Climate change will raise sea levels, cause apocalyptic floods and displace almost a billion people

Matthew Rozsa

SALON
Mon, August 28, 2023 

Lone penguin standing on ice floe Getty Images/Andrew Peacock

When climatologist Dr. Twila Moon described a future of climate change-caused horrors as "baked in," she may not have intended to create a darkly apt pun for global warming. Certainly the future she laid out for sea level rise, a term for an increase in the level of the world's oceans, is a very grim one. As humans burn fossil fuels and emit so many greenhouse gases that they unnaturally overheat the planet, scientists agree that complex processes result which culminate in rising sea levels.

"Sea level rise from our past of heat trapping emissions is really baked in for the next few decades," Moon, who is the deputy lead scientist at NASA's National Snow and Ice Data Center explained. "We are going to be seeing sea levels rise for the next several decades."

Moon says this will occur regardless of the actions undertaken today, and humanity will need to plan accordingly. There will be an increased number of inland floods, permanently changed coastlines and infrastructure damage, including everything from water sewage to transportation. If the billions of people who live near the coasts decide to move further away from the ocean, there will also be a massive population shift fueled by climate refugees.

Salon wanted to learn more about the consequences of sea level rise — how bad the inevitable will be, and how much worse it will turn out if humanity fails to control the "super emitters" among us (that is, the wealthy who are disproportionately responsible for climate change). At the same time, there is also cause for hope, if for no other reason than our species is armed with that most powerful of weapons: Our scientific knowledge.

It was that very knowledge which led mankind to collectively sign the Paris climate agreement in 2015, which primarily exists to commit the species to restrict global warming to 1.5°C — and certainly no higher than 2°C — above pre-industrial levels. To understand the base case scenario for sea level rise due to climate change, one must start with a hypothetical universe in which humanity meets its Paris climate agreement targets.

"If we are able to keep below 2º C degrees warming above pre-industrial levels, the likely range of global sea-level rise by 2100 is between 0.4 and 0.7 m (1.3 f to 2.3 f), with a median projection of 0.5 m (1.6 f)," explained Dr. Ben Hamlington, research scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dr. William Sweet, oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in an email to Salon. They later added that when it comes to the United States and its coastline, "this would be about 0.7 m of rise on average above 2000 levels (about 0.6 m [2 feet]) above 2020 levels) due to other factors like regional changes in land elevation, ocean heating and circulation and gravitation and rotational effects from land-based ice melt and discharge."

Of course, this is only the absolute best case scenario. There are a wide range of possible outcomes in terms of climate change predictions, and with each one comes a different situation for regions on or near the world's coasts. If you want to look at your own community and how it will fare amidst various contingencies, NASA has a very helpful (albeit imperfect) website for doing that: A sea level projection tool that takes users to a map and a panel where they can select specific scenarios in terms of climate change. (The SSP1-2.6 and SSP1-1.9 scenarios are those ones that meet the 2015 accord targets.) Yet if you want to know the worst case scenario, Hamlington and Sweet offer a succinct summary.

"The worst case is associated with the potential for rapid ice sheet loss and subsequent sea level rise," they wrote to Salon. "'Rapid' still refers to changes occurring over decades and not years, but if some of the deeply uncertain physical processes in the Antarctic come into play, sea level rise could approach 2 meters by 2100 [6.6 feet] and substantially higher after 2100. This is among the most active areas of research and our understanding of the possible upper end of sea level rise continues to evolve."

They later narrowed their scope to analyzing merely the United States, arguing that "a worst case scenario that we have developed for the U.S. is defined by the high sea level scenario of 2 meters by 2100 globally. At a regional level, this high sea level scenario would equate to a 1.8 meters [5.9 feet] rise along the US NW Pacific coastline to 2.6 meters [8.5 feet] along the Western Gulf coast. In short, U.S. coastlines would fundamentally change and put most coastal infrastructure/systems at risk of serious damages or total failure based upon today's vulnerabilities."

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To understand why the worst case scenario is so bad, one needs to start with grasping how "sea level rise is insidious," in the words of Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "It is mostly, about 60% due to melting of land ice (glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica) that puts more water into the oceans. Most of the rest is from thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms up."

As such, the effects of sea level rise depend on a number of variables including "the rise in ocean waters [versus] the land" as "in many places land is subsiding because of ground water withdrawals etc. And locally that can be a major factor, but it is far from universal," Trenberth said. It also depends on highly unpredictable factors like the tide and whether there are strong storm surges.

"There is a fair bit of resilience in coastal regions because of tides and storms; it is when all factors coincide that risk of inundation and erosion etc is greatest," Trenberth wrote to Salon. "Modeling of ice sheets is primitive and uncertain. The West Antarctic ice is grounded below sea level and is vulnerable and could collapse at some point. But sea level rise is relentless. Because of uncertainties it is generally best not to say what [sea level rise] is at a particular date but rather that the amount in question occurs between these dates...  It is not a matter of if but when."

