had ever experienced and that houses were set on fire with families still inside.

Large clouds of smoke billowed throughout the town to the constant sounds of screaming, she said.

"We were sitting in our homes, and suddenly we heard explosions and screams of panic. We learnt that the settlers had attacked the town," Hamad recalled.

"My children started crying and I tried to calm them down, but the sounds of assault were louder than everything: swearing in Hebrew, smashing windows, burning vehicles, homes, and shops ... It was very terrible."

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh charged the Israeli government with full responsibility for the attacks in Huwwara and urged the international community to provide protection to the civilian population.

Meanwhile, Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, condemned the attacks, tweeting: "The settlers are committing a horrific crime tonight in Huwwara - burning homes while families are inside and wreaking havoc.

"They are acting in the spirit of the fascist government," Touma-Suleiman said. "I spoke to several ambassadors and asked them to intervene.

At least one Palestinian fire truck attempting to respond to the fires was attacked and its windows smashed. Several ambulances were also damaged, according to reports on social media. PRCS said they were prevented from reaching areas affected by the attacks in Huwwara for two hours.

Settlers 'seek revenge'

Earlier on Sunday, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, two brothers from Har Bracha, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, were fatally shot in their car while driving through Huwwara.

The assailant rammed the vehicle, before shooting at the two and fleeing the scene. Just after the shooting, Israel's military said it was pursuing the perpetrator.

Israeli settlers issued calls to organise a march to Huwwara on social media to "seek revenge" for the attacks.

"Israeli settlers have been terrorising the Palestinian communities today, in the occupied West Bank, attacking civilians and torching down houses and businesses," the official account of the Palestinian mission to the UK tweeted, sharing a video of one of the fires and tagging Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and two Foreign Office Twitter accounts.

The occupied West Bank is home to about 2.9 million Palestinians as well as an estimated 475,000 Jewish settlers who live in state-approved settlements that are illegal under international law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a joint statement following Sunday's initial shooting, announcing that parliament had passed legislation approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism offences against Israelis.

"On this difficult day when two Israeli citizens were murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack, there is nothing more symbolic than passing a death penalty law for terrorists," the statement read.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian officials held talks in Jordan to try to secure calm in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

At least 62 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis this year, at a rate of more than one fatality per day. Meanwhile, 12 Israeli civilians and one police officer have been killed by Palestinians in the same period.

This follows a steep increase in violence in 2022 when at least 167 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the highest death toll in those territories in a single year since the Second Intifada. Palestinian attacks killed 30 Israelis last year.

Fayha Shalash reported from Ramallah and Sheren Khalel from Florida.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

They burned everything': Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes, cars after West Bank attack

Once again, Netanyahu tricks us on Jewish settlements

BY JONATHAN OFIR 

 FEBRUARY 27, 2023 

MONDOWEISS

BEZALEL SMOTRICH OF THE EXTREMIST RELIGIOUS ZIONISM PARTY MEETS WITH BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ON DEC. 1. FROM SMOTRICH’S TWITTER FEED.

Israel, Palestine, the US, Jordan and Egypt just held a one-day summit in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, yesterday, intended to cool down the flames in Israel-Palestine. Its main aim was to “build trust”. The nations issued a joint communique at its end, which stated that Israel was committed to stop “discussing setting up any new settlement units for four months and stop approving any new settlements for six months”, and that the two sides (Israel, Palestine) would work closely to “prevent further violence”, in the name of advancing toward a “just and lasting peace”, as Reuters reported.

But yesterday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that the whole part about the settlement freeze was fake news. In Hebrew, he wrote that the headlines were “tweets” — just hearsay:

“In contradiction to the tweets, the building and the [retroactive] legalization [of outposts] in Judea and Samaria [biblical names for occupied Palestinian West Bank] will continue in accordance with the original timeline for planning and building, with no changes. There is no freeze and will be no freeze”.

How could it be? Was Reuters lying? Did the US just issue a lie without consulting Netanyahu?

Haaretz daily seeks to explain the discrepancy:

“In the joint announcement, there was no reference to freezing decisions that had already been made regarding construction in the settlements. Sources familiar with the talks told Haaretz that the thousands of housing units greenlit last week are all the construction plans that were ready for approval.”

So, the massive wave of construction permits – over 7,000 permits – was passed a few days prior to the summit, and will not be annulled by it. Likewise, the nine settler-outposts which were retroactively legalized, would not be affected by the supposed freeze. It’s a done deal.

It is worth reflecting upon the magnitude of those 7,000 permits. Last year Israel issued 4,427 permits for construction of Jewish settlements. In 2021, another 3,645 were approved. In other words, Israel has already processed a bulk of permits which far exceeds its tempo in the past years (in fact almost doubles it), so it has surely satiated its colonialist thirst for the coming six months of stoppage time.

Haaretz pretty much confirms that understanding. There’s not even a pause in pouring concrete:

“According to [sources familiar with the talks], the commitment not to discuss new construction in the settlements for four months does not constitute a real concession on Israel’s part. This is because the construction planning process requires a great deal of time and effort, so it would take several months regardless before the council could approve additional housing units.”