Moon also alluded to the importance of recognizing that the experts are uncertain about the finer details of how climate change will manifest itself. Indeed, even their gloomier projections do not necessarily spell doom for people who live in coastal regions. Humans can be surprisingly resilient, after all.

"People have created all sorts of ways to live in more challenging places that flood," Moon reflected to Salon when asked about the likelihood of mass climate refugee crises. "Someone who maybe lived in a more standard construction might decide to build themself something on stilts, and they can live in the same place with a very different amount of flooding. And they might have to get around in different ways. There might be different services available to them. You can't think of it in as it entirely black and white as far as who's going to stay put and who's going to move."

At the end of the day, "a lot depends on us," Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, reflected to Salon. "If we act to reduce carbon emissions dramatically in the decades ahead, we can probably keep sea level rise to roughly a meter by 2100. That would be hugely disruptive but not civilization ending. It would mean the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, but it would take place over decades, and managed, orderly retreat would be possible."

By contrast, Mann said, "if we continue with business-as-usual fossil fuel burning, we could be looking at 6 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, the displacement of nearly a billion people, and we can't rule out the possibility that it would happen on an accelerated timeframe. So we still have much to say about this."

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Aussie lender NAB to cut 10% jobs in markets division - AFR

Reuters
Sun, August 27, 2023 

The National Australia Bank Logo is seen on a branch in central Sydney

(Reuters) - National Australia Bank is preparing to cut around 60 jobs of the 600-staff at its markets division and undertake a broad restructuring exercise across its seven business, the Australian Financial Review said on early on Monday citing sources.

The country's second-biggest bank would begin the layoffs as early as this week but is yet to announce the changes internally, AFR said.

The move, if confirmed, would come after reports of larger peers Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac Banking Corp axing of several hundred jobs to reduce higher costs amid high interest rates and inflation.

Layoffs at NAB would include capital markets types working within its corporate and institutional banking unit, where its markets business sits with a team of about 600.

NAB did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking comments outside normal business hours.

(Reporting by Poonam Behura in Bengaluru; Editing by Alison Williams)

Climate activists target jets, yachts and golf in a string of global protests against luxury

DAVID BRUNAT
Sun, August 27, 2023 

 

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Climate activists have spraypainted a superyacht, blocked private jets from taking off and plugged holes in golf courses this summer as part of an intensifying campaign against the emissions-spewing lifestyles of the ultrawealthy.

Climate activism has intensified in the past few years as the planet warms to dangerous levels, igniting more extreme heat, floods, storms and wildfires around the world. Tactics have been getting more radical, with some protesters gluing themselves to roads, disrupting high-profile sporting events like golf and tennis and even splashing famous pieces of artwork with paint or soup.

They’re now turning their attention to the wealthy, after long targeting some of the world’s most profitable companies – oil and gas conglomerates, banks and insurance firms that continue to invest in fossil fuels.

“We do not point the finger at the people but at their lifestyle, the injustice it represents,” said Karen Killeen, an Extinction Rebellion activist who was involved in protests in Ibiza, Spain, a favorite summer spot for the wealthy. She said the group is protesting unnecessary emissions such as superrich individuals going to pick up a pizza by boat. “In a climate emergency, it’s an atrocity,” she said.


Killeen and others from climate activist group Futuro Vegetal — or Vegetable Future — spraypainted a $300 million superyacht belonging to Walmart heir Nancy Walton Laurie. Protesters held up a sign that read, “You consume, others suffer.”

In Switzerland, some 100 activists disrupted Europe’s biggest private jet sales fair in Geneva when they chained themselves to aircraft gangways and the exhibition entrance. In Germany, climate group Letzte Generation — which translates to Last Generation — spraypainted a private jet in the resort island of Sylt, in the North Sea. In Spain, activists plugged holes in golf courses to protest the sport's heavy water needs during hot dry spells.

In the U.S., Abigail Disney, the grand-niece of Walt Disney, was arrested at East Hampton Town Airport, New York, in July along with 13 other protesters for blocking cars from entering or exiting the parking lot. It was the first of up to eight actions carried out in the exclusive Hamptons area. Activists also crashed a golf course, disrupted a museum gala and demonstrated outside some private luxury homes.

“Luxury practices are disproportionately contributing to the climate crisis at this point,” said University of Maryland social scientist Dana Fisher. According to a 2021 report by nonprofit Oxfam, if all planet-warming emissions were attributed to the people producing them, the richest 1% will be responsible for around 16% of emissions by 2030. “It makes a lot of sense for these activists to be calling out this toxic behavior.”

Richard Wilk, an economic anthropologist at Indiana University, said luxury travel is “the real culprit” in the emissions of the ultrawealthy.