And these supposed concessions were being offered ahead of the summit. Fully a week ago, Haaretz reported that “Israel has informed the United States that it will not build or approve new Jewish settlements in the West Bank beyond the nine that were approved last week – a move which enraged Western leaders”.

Notice how the supposed liberal opposition leader Yair Lapid responded to that report of a concession a week ago:

“Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that ‘he was surprised that the government agreed to the freeze. We never agreed to this, despite repeated requests from the Americans’.”

So Lapid, the good guy as far as liberal Zionists are concerned, was basically boasting (at his party meeting), that he was tougher against the ‘Americans’, and that he was a tougher settler than Netanyahu. So much for opposition.

Michael Lynk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, observed these political dynamics ahead of the summit when he wrote: “[O]n the other hand, Netanyahu’s far-right allies in the new government, particularly Itamar Ben Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich, were relatively quiet about the pause, indicating that they understood the prevailing American-Israeli quid pro quo on the settlements”.

That reference to “quid pro quo” means a deal that the United States cut with other countries at the United Nations Security Council to water down a resolution proposal by UAE, calling all the settlements what they are – “flagrant violations” of international law. The resolution morphed into a non-binding Security Council statement that avoids mentioning their illegality.

But that silence on the part of Netanyahu’s partners-in-war-crimes was temporary. Smotrich, who is now in multiple ministerial positions and poised to realize his full Apartheid plan, tweeted yesterday:

“I have no idea what they talked about or didn’t talk about in Jordan. I heard about this useless conference from the media just like you. But one thing I do know: there will be no freeze of the building and development in the settlement[s] not even for one day (it is under my authority)…”

Smotrich’s tweet was published exactly two hours before Netanyahu tweeted that there will be no freeze.

Following Smotrich’s tweet, his alter-ego and fellow Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir tweeted his own mockery of the summit:

“What happened in Jordan (if it happened), stays in Jordan”.

BEN-GVIR IN THE ILLEGAL JEWISH OUTPOST SETTLEMENT OF EVYATAR, CALLING FOR ITS LEGALIZATION, FEB. 27, 2023. FROM HIS TWITTER FEED.

So there you have it. The “freeze” was a trick. It wasn’t a real concession – it just sounded good. It gave Netanyahu the opportunity to have his cake and eat it. He’s now supposedly compromising, but the concessions were already made. When the noises come from the further right– and he is the most left member of his coalition!– about him being soft, he can assure them that he wasn’t.

This is very much like that now-famous secret video from 2001 (which surfaced a decade later), in which Netanyahu explained to a settler family how he manipulated the Oslo agreements, to avoid a “racing to the 1967 lines”:

“How did we do it? Defined Military zones, I said, are security zones. From my point of view, the Jordan Valley is a defined military zone, right?”

That video is where Netanyahu also boasted: “I know what America is, America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way”.

Recall that Biden was in the Obama administration in December 2016 when it abstained on a UN Security Council resolution that described the settlements as a “flagrant” violation of international law. But Obama was a lame duck; and Biden is running for reelection.

That is enraging. But it should be equally shocking that Yair Lapid made a statement that echoes Netanyahu and Smotrich.

And so it continues. The Israeli settlement enterprise is a “national value”, as its quasi-constitutional ‘Nation-state’ law of 2018 states, and it specifies, exclusively, “Jewish settlement”.

It is not going away. It is not even freezing, not even temporarily. The minister now singularly in charge of it, Smotrich, says it won’t even freeze for a day. And these settlements sit at the very core of the whole matter. As Lynk writes:

“The settlements are the engine of the Israeli occupation, the “facts on the ground” for Israel’s looming quest to annex the West Bank, and the source of many of the human rights violations against the Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

It’s not complicated at all. In fact, Lynk notes, ”the illegality of the Israeli settlements is also one of the most settled issues in modern international law”.

And here we are discussing whether it’s freeze or no freeze, while Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir chuckle among themselves – they’ve tricked us again. We really are easy to move.

Study shows why conservatives may reject some pandemic measures

by Jeff Grabmeier, The Ohio State University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new study may reveal part of the reason why conservatives are more likely than liberals to reject some COVID-19 health measures: They see boundaries as restrictions.

Liberals were more likely to see some of the measures used in the pandemic—such as social distancing rules and plexiglass separators in restaurants and stores—as providing guidance, rather than restrictions.

"There seems to be a fundamental ideological difference in how people view boundaries," said Selin Malkoc, co-author of the study and professor of marketing at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

"Conservatives are more likely than liberals to see boundaries as a way to restrict what they can do."

And the finding doesn't apply only to politically charged topics: The study found ideological differences in how people viewed other types of boundaries, including a row of traffic cones and a three-sectioned plate.

But the findings also showed a way to describe boundaries that make them more appealing to conservatives.

The study was led by Jianna Jin, a doctoral student in marketing at Ohio State. Russell Fazio, professor of psychology, was also a co-author. The research was published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

In a series of four studies—three with online samples and one with college undergraduates—participants responded to various types of boundaries, indicating whether they saw them as guidance or restrictions.