He published estimates of top billionaires’ annual emissions in 2021 and found that a superyacht — with permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools — emits about 7,020 tons of carbon dioxide a year, over 1,500 times higher than a typical family car. And private aircraft in Europe alone last year caused more than 3 million tons of carbon pollution, equivalent to the average annual CO2 emissions of over half a million EU residents, according to the nonprofit Greenpeace.

But Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann warned that attention away from the fossil fuel companies — which are responsible for at least 70% of all emissions — and toward the rich could be “playing right into the hands of the fossil fuel industry and the ‘deflection campaign’ they’ve used to divert attention from regulation by emphasizing individual carbon footprints over the much larger footprint of polluters.”

“The solution is to get everyone to use less carbon-based energy,” whether wealthy or lower-income people, he said.

David Gitman, president of Monarch Air Group, a Florida private air charter provider, encouraged activists to think twice about whether they're taking the right approach.

“If their activism goes toward some sort of actual assistance to real programs to make real change like sustainable aviation fuel, like carbon offsets, I think that this kind of activism can help achieve those results,” said Gitman. “Now, if they go out and they spray-paint a private jet in an airport in Europe, is that going to get those results? In my opinion, no.”

Fisher, of the University of Maryland, was also skeptical that the activism was effective in changing behavior by the wealthy.

In some cases, governments have stepped in with regulations. France is cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys, and earlier this year, the Netherlands' Schiphol Airport also announced plans to ban private jets.

But as protests escalate, Fisher and Wilk say they could still move the needle toward behavior change.

“Public shaming is one of the most powerful ways of controlling people,” Wilk said. “It acts in a lot of different ways to embarrass people, to make them more conscious of the consequences of their actions.”

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Mary Katherine Wildeman in Hartford, Conn., and Guillermo González in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.






Climate Activists Against Luxury

Environmental activists of Stay Grounded and Greenpeace demonstrate while handcuffing themselves to a plane during the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE), at the Geneve Aeroport in Geneva, Switzerland, May 23, 2023. Climate activists have spraypainted a superyacht, blocked private jets from taking off and plugged holes in golf courses this summer as part of an intensifying campaign against the emissions-spewing lifestyles of the ultrawealthy.

 Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP

Illegal logging thrives in Mexico City's forest-covered boroughs, as locals strive to plant trees

MARIA VERZA
Sun, August 27, 2023

MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s a strange scene: in the forest-covered mountains of Mexico City — which most people outside Mexico don’t know exist — a brigade of farmers and forest rangers plant inches-high pine saplings in a recently cut stand of trees, even as the sound of chainsaws can be heard nearby.

Illegal logging has taken a huge toll in recent years on the forest-covered southern half of the city of 9 million inhabitants.

“They have finished off the forest,” Alfredo Gutiérrez, 43, said with sadness.

The extent of the devastation is astonishing. Just a year ago, “it was always dark, even if the sun was shining, because of all the trees that were here,” Gutiérrez said of the grove near his town of San Miguel Topilejo — on the edge of the encroaching urban sprawl.

While most people associate Mexico City with traffic jams and polluted air, actually about one-half of the city’s territory is rural, almost all of it in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta and Tlalpan. About 20% are protected nature areas, like the mountains covered with pine and fir forests that adjoin the neighboring state of Morelos.

Those trees guarantee the recharge of aquifers that supply nearly 20 million people living in the city — and its suburbs. They also help clean the polluted air of the city and serve to contain high temperatures.

Why the illegal tree cutting has gotten so bad so fast is a matter of debate.

Local farm communities — many of whose members are paid as park rangers or soil conservation workers by the city government — think that organized crime gangs have moved into the illegal logging business.

It would not be a far stretch: Such gangs have long used the rural communities on the city’s edge to set up safehouses to hold kidnapping victims and its forests as dumping ground for the bodies of their victims.

Some of the villagers suggest the federal government’s crackdown on the sale of contraband gasoline and diesel stolen from government pipelines may also play a role, saying those who used to make a living selling fuel at roadside stands may now have turned to logging.

Mexico City authorities say they have identified criminal groups behind illegal logging, and in the past few months they have struck back, mounting operations involving hundreds of police officers and soldiers who raided clandestine sawmills in the mountains.

The city also sponsors reforestation efforts, but it is a race against time. Many of the tiny saplings won’t survive, and it would take decades to replace the majestic mature forests being cut.

In 2010, forests covered about 100,000 acres (40,500 hectares) of the city’s total area of 370,000 acres (150,000 hectares), according to the activist group Global Forest Watch.

The group says the city lost 121 acres (49 hectares) of forest in 2022 — as much as in all of the four previous years together.

The problem is particularly acute in San Miguel Topilejo, which — because it has forests and is crossed by highways — makes it an attractive place for gangs to cut logs and move them to sawmills.