In one of the studies, participants were shown a photo of a social distancing sign indicating where people should stand to stay 6 feet apart at a restaurant. Participants rated the sign on a scale of 1-7 in which 1 was "The sign seems to guide where customers can or cannot stand" and 7 was the "The sign seems to restrict where customers can or cannot stand."

The other studies were similar, but asked about partitioned time slots to pick up groceries (to "structure" when they can or cannot pick up their items versus "restrict"), a row of traffic cones (that "guide" where people can or cannot go versus "restrict"), or a three-sectioned plate (to "control" your meal portions versus "restrict").

In all four studies, people who indicated their political orientation as conservative were more likely to see these boundaries as restrictions rather than guidance—even in the studies on their views concerning the plate partitions and traffic cones, which were not political.

When they began the study, the researchers weren't sure that conservatives would be more likely to see boundaries as restrictions, Jin said. Other research suggests conservatives have a stronger need for structure and order and thus could prefer an organized environment. So they could have seen boundaries as being more positive.

"For example, if you think about a set of traffic cones arranged in a row, they can be viewed as both 'restricting' and 'structuring' the traffic flow," Jin said. "It could be that conservatives would appreciate the structure that boundaries provide."

A follow-up study investigated further how conservatives felt about structure.

In that study, a different group of participants gave their reactions to a set of 16 words as quickly as possible, rating them on a 7-point scale from "very negative" to "very positive."

The researchers were interested in four target words—structure, guidance, guidelines and control—chosen to convey a sense of orderliness and predictability that is associated with structure.

As the researchers expected, findings showed that conservative participants were more favorable to the structure-related words.

So what would happen if messages about COVID-19 health measures emphasized how boundaries provided structure? Another study investigated that question.

Online participants completed the same social distancing sign task from the previous study: They were shown a photo of a social distancing sign indicating where people should stand to stay 6 feet apart at a restaurant.

But in this case, some participants read an additional line that said "arrow stickers on the floor are placed to structure the customer flow." Others read a line that said the arrows restricted customer flow or saw no additional line of text.

Results showed that conservative participants had a more positive attitude toward the sign when they were told it provided structure versus when they were told it restricted customers or when they received no message about the sign.

People who identified as highly liberal actually showed less favorability toward the sign when it said it structured customer flow. This might be because of the political climate surrounding the social distancing signs, Malkoc said.

"They may have thought the structure framing of the message suggested too lax enforcement of social distancing," she said.

The results show that conservatives and liberals inherently differ in how they think of the same boundary, Malkoc said.

"But the words used to explain these boundaries can help focus attention on how they provide structure—and thus appeal more to conservatives," she said.

More information: Jianna Jin et al, For whom do boundaries become restrictions? The role of political orientation., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2023). DOI: 10.1037/xge0001361

Journal information: Journal of Experimental Psychology

Provided by The Ohio State University 

Studies examine different understandings, varieties of diversity

Mapping the 'memory loss' of disinformation in fact checks

by CORDIS

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Fact-checking is an important tool in the fight against online disinformation that can have serious implications for individuals and society by influencing elections, conflict and health. However, according to a survey conducted as part of the vera.ai project, the crucial task of archiving appearances of disinformation is made extremely difficult by anti-scraping measures taken by social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

What happens in this case? There are fewer documented fact checks, and less evidence of disinformation traces. As reported in a paper posted on the "Digital Methods Initiative" website, "many links to content disappear (erased by platforms, by end-users, or kept within private groups after debunks)." This harms fact-checking memory and hampers social scientists' efforts to assess the scope of disinformation on different platforms.

The focus on Ukraine

But what is the actual extent of fact-checking "memory loss?" To answer this question, researchers at vera.ai project partner University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, used the "War in Ukraine" fact-check dataset published by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). They analyzed 1,991 fact-checking articles, extracting more than 41,000 links, of which 6,002 were archived web pages.

The team identified the multiple fact-checking organizations contributing to archiving links, their contribution count and their country. They also investigated the evolution of the publications over time as the Ukraine war progressed.

The study revealed that at least 15% of the archived content links on EDMO's "War in Ukraine" dataset are poorly archived. "The 'memory loss' is even more important as many errors due to unplayable videos have been identified during a manual analysis of a sample of 100 links," the authors report in the paper. Additionally, 23% of the non-archived Facebook links in the same dataset have missing content.

The archive services used are also discussed: "Three main services (archive.today and its satellite sites with 44.1% in the dataset, 29.2% and 26.6%) are currently dominating the field. While archive.today relies on advertising, perma.cc is a freemium and commercial service built at Harvard University while the US Wayback Machine / Internet Archive remains the free-access web archive. Their use by fact checking organizations rely often on their ability to archive content from platforms and especially from Facebook, due to anti-bots and anti-scraping measures."

The researchers also found that although platform pages seem to remain accessible, many of them display archived warnings of different types of archiving issues ranging from login barriers to unplayable video content. Next, the vera.ai: VERification Assisted by Artificial Intelligence team intend to extend their study to more datasets.

More information: Mapping the 'memory loss' of disinformation in fact checks. wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/Wi … 023MappingMemoryLoss

Provided by CORDIS 

EU calls out Twitter for incomplete disinformation report

Two Keys to Sustainable Social Enterprise
How successful businesses change their own ecosystems

by Sally R. Osberg and Roger L. Martin

Angus Grieg

Summary. Social entrepreneurship has emerged over the past several decades as a way to identify and bring about potentially transformative societal improvements. Ventures in this realm are usually intended to benefit economically marginalized segments of society 

Social entrepreneurship has emerged over the past several decades as a way to identify and bring about potentially transformative societal change. A hybrid of government intervention and pure business entrepreneurship, social ventures can address problems that are too narrow in scope to spark legislative activism or to attract private capital.

To succeed, these ventures must adhere to both social goals and stiff financial constraints. Typically, the aim is to benefit a specific group of people, permanently transforming their lives by altering a prevailing socioeconomic equilibrium that works to their disadvantage. Sometimes, as with environmental entrepreneurship, the benefit may be extended to a broader group once the project has provided proof of concept. But more often the benefit’s target is an economically disadvantaged or marginalized segment of society that doesn’t have the means to transform its social or economic prospects without help.

GoodWeave

When customers buy carpets bearing the GoodWeave label, they know that their purchases were woven without child labor.

In Afghanistan, GoodWeave’s supply chain inspectors are all female, so they may enter the women’s quarters in homes, where most carpets are made.

The endeavor must also be financially sustainable. Otherwise the new socioeconomic equilibrium will require a constant flow of subsidies from taxpayers or charitable givers, which are difficult to guarantee indefinitely. To achieve sustainability, an enterprise’s costs should fall as the number of its beneficiaries rises, allowing the venture to reduce its dependence on philanthropic or governmental support as it grows.

In some cases a social enterprise may even spawn a profitable business. In the late 1970s, for example, Muhammad Yunus secured funding to conduct an experiment in which very poor borrowers were given tiny loans. The experiment grew into the famed Grameen Bank, a financially sustainable social business serving disadvantaged Bangladeshis. As others around the world saw that it was actually possible to make a tidy profit lending to poor people, they adopted the Grameen model, vastly magnifying the impact of Yunus’s initial innovation.

What can social entrepreneurs do to increase their chances of achieving sustainability—and perhaps even profitability? We think we have an answer. Over the past 15 years we have studied successful social entrepreneurs up close through our work for the Skoll Foundation, which was established in 1999 by the internet entrepreneur Jeffrey Skoll. Each year the foundation confers the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (SASE) on a small number of people. More than 100 social entrepreneurs representing 91 organizations have received Skoll awards to date.

In studying these leaders and their ventures, we have found that they all focus on changing two features of an existing system—the economic actors involved and the enabling technology applied—to create sustainable financial models that can permanently shift the social and economic equilibrium for their targeted beneficiaries. In the following pages we’ll describe how representative entrepreneurs have successfully made these changes.

The Actors

Social and economic problems often reflect an imbalance of power among the economic actors involved. India’s handwoven-carpet industry offers a prime example of this dynamic. In the early 1980s the children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, joint winner with Malala Yousafzai of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, saw that poor children were easy prey for labor brokers who recruited workers for a number of Indian industries, including carpet weaving.

Social entrepreneurs add new actors to an existing system: customers and government.

Captured by these middlemen, the children were sold to business owners who forced them to work 12 or more hours a day under brutal conditions, their small hands producing the handsome but inexpensive rugs retailers demanded. Three groups of players—owners, labor brokers, and retailers—dominated the country’s handmade-rug industry, their interlocking interests perpetuating a particularly ugly equilibrium that benefited them by exploiting children.

In situations like this, we have observed, social entrepreneurs aim to transform the equilibrium by adding new actors to an existing system. These actors fall into two categories: customers, whose role is to shift the power balance; and government, whose role is to alter the economics.
Customers and power.

Satyarthi began his career in activism primarily through advocacy and organizing raids on companies, in the hope that he could raise awareness of child exploitation. He recalls the point at which he forced himself to admit that this approach would never change the system. Following a harrowing but successful raid, he was headed home when he confronted yet another bunch of labor brokers boarding a train with dozens of children bound for a life of servitude. He realized that freeing 10 or 20 or 200 children, when another 200 or 2,000 would come right behind them, was not the solution.

What could make a difference, he discovered, was enlightened consumers who would refuse to buy rugs that had been made with slave labor. Satyarthi’s insight came when an elderly woman told him she had bought a carpet in utter ignorance of how it had been made, but once she learned that it had probably been woven by child laborers, she felt she had no recourse but to throw it out. “I’m very old,” she told the activist, “but you’re very young—you must do something so that I can buy a new carpet.”

FURTHER READING

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Magazine Article James D. Thompson and Ian MacMillan
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Satyarthi realized that this woman represented others who could be educated to shun products produced by exploitation in favor of those produced responsibly. In the mid-1990s he launched Rugmark (now GoodWeave International) as the first voluntary labeling scheme to certify rugs produced without child labor in South Asia.