Pablo Amezcua, a natural resources engineer who works in San Miguel Topilejo, said that before 2020, only about 500 acres (200 hectares) had been affected by logging. Amezcua says that by mid-2023, a total of about 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares) had been fully or partially cut.

Combating illegal loggers is a Sisyphean task.

According to data from the country's attorney general for environmental protection, there have been 122 illegal logging complaints since 2013 in Mexico City, with more than half of those so far in 2023.

On a recent day, a group of forest rangers and volunteers set out on a reforestation mission in trucks from San Miguel Topilejo, going down narrow dirt tracks in the forest that are barely wide enough for the small trucks to pass.

They were escorted by soldiers and armed officers of the National Guard.

At the wheel of one of the trucks, a 24-year-old looked nervously from side to side as he piloted the vehicle. Like many of the rangers interviewed for this story, he asked not be named citing security reasons.

He said that when he passed the same spot two days before, there were trees where now there are felled branches and heaps of pine boughs, which could be dangerous fuel in the next forest fire season.

Riding next to him is a 58-year-old ranger who says he was shot in his abdomen by illegal loggers he tried to stop in November. A year before he says he was forced to flee his community after his family received threats.

Sadly, his situation is not unusual. Mexico is the world's deadliest place for environmental and land defense activists, according to a 2022 report by the nongovernmental group Global Witness. Mexico saw 54 activists killed in 2021, the highest number in the world.

The fact the forests have survived is itself a feat.

As Mexico City’s population exploded between the 1950s and 1970s, urban sprawl crept steadily up the forested mountain slopes on the city’s southern boroughs. All kinds of logging had already been prohibited but some believe the prohibition fueled illegality.

Marina Robles, the head of Mexico City’s environment department, said the causes behind illegal logging are many, from real estate interests to organized crime.

For starters, organized crime gangs that were once content to use the forests as a hide-out and body-dumping ground, now want to control every activity, licit and illicit, that occurs on what they consider “their” turf. That includes illegal logging.

A couple of months ago, local residents — left to their fate against the gangs — protested by blocking highways leading out of the forest.

In response, authorities started the raids in June, with the help of 500 soldiers.

By early August, acting Mayor Martí Batres said authorities have identified al least five organized criminal logging groups in the city and had seized 32 lumber yards and 28 illegal sawmills within city limits. A dozen more sites were found in the neighboring state of Morelos.

Most were semi-portable, fly-by-night operations.

“They find a place that has the right conditions, they set up the sawmills, cut down trees, all very rapidly, from one day to the next; they start milling the logs and then pack up the sawmill,” Batres said.

He hopes to pass tougher penalties for illegal logging but, at present, it is hard to even arrest illegal loggers, who have attacked rangers and even soldiers, at one point dousing an army patrol with gasoline.

In return, some local residents set fire to logging trucks.

But it is an unequal battle.

“They have high-powered rifles,” said the ranger who was wounded in November. “These criminals completely out-gun us.”

 Escorted by Mexican National Guards, locals gather to plant pine saplings in the San Miguel Topilejo borough of Mexico City, Aug. 13, 2023. Illegal logging is particularly acute in San Miguel Topilejo, which, because it has forests and is crossed by highways, makes it an attractive place for gangs to cut logs and move them to sawmills.

 (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

Members of US Congress make a rare visit to opposition-held northwest Syria

ELLEN KNICKMEYER and ABBY SEWELL
Updated Sun, August 27, 2023



Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., speaks House Rules Committee prepares a measure for a floor vote at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Three U.S. Congress members, including Fitzgerald, made a brief visit to opposition-held northwest Syria on Sunday, Aug. 27, the first known trip to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)


BEIRUT (AP) — Three Republican members of the U.S. Congress made a quick trip Sunday into opposition-held northwest Syria in the first known visit to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years. They urged the Biden administration and regional partners to keep up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The roughly one-hour stop was a signal of the significant support on Capitol Hill for the opposition in Syria's long civil war.

U.S. Rep. French Hill of Arkansas, one of the three lawmakers, told The Associated Press by telephone after leaving Syria that the trip was the latest of his several to the region this summer to press the U.S. government and Arab allies to continue pushing for a political resolution to the war.

Hill said his message was in behalf of “those in Syria who want to have their own representative government."

The conflict began in 2011 after Assad launched a campaign to crush what began as a peaceful uprising against his family's autocratic rule. Assad has held on to power despite the uprising thanks in large part to the armed intervention by allies Russia and Iran. But the conflict has splintered the country, killed at least 300,000 civilians, and displaced half of Syria's prewar population of 23 million.

The trip comes at a time that Middle East leaders have begun restoring relations with Assad's government. By doing so, the Arab leaders are breaking sharply from the U.S., which is pushing to keep Assad isolated over government abuses that the United Nations says include repeated use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.

The U.N says 300,000 Syrian civilians died in the first 10 years of the conflict.

Hill and his fellow lawmakers, Ben Cline of Virginia and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, entered Syria early Sunday from Turkey via the Bab al-Salama crossing in northern Aleppo province.

They were greeted by orphans who attend Wisdom House, a school for orphans that is a project of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition organization that facilitated the lawmakers’ trip.

Hill’s constituents in Arkansas have been leading donors to the school. “It was an emotional day for me to see those children, holding up pictures of their parents who’d been murdered by Assad's regime, getting a hug and a kiss from them," he said.

The children were students at Wisdom House, a school for orphans that is a project of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition organization that facilitated the lawmakers’ trip. Hill's constituents in Arkansas have been leading donors to the school.

The lawmakers met with opposition and humanitarian leaders, including Raed Saleh, head of the White Helmets, a volunteer group of first responders known for extracting civilians from buildings flattened by bombing.

Saleh spoke with the lawmakers about the political status of the conflict in Syria and on continuing humanitarian efforts for victims of a earthquake earlier this year in Turkey and Syria, the White Helmets said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Security concerns meant there was no public announcement of the trip beforehand. Hill spoke from neighboring Turkey, where the congressmen also held a series of meetings.

The last-known trip by a U.S. lawmaker to Syria was in 2017, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited U.S. forces stationed in northeast Syria’s Kurdish region. McCain had previously visited Syria and met with armed opposition fighters.

Also in 2017, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, visited Damascus, the capital, and met with Assad, a decision that was widely criticized at the time.

Since the beginning of the uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria, the U.S. government has backed the opposition and has imposed sanctions on Assad’s government and associates over human rights concerns. Washington has conditioned restoring relations with Damascus on progress toward a political solution to the 12-year conflict.

A growing number of Arab leaders are moving to end their own isolation of Assad, in line with arguments that engagement is the best way to address the flow of refugees, illegal drugs and other problems for the region from Syria. The 22-member Arab League recently reinstated Syria as a member after cutting ties earlier in the Syrian war.

Hill said he had engaged Middle East governments repeatedly over the past three months about “what are the ramifications of the Arab League’s admission of Syria back to the League and yet asking nothing” of Assad in return in terms of greater political freedoms and an end to rights abuses.

Hill also is pushing for the U.S. and Arab countries to press Assad harder on Syria's status as the world's leading global trafficker of Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine.

Congress late last year passed a mandate for the U.S. to target Captagon smuggling in the Middle East, and President Joe Biden signed it into law.

Hill accused Biden of not doing enough to pressure Assad to adopt political reforms and stop the flow of that illegal drug, an important source of revenue for the Assad government.

"What I believe Syria needs, and the same thing the U.S. needs, is American leadership, Hill said.

Neither the State Department nor the White House had immediate comment on the Republican lawmakers' trip.

Control of northwest Syria is largely split between the Turkish-backed opposition groups and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that was originally founded as an offshoot of al-Qaida and is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. In recent years, the group’s leadership have attempted to publicly distance themselves from their al-Qaida origins.

The Turkish-backed opposition groups have regularly clashed with Kurdish forces based in northeast Syria, who are allies of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State.

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Knickmeyer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Omar Albam in Idlib, Syria contributed to this report.

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Opinion: The Golda Meir movie starring Helen Mirren fails the test of history

Opinion by Noah Berlatsky
Sat, August 26, 2023 

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Noah Berlatsky - Noah Berlatsky

Editor’s Note: Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) is a freelance writer in Chicago. The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

In Guy Nattiv’s new feature film “Golda,” which arrived in theaters Friday, Helen Mirren plays Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the crisis of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Mirren is not Jewish, and she wears heavy makeup to look like the unglamorous, chain-smoking politician.

Accordingly, the movie is inevitably fodder for an ongoing discussion about whether non-Jewish performers should play Jewish roles. There have been thoughtful arguments pro and con, but the focus on who should be cast can sometimes drown out questions about what that casting is doing

In “Golda,” casting Mirren — a White, internationally renowned, British actress — is a metaphor for the way the film blurs Israeli identity with a generalized White, Western identity. By doing so, it attaches Israel’s moment of crisis to a tradition of triumphalist American military films that validates the virtue of the US, of Israel and of whiteness.

From Israel’s founding in 1948, the country was attacked by Arab states multiple times. In 1967’s Six-Day War, Israel’s superior air force wiped out much larger armies from three Arab countries. After that victory, it controlled the Golan Heights, captured from Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula, captured from Egypt, among other territory.

Israel’s sweeping success in 1967 made its leaders and its populace feel invincible, and they were caught almost completely by surprise when Egypt and Syria staged a joint attack in October 1973 on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. They made significant advances, threatening all of Israel, until Israel ultimately turned the tide to retain the land it had acquired in 1967.