Today GoodWeave operates globally, focusing on the top retail markets and key rug-producing regions across Asia. More than 130 carpet importers and retailers—including Target—have signed on, pledging to source woven rugs that have been certified by GoodWeave. Satyarthi understood, as have the many other social entrepreneurs introducing certification systems in a wide variety of industries, that consumers represent a potent and sustainable means of altering a suboptimal social equilibrium. As long as certification labels are undergirded by well-conceived and credible efforts, they inform and motivate consumers through increased transparency. When enough consumers vote with their wallets, retailers and suppliers get the message—and entire systems are forever altered.

Government and economics.

A number of successful social entrepreneurs have generated a better equilibrium by moving government from the sidelines to a far more productive place in the system. This new role leverages the effectiveness of citizens’ taxes or, in the case of emerging economies, development aid from wealthy nations, making government services more valuable. The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), for example, has tackled the problem of Amazon basin deforestation by rendering Brazil’s government a more effective actor in a system that previously pitted primarily indigenous peoples against the loggers, ranchers, and miners who were claiming more and more of the basin for development, razing millions of hectares of forest—often illegally—in the process. Although Amazonian peoples have for generations considered vast tracts of the basin as their own, their existence was increasingly tenuous, and they had few means of asserting control over those lands.

But as Brazil woke up to the massive problem of deforestation, the government could do little given the sheer magnitude of the violations. Again and again it found that by the time illegal use of indigenous peoples’ land in the rain forest was identified, the damage had already been done.

ACT’s core innovation was to equip tribal peoples with handheld GPS devices and train them to chart their ancestral lands. The resulting maps enabled them to advocate more effectively for their own interests by supplying the government with information needed for rain forest conservation. With their territories clearly identified, tribal peoples could monitor and protect the land on which their way of life depended. This distributed system of monitoring and conserving significantly outperformed any centralized approach. The balance of power in the struggle with commercial interests was cost-effectively shifted in favor of the indigenous peoples, contributing to more-efficient and more-effective conservation.
The Technology

Economic and social agents use structures, business models, and tools to achieve their desired ends in an existing equilibrium. The actors and their means of operating—the engagement “technologies” they use—combine to make the equilibrium unjust and suboptimal. A second way, therefore, to effect change is to dramatically improve a system’s technology while leaving the current actors in place. Such improvement is achieved in one of three ways: substitution, creation, or repurposing.

APOPO

Bart Weetjens, who’d kept rats as childhood pets, realized they could be put to work detecting land mines. The rodents are trainable and weigh so little that they wouldn’t detonate the mines. His organization, APOPO, has since used rats to help clear more than 8 million square meters of land of some 1,000 unexploded bombs. The rats have also identified more than 7,000 tuberculosis patients, many of whom were initially deemed free of the illness by their local clinics.

Replace a key technology with a lower-cost one.

A number of SASE winners have succeeded by identifying a lower-cost technology that can substitute for a prevailing standard in a given function or product component.

Bart Weetjens, the founder of APOPO, realized that the greatest hurdle to clearing land mines was the high cost of the prevailing technologies, which included expensive equipment and trained dogs. For countries riddled with mines, de-mining machinery was hard to come by; furthermore, the weight of the dogs made them vulnerable to death from an exploding mine. Consequently, efforts to clear minefields were slow to gain momentum. Having kept rats as childhood pets, Weetjens knew they were smart and trainable enough to sniff out land mines. He showed that African giant pouched rats were perfect for the job, weighing so little that they wouldn’t detonate the mines. Countries and organizations can use APOPO’s services to remove mines at a radically lower cost and thus de-mine more land faster than was previously possible. (Weetjens has also trained his rats to sniff out tuberculosis in sputum samples. This cheap and readily available “technology” enables remote, isolated clinics to identify TB and get patients into treatment sooner.)

In settings where medical professionals are in short supply or strapped for time, many social entrepreneurs have discovered that paraprofessionals can deliver outstanding results. In sub-Saharan Africa the shortage of doctors and nurses is particularly acute, so the nonprofit Medic Mobile equips community health workers’ phones with applications that help the workers do everything from track drug inventories to register new pregnancies—tasks that would otherwise fall to professionals, distracting them from their more specialized, and critical, responsibilities.

In another example, mothers2mothers trains “mentor mothers” to monitor HIV-positive pregnant women. Such help has been shown to increase the latter’s adherence to the demanding treatment regimens required to increase their chances of delivering healthy, HIV-negative babies. As an added benefit, m2m’s mentor mothers leverage the international community’s enormous investment in antiretroviral drugs and other medicines to combat AIDS.

A New Model for Public Projects

Although social entrepreneurship started squarely in the private nonprofit world, striking ...

In the United States, Health Leads trains college students to “prescribe” what doctors would if they had the time and the information: nonmedical social support services to the many poor or struggling patients who use public health clinics or hospital emergency rooms. The organization recognizes that such patients stand a better chance of recovering from illness if their needs for food, shelter, and transportation are met. Better health outcomes reduce the workload on doctors and nurses and the cost burden on the public health care system.

Create a new enabling technology.

We have observed that social entrepreneurs also succeed by supplying or creating a new technology that allows users to do things they could not previously do. For example, before Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley created the Kiva platform, it was nearly impossible for small-scale lenders in wealthy countries to lend to small-scale borrowers in poor countries. The would-be lenders had no way to funnel funds through microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are largely regulated as banks by the countries in which they are based. Instead they had to stick with charitable giving by making donations to NGOs that offered microfinance programs in poor countries.

Medic Mobile equips community health workers’ phones with invaluable apps.

The Kiva platform provides a technology to break through these barriers. It enables microlenders worldwide to make loans as small as $25 to microborrowers in poor countries. Kiva manages the transaction and legal costs and requirements with its global network of MFIs and validates borrowers through locally based partners. Transaction costs on both sides have plummeted as more lenders and borrowers have begun to use the platform. Kiva is on track to facilitate more than $1 billion in microloans within the next couple of years. It has enjoyed a 98% repayment rate since its founding, in 2005, and its earned-to-contributed revenue ratio increases each year.

Repurpose an existing enabling technology.

The third mechanism is similar to the second. However, instead of creating a new technology, the social entrepreneur repurposes an existing one from a different context.

The SASE winner Victoria Hale, a former pharmaceutical company scientist and U.S. Food and Drug Administration staffer, created the Institute for OneWorld Health (iOWH) in order to scour pharmaceutical company shelves for drugs deemed unsuitable for developed world markets and incapable of generating profits in the developing world. She reasoned that some of this latent intellectual property could be repurposed to fight diseases endemic in the poorest parts of the world. An early target for iOWH, which subsequently merged with the global health organization Path, was visceral leishmaniasis (black fever), a fly-borne disease that infects half a million people and kills 30,000 each year, principally in rural India and East Africa. Black fever’s fatality rate existed not because the disease was incurable but because treatment was prohibitively expensive.

Hale identified a drug that had been fully developed but was no longer in production, paromomycin, which she believed could be used to cure black fever. Clinical trials in India proved her right. Eliminating the huge costs of drug development enabled iOWH to persuade the Indian government to make paromomycin available, turning “prohibitively expensive” into “life-saving” for those afflicted.

Imazon
JANUARY 2010


FEBRUARY 2011


Amazon's world-renowned monitoring system can track logging, small-road clearing, and fires in the Amazon rain forest, thus aiding efforts to stop deforestation and degradation. The organization uses its regularly updated data to spark frank discussion and to push for action, working with governments to stop illegal operations.

Meanwhile, in the Amazon basin once again, the SASE winner Imazon anticipated by about a decade Google Earth’s repurposing of public satellite infrastructure. The U.S. government and others built the infrastructure and incurred all the research, development, and other capital costs; Google acquired and repurposed it to provide a popular service.

Imazon repurposed the same infrastructure to track real-time changes in the Amazon basin—with a particular focus on the construction of new roads in the rain forest. Historically, given the size and remoteness of this terrain, illegal loggers could build an illegal road and use it for illegal cutting for years before being discovered and shut down. Imazon’s application of satellite technology, and its partnership with both government and the media, expose logging operations and other incursions so that perpetrators can be identified, stopped, and prosecuted.
A Blended Approach

The strategies we’ve described for succeeding in social entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. Many SASE winners draw upon several of them to achieve a new, sustainable equilibrium for their target constituents. For example, Debbie Aung Din Taylor and Jim Taylor, of Proximity Designs, understood that transforming Myanmar’s smallholder agricultural sector required them to fire on multiple cylinders: They had to reduce costs traditionally associated with a start-up, pare down the operating costs of product design and development, cultivate customers, shift government’s role, and continually enhance their technology solutions.

In Myanmar, where the two have worked since 2004, smallholders are the country’s backbone: More than 70% of the population depends on agriculture, and most farmers cultivate subsistence plots in rural locations. Only now emerging from decades of dictatorship, the government has neither the financial resources nor the capability to support this population. Private-sector businesses entering the region are focused on the larger and more sophisticated rice farmers whose output can be aggregated to meet market demands. And donors are more likely to be attracted to health or education programs than to the needs of smallholders. Rural farmers are left to eke out an existence on their own, effectively denied the information, tools, and training that would decrease their vulnerability and increase their productivity.

The Taylors were determined to transform this miserable equilibrium. A lean, focused, entrepreneurial organization from the outset, Proximity started life as a country office for International Development Enterprises, a well-established agricultural products NGO, which cut its start-up costs significantly. As it evolved and became an independent entity, its next task was to figure out how to significantly reduce product R&D costs. It did so in two ways: by partnering with Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and by actively recruiting low-cost, talented, and highly motivated design “fellows” and interns.

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Understanding its poor rural customers enables Proximity to meet their needs across the board. The organization designs its pumps and other irrigation products to be effective, durable, and affordable, and tests its seeds to ensure healthy crops. But a substantial number of Myanmar’s farmers can’t afford new seed stock or even the least expensive device, so Proximity has added microcredit to its suite of services. In addition, it supplements its products and financial services with advisory support, providing the technical assistance that might otherwise be delivered by a country’s agricultural extension services. Finally, the organization engages deftly with the government, which considers it a trusted adviser on issues of food security and a resource for training agricultural officers.