The movie is based on these historical facts. But which facts get emphasized in a 100-minute movie matter a good deal. “Golda” presents itself as a straightforward telling of the Yom Kippur War, incorporating clips of archival footage to cement its authenticity, and Nattiv is careful to choose details that emphasize Israeli perspectives and virtue.

Yet Israeli failures in the war were based on extreme overconfidence. Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had “utter contempt for the fighting qualities of the Arab armies.” That contempt was very much unwarranted; as one Israeli company commander said, Egyptian forces fought with determination and “operated exceptionally well.” The movie does little to acknowledge the quality of Arab soldiers, or how completely they took the Israelis by surprise.

There’s also remarkably little discussion of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Sadat was a brilliant and, in many ways, courageous head of state who, before the war, had attempted to convince Israel to exchange its territorial gains for diplomatic peace. Israel, understandably mistrustful, refused. Sadat then moved irrevocably towards war — in order, many historians believe, to put himself in a stronger position from which to negotiate peace and the return of Sinai.

The Arabs’ stunning military victories early in the conflict were in large part due to Sadat’s innovative use of Soviet antitank and antiaircraft technology, carefully and cautiously deployed, according to Abraham Rabinovich’s exhaustive “The Yom Kippur War.” Rabinovich writes that “The supreme victor in the Yom Kippur War was the man who initiated it — President Sadat,” who “parlayed an audacious military move … into an audacious diplomatic process that restored [Egypt’s] lost lands.”

The movie does end with archival footage of Sadat and Meir at the peace table, pointing the way to the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which has held to this day. But the success is presented as Meir’s, while Sadat’s own maneuvering and desires, to say nothing of his assassination in 1981 by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who saw the treaty as a betrayal, are barely touched on. His perspective and his history are almost entirely omitted.

But there is one non-Israeli who is given star treatment in the film: US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (played by Liev Schreiber). Kissinger was an important figure; American willingness to provide military supplies and diplomatic pressure was crucial to Israeli victory.

The movie suggests, though, that Washington’s decisions were motivated by morality rather than realpolitik. According to the film, Meir appealed to Kissinger’s Jewish roots and sense of decency by reminding him, subtly and not so subtly, of antisemitic atrocities in Russia and Germany. If this happened, it’s certainly not treated as an important exchange in most accounts of the crisis. Instead, Kissinger saw the war as a way to increase US influence in the region and counter the Soviet Union, allied to the Arab states, at the height of the Cold War.

Golda’s evocation of her own family’s history of oppression makes her, and Israel, more noble and sympathetic, making even her threat to murder a surrounded Egyptian army seem honorable and necessary. Similarly, Kissinger’s supportive role in her drama frames him as a bulwark against war crimes and global atrocities — which, given his part in the bombing of Cambodia, is misleading, to put it as mildly as possible.

The leveraging of past crimes against Jewish people to erase or legitimize violence by Jewish people is especially disturbing, given the current right-wing Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territory.

These historical elisions and tweaks are given a poetic coherence by images of Golda. Nattiv’s camera lingers on Mirren’s made-up, lumpy, characterful features, twisted with care and sadness, and on her stooped figure descending a long interior staircase. She stands, resolute and tiny, amidst her generals, or faces down a board of inquiry with a steady gaze and a cigarette. There are many scenes of her in the hospital fighting cancer, the pain of her illness merging with the pain of Israel’s crisis.

Mirren’s performance of vulnerability, courage and triumph is familiar because Western cinema is replete with stories of White military underdogs struggling and overcoming non-White foes. “Birth of a Nation” (1915), “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), “Red Dawn” (1984), “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) — there are no shortage of examples.

The point here isn’t that Israel was the villain in the war. The Arabs launched a surprise attack and were clearly the aggressors. Sadat praised Hitler numerous times over his career; Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had his own grim history of human rights atrocities. And though the Kremlin didn’t want a war any more than the US did — Sadat had expelled Russian diplomats in 1972 because they refused to provide him with more offensive weapons — once the war started, Russia provided aid to advance its own interests, just as the Americans did.

Instead, the point is that the Yom Kippur War was a complicated conflict for territory and geopolitical advantage, abetted by prejudice and intransigence on every side. “Golda” turns that into a straightforward story of righteous White Western victimization and ultimate triumph. It’s able to do that, in part, because it makes sense, to Western audiences, for a famous White actor like Mirren to play a Jewish leader like Meir who also broadly fits in the cultural category of “White” for most Western audiences.

White non-Jewish actors can be cast as White Jewish characters because White Jewish people (like White Irish people or White Italian people) are, at the moment, generally perceived and accepted as White. That may create problems of Jewish representation in various ways — as when the non-Jewish Bradley Cooper bafflingly decides to strap on a giant caricature of a Jewish nose to portray Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein. It can also allow Jewish stories to be assimilated to, and used to justify, standard Hollywood narratives that place virtuous White heroes at the center of history.