Proximity’s operating-cost reengineering has enabled it to constantly improve and add to its line of products and services. This, in turn, has increased market demand, grown the organization’s customer base, dramatically increased revenue, and—most important—substantially improved food security and livelihood for millions of people.

The government officials, social activists, and business entrepreneurs associated with the great social transformations that have improved our world may not have imagined how much their innovations would accomplish; many did not live to see it happen. Martin Luther King Jr. is a poignant example. The same may be true of today’s social entrepreneurs. But their hybrid method is helping to create change in ways that would be difficult for government or business.

To be sure, pursuing a social goal while being constrained by the requirement of financial sustainability is difficult. Yet the evidence we see from our work at the Skoll Foundation shows that many entrepreneurs are succeeding, in settings all over the world, at creating scalable social ventures to transform unhappy circumstances for a great number of people. The clearly emerging pattern in their successes can serve as a valuable road map for others, thereby speeding society’s journey toward a better, fairer future.

A version of this article appeared in the May 2015 issue (pp.86–94) of Harvard Business Review.

Read more on Business and society or related topics Corporate social responsibility and Public-private partnerships

Sally R. Osberg is the president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation.

Roger L. Martin is a former dean of the Rotman School of Management, an adviser to CEOs, and the author of A New Way to Think (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022).

High Time for a High-Seas Treaty

Feb 24, 2023

JENNIFER MORRIS

As with many common resources, the high seas are not yet protected by a truly comprehensive, agreed-upon framework governing conservation and economic activities beyond national jurisdictions. But this must change if there is to be any hope of achieving global biodiversity goals.

NEW YORK – Our planet’s tightly woven, interconnected natural systems are vital to life and livelihoods. Yet with each passing season, we are witnessing the crushing realities of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. In its 2023 Global Risks Report, the World Economic Forum warns that six of the top ten risks in the coming decade will stem directly from the loss and degradation of nature. In the face of extreme storms and floods, devastating droughts and wildfires, ocean dead zones, and food scarcity, demands for systemic change have reached a crescendo. Unless we embark on a new course, our crises will only deepen

Despite the challenge of reaching global agreements in such a fractured world, we have cause for optimism. In late 2022, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) achieved a breakthrough after languishing in relative obscurity for many years. At the COP15 summit in Montreal in December, countries completed four years of negotiations and approved the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the most significant intergovernmental agreement on biodiversity in over a decade.

Under the GBF, governments have committed to protect 30% of the world’s land, freshwater, and ocean by 2030; improve the sustainability of agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry; and restore 30% of degraded ecosystems. The framework establishes multiple pathways for scaling up solutions within and across borders. It includes down payments, financial commitments, and an implementation plan, and it is already spurring action by corporations, governments, and civil society.

But critical work remains to done. On February 20, UN member states gathered in New York to finalize a key piece of the ocean-governance puzzle: a new treaty to conserve and sustainably manage marine biodiversity in the high seas.

The high seas cover two-thirds of all ocean and almost half the planet, and are home to up to ten million species – many of them still unidentified. But much of this biodiversity remains out of sight and thus out of mind. As a result, life in this vast expanse is constantly threatened by weak regulation of activities such as shipping and fishing, and by poor enforcement of existing laws.

The high seas belong both to everyone and to no one. As with many common resources, there is no comprehensive, agreed-upon framework governing conservation and the sustainable use of the ocean outside of national jurisdictions. But since the same large petrels, leatherback turtles, sharks, and whales that we seek to protect on and off our shores spend much of their lives in the high seas, there is an obvious need for more robust global strategies to protect, manage, and monitor these areas.

Marine life does not recognize legal jurisdictions. For the conservation of migratory species and transboundary ecosystems to be effective, we urgently need a global high-seas treaty, which in turn will contribute to the implementation of the CBD’s ambitious new framework. Without it, the CBD will have much less chance of success. That is because, currently, there are no global powers to establish marine protected areas in the high seas. Even though the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea obligates states to assess the impact of activities in their waters, there is no global mechanism for assessing activities in the high seas. Instead, there is a patchwork of assessment mechanisms for different bodies that regulate parts of the high seas, but no minimum standards that ensure quality or consistency.

So, what needs to happen at the summit in New York? For a new high-seas treaty to make a difference, it must achieve multiple objectives. The first is to provide countries with the legal powers to establish and manage a representative network of marine protected areas in the high seas, as this is essential to protecting at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.

Moreover, we must dramatically strengthen governance of human activities that affect the high seas, by establishing robust, modern environmental assessment and management standards. And we need to ensure sufficient financial, scientific, and technical support for states that require it.

We will also need a mechanism for sharing the benefits of marine genetic resources fairly and equitably, as well as a voting procedure when all good-faith efforts to reach consensus have been exhausted. Otherwise, one or two countries will be able to block progress even on issues that are supported by the overwhelming majority.

Only through a strong high-seas treaty and bolder action within existing treaty bodies (especially fisheries-management agreements) can we protect the health of the ocean. We must adapt quickly to new activities like deep-sea mining, as well as to increased shipping collisions with large animals and rising waste, noise, and artificial-light pollution. This requires managing the whole ocean in a more comprehensive fashion. With ocean health declining, maintaining the status quo is not a viable option.

The negotiations for the first international ocean treaty in over 40 years, and the first to target the conservation and sustainable use of marine life in the high seas, offer another opportunity to rebalance our relationship with nature. Building on the momentum from COP15 in Montreal, we must now set a course to address the biggest risks facing our planet in the next decade.



JENNIFER MORRIS  is CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

Who stands for freedom?

US corporations that have benefited from government largesse have created the myth of ‘free enterprise,’ robbing Americans of their most basic freedom in the process

• By Joseph Stiglitz / NEW YORK
•  
   

The Republican Party has long wrapped itself in the US flag, claiming to be the defender of “freedom.” The party believes individuals should be free to carry firearms, spew hate speech, and eschew vaccines and masks. The same goes for corporations: Even if their activities destroy the planet and permanently change the climate, the “free market” should be trusted to sort things out. Banks and other financial institutions should be “liberated” from regulation, even if their activities can bring down the entire economy.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the acceleration of the climate crisis, it should be obvious that this conception of freedom is far too crude and simplistic for the modern world. Those who still espouse it are either mind-numbingly blinkered or on the take. As the great 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it: “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.” Or, put another way, freedom for some is unfreedom for others.

In the US, the freedom to carry guns has come at the expense of the freedom to go to school or the store without being shot. Thousands of innocent people — many of them children — have died so that this particular freedom can live. And millions have lost what former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought was so important, the freedom from fear.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom within a society. Different freedoms must be balanced against each other, and any reasoned discussion among typical Americans (meaning one not captured by political activists and special interests) would inevitably conclude that the right to an AR-15 is not more “sacred” than others’ right to live.

In complex modern societies, there are innumerable ways that one’s actions can harm others without one having to bear any consequences for it. Social media platforms constantly pollute our “information ecosystem” with disinformation and content that is well-known to cause harm (not least to adolescent girls). While the platforms present themselves as neutral conduits of information that is already out there, their algorithms are actively promoting a socially harmful substance.

However, far from paying any costs, the platforms are reaping billions of dollars in profits every year.

The US tech giants are shielded from liability by a 1990s-era law that was originally designed to foster innovation in the inchoate digital economy. The US Supreme Court is now considering a case involving this legislation and other countries around the world are also questioning whether online platforms should be able to avoid accountability for their actions.

For economists, a natural measure of freedom concerns the range of things one can do. The greater one’s “opportunity set,” the freer one is to act. Someone on the verge of starvation — doing what she must just to survive — effectively has no freedom. Viewed this way, an important dimension of freedom is the ability to realize one’s potential. A society in which large segments of the population lack such opportunities — as is the case in societies with high levels of poverty and inequality — is not really free.

Investments in public goods (such as education, infrastructure and basic research) can expand the opportunity set for all individuals, effectively enhancing the freedom of all.

However, such investments require taxes and many individuals — especially in a society that valorizes greed — would rather free ride, by avoiding paying their fair share.

This is a classic collective-action problem. Only through coercion, forcing everyone to pay their taxes, can we generate the revenue needed to invest in public goods. Fortunately, all individuals, including those who have been forced against their will to contribute to society’s investments, may be better off as a result. They will live in a society where they, their children, and everyone else has a larger opportunity set. In such circumstances, coercion is a source of liberation.

Neoliberal economists have long ignored these points and focused instead on “freeing” the economy of what they view as pesky regulations and taxes on corporations (many of which have benefitted massively from public expenditures).

However, where would US business be without an educated labor force, the rule of law to enforce contracts, or the roads and ports needed to transport goods?

In their new book, The Big Myth, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway show how business interests managed to sell the US public on the staunchly anti-government, “free market” vision of capitalism that emerged in the decades after World War II. The rhetoric of “freedom” was key. The captains of industry and their academic servants systematically re-characterized our complex economy — a rich matrix of private, public, cooperative, voluntary and not-for-profit enterprises — as simply a “free enterprise” economy.

In books like Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, and Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, capitalism was crudely equated with freedom. Central to this vision of capitalism is the freedom to exploit: Monopolies should have unfettered power to trample potential entrants and squeeze their workers, and firms should be free to collude to exploit their customers. Yet only in a fairy tale world (or an Ayn Rand novel) would such a society and economy be called “free.” Whatever we call it, it is not an economy that we should want; it is not one that promotes broadly shared prosperity; and the greedy, materialistic individuals that it rewards are not who we should want to be.

The Democratic Party needs to reclaim the word “freedom,” as do social democrats and liberals around the world. It is their agenda which is genuinely liberating, which is expanding opportunities, and which is even creating markets that are truly free. Yes, we desperately need free markets, but that means, above all, markets that are free from the stranglehold of monopoly and monopsony, and from the undue power that big businesses have amassed through ideological myth-making.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is university professor at Columbia University and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

Copyright: Project Syndicate