There can be some pleasure for Jewish people in seeing major film actors in major films portray Jewish heroes. But there have to be ways of doing that that don’t involve whitewashing the ugly actions of Kissinger. If we are really committed to peace and justice, Jews and non-Jews alike need more honest, and more difficult, narratives than the one we see when we look at Helen Mirren’s makeup.

 CNN.com

WAR CRIME

Reported Israeli strike damages Aleppo airport and puts it out of service

ALBERT AJI
Sun, August 27, 2023

This is a locator map for Syria with its capital, Damascus. (AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

DAMASCUS (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit the international airport in the city of Aleppo in northern Syria early on Monday, damaging a runway and putting it out of service, Syrian state media said.

State news agency SANA, citing a military official, said Israeli planes coming from the Mediterranean Sea carried out the attack at around 4:30 a.m. There were no casualties reported.

The airport has been targeted several times this year, including two attacks in March that also put it out of service.

There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations. Often the strikes target Syrian military forces or Iranian-backed groups.

Israel has targeted airports and sea ports in the government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region joined Syria’s 12-year conflict helping tip the balance in favor of President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Aleppo, which suffered widespread destruction in Syria’s civil war, was again heavily damaged in the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria in February.

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This story corrects that earthquake was in February.

Bella Hadid took on an Israeli far-right leader for saying Jewish rights are more important than Palestinian rights. Now the far-right is hitting back.

Lauren Edmonds
Sat, August 26, 2023 

Bella Hadid (left) criticized Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Instagram.VALERY HACHE/ Amir Levy/Getty images

• Israel's national security minister made some controversial remarks about Palestinians this week.

• Bella Hadid criticized the minister in a now-deleted Instagram post.

• The minister lashed out at Hadid on Friday, calling her an "Israel hater."

Supermodel Bella Hadid criticized Israel's far-right national security minister over his comments about Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, sparking an online tiff between the two.

Itamar Ben-Gvir said Jewish settlers' right to life and safe travel in the occupied West Bank is more important than the rights of Palestinians during an interview with Israeli media on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. His remarks came after two Palestinian attacks on Israelis in recent days.

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's Minister of National Security.ATEF SAFADI/Getty Images

"My right, the right of my wife and my children, to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs," Ben-Gvir said, referring to the biblical name for the West Bank. "The right to life comes before freedom of movement."

Ben-Gvir's comments prompted a response from Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, in a now-deleted Instagram Stories post on Friday.

"In no place, no time, especially in 2023 should one life be more valuable than another's. Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture or pure hatred," the post read.

The outlet reported that Hadid also posted a video from an Israeli rights group showing Israeli soldiers in the West Bank telling residents that Palestinians are not allowed to walk on a certain street because it's reserved for Jews.

 

On Friday, Ben-Gvir responded with a pointed statement on X, formerly called Twitter, that referred to Hadid as an "Israel hater."

"I saw yesterday that you took a segment of mine from an interview, and distributed it to the whole world in order to make me out to be racist and dark," the translation of the post read. "I invite you to Kiryat Arba, to see how we live here, how every day Jews who have done nothing wrong to anyone in their lives are murdered here."

He added: "So yes, the right of me and my fellow Jews to travel and return home safely on the roads of Judea and Samaria outweighs the right of terrorists who throw stones at us and kill us."

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu also weighed in later that day, supporting Ben-Gvir's remarks in a statement posted to X.

"Israel allows maximum freedom of movement in Judea and Samaria for both Israelis and Palestinians," the statement read.

The statement said Palestinian militants "take advantage of this freedom of movement to murder Israeli women, children and families by ambushing them at certain points on different routes."

Representatives for Israel's Ministry of National Security, the Prime Minister's Office, and Hadid did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

On Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there are 645 obstacles, including checkpoints and roadblocks restricting movement for Palestinians in the West Bank. The statement said more than half the obstacles have a "severe impact" on Palestinians by restricting their access or movement to certain areas.

Hadid has advocated for Palestine in the past, including in 2021 when she joined a "Free Palestine" march in New York City." She and her sister, Gigi Hadid, have both shared social media posts in support of Palestine.

"I love my family, I love my Heritage, I love Palestine," she wrote in a now-deleted post. "I will stand strong to keep their hope for a better land in my heart. A better world for our people and the people around them. They can never erase our history. History is history!"

A Top Israeli Official Finally Admitted the 

Truth About Justice in Israel

Ella Sherman

Thu, August 24, 2023 

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir confessed on Wednesday that he believes his family’s rights are more important than the freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank—exposing the truth of the two-tiered system of justice.

“Sorry Mohammad, but that’s just the reality,” Ben-Gvir told journalist Mohammad Magadli on Channel 12 News. “My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” he added, using another name for the occupied West Bank.

Ben-Gvir’s entitled statement came after Magadli asked him about violent crime and terrorism and the Israeli government’s failure to address it.

This isn’t the first time Ben-Givir has expressed anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views: He has been convicted of eight charges for inciting racism and supporting Kach, a right-wing anti-Palestinian terrorist organization in Israel.

South Korean memorial to draw Chinese tourists sparks controversy for lionising Korean-born composer of PLA anthem

South China Morning Post
Sun, August 27, 2023

A plan by a South Korean city to attract Chinese tourists with a memorial for a Korean-Chinese composer known for both writing the Chinese military's anthem and fighting against Seoul during the Korean war has sparked controversy.

The city of Gwangju has proposed building a park memorialising Korean-born Zheng Lucheng who wrote the anthem of the People's Liberation Army.


In 2009, Zheng Lucheng was named one of the "100 heroes and model figures who made outstanding contributions to the founding of New China" by the Chinese government. 

Park Min-shik, South Korean Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, made a post on Facebook on Tuesday criticising the plan, saying it "denies the spirit of the constitution" to commemorate someone who "led the way to tear down liberal democratic Korea".

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"When the tragedy of the Korean war broke out, he organised a war consolation performance group and comforted the Chinese army. Not only that, but he abandoned his nationality and became a Chinese citizen, writing songs for the Chinese Communist Party and ending his life as a Chinese," Park said.

"As the minister of patriots and veterans affairs, I express strong concern over the plan [by] Gwangju to commemorate the person who took the lead in overthrowing a free Republic of Korea with taxpayers' money. It should be completely withdrawn."

The city government of Gwangju, which is in southwestern South Korea and is Zheng's birthplace and hometown, announced its plans to create a memorial park commemorating Zheng in May 2020. The work, including a statue and paintings of Zheng, is expected to be finished by the end of this year.

Zheng's history as a musician for the Chinese and North Korean army that fought against South Korea during the Korean war is controversial in South Korean politics. The ruling conservative People Power Party issued a statement calling for an immediate halt to construction of the memorial park commemorating the "communist military cheerleader".

Kang Gi-jung, the mayor of Gwangju and a member of the opposition Democratic Party, countered that the city "neither regards Zheng as a hero nor does it disparage him," and said Zheng was a symbol of friendship between South Korea and China which would help attract more Chinese tourists.

"In the eyes of Gwangju, he is an outstanding musician," Kang said, while also describing the musician's personal pain as in keeping with a period when Korea was occupied by Japan.

"Thanks to his achievements ... many Chinese tourists visit Gwangju. We will discover and invest in Zheng as a historical and cultural resource of the city."

Zheng, who is also known by his Korean name Jeong Yul-seong, is considered one of the greatest modern composers of military songs in China. In 2009, he was named one of the "100 heroes and model figures who made outstanding contributions to the founding of new China" by the Chinese government for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his speech at Seoul National University in 2014, also mentioned Zheng's name as one of the examples of the people who supported the "friendly exchanges" between the two countries.

Zheng was an anti-Japanese resistance activist who is known to have been involved in the Korean independence movement in China, where he studied music.

In 1939, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and composed military songs for the PLA. He returned to Korea - in North Korea - after it gained independence from Japan in 1945, where he taught music and worked as chief of the North Korean army band, writing its military anthems.

After the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, Zheng returned to China following a request from then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and obtained Chinese citizenship to organise music consolation groups for the Chinese military sent to fight against South Korea and the allied forces.

Zheng died in 1976 and was buried in Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, a main resting place for the highest ranking government figures in Beijing.

He is best known for composing military songs and marches in China and North Korea. In addition to the PLA song, he is known for writing "Ode to Yanan", "March of the Korean People's Army" and "Tumen River".

The Jeong Yul-seong memorial society issued a statement on Thursday saying it was "not helpful" for the memorial construction to be stopped suddenly, and it was inappropriate to have an "excessive ideological dispute".

However, Park said of mayor Kang's remark that seeking to draw Chinese tourists was a "poor excuse" for building the memorial park. The minister told Channel A on Wednesday he was considering filing a constitutional appeal to stop construction.

"According to that logic, if you want to attract Russian tourists, you have to build Stalin Park, and if you want to attract Japanese tourists, you have to build Japanese Emperor Park," Park said.

"It makes no sense. Money is important, but national identity is a value that we cannot concede, so I don't think we can justify it by attracting tourists."

South Korea's patriotism and veterans affairs ministry considered conferring a posthumous honour on Zheng in 2018 after former president Moon Jae-in visited China in 2017.

But it was rejected because of the composer's support for China and North Korea during the Korean war and after an investigation declared there was uncertainty around his purported work for the Korean independence movement.

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