Kernow Damo

Right, so the rodent infestation, the biblical plague of rats that has descended on Israel as I covered a few weeks back has just got dramatically worse you’ll be broken hearted to hear. So much so in fact, it has now earned a funding announcement from Netanyahu’s government of up to three million shekels to help affected councils tackle it. Three million shekels. That’s one helluva rat problem you’ve got there Bibi! A biblical plague now so severe it comes with a budget application form. Presumably the rat king will be most impressed. JDN reported the Environmental Protection Ministry’s announcement on 20 October. That’s one pot shared between eligible councils, with the government offering to reimburse up to 90 per cent of approved expenditure, but when you’re saying up to three million, and phrasing it that way makes me thing, well, are councils having to stump some cash up themselves as well? Just how overrun are they here? Well, the announcement does tell us something about the scale of the response. This involves homes, farmland and four council areas: Eshkol, Sha’ar HaNegev, Sdot Negev and Hof Ashkelon. Residents can put down traps, get someone in and follow the advice. What they can’t do is deal with every surrounding field where the next batch might be breeding and feeding and of course all of this problem to begin with is largely suspected to be down to creating the ideal disease and filth-ridden environment rats flourish in, by turning Gaza into a wasteland.

Right, so Israel needs more soldiers, but a planned operation to arrest draft evaders has been cancelled because the police and army couldn’t agree on how to carry it out. Before they could round anybody up, they fell out over who was coming along. According to Kan, the police wanted three hundred soldiers to help. The army said it wasn’t its job. So the operation was dropped, leaving those recruitment orders outstanding and the personnel shortage unresolved. What a magnificent start to addressing your troop shortages, with both sides invoking work to rule. And Netanyahu? He’s criticising the arrests of religious students, arguing that they undermine efforts to persuade Haredi men to enlist. He wants recruits, but he also wants support from those religious parties demanding protections from the draft, because if he hopes to stay in power he very much needs them on side as much as the likes of Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Apparently, everyone else is supposed to make those promises fit together for him though and it seems a memo might have got lost in the post.

Right, so still Lib Dem leader apparently Ed Davey has decided to jump aboard Andy Burnham’s anti-Green pro-Israel whinging, refusing to work with Greens at local level if they don’t reject the Zionism Is Racism motion, because of course he has, as if we’ve forgotten the Lib Dems are part of the establishment Uniparty. The Green Party membership have voted to call Zionism racist, because it is. Burnham has demanded they reverse it, which they can’t do, at least until the next Conference where they could try, but no party leader can do so and now Davey has turned up to jump on another party’s bandwagon – again - with a letter announcing that his party won’t enter a national partnership with them while that policy stands either. Lib Dem leadership for you: Copy someone else but wait a week to do so. And just like Burnham, he’s also now reached into councils where Greens and Liberal Democrats already work together, asking the Green councillors involved to publicly reject their own party’s policy and campaign to overturn it or that’s the end of their working relationship as well. Labour and the Lib Dems in lockstep, doffing their caps to Israel and refusing to work with those taking a stand against the racist ideology that underpins it, its creation, the dispossession of the people who’s land that was and everything it has done in the Middle East since 1948, all of which we are more aware of today than we ever have been before. That means even more councils and even more councillors are now affected insofar as how local services can be delivered, all for the sake of Israel. You’ve negotiated an agreement, worked through the disagreements, got on with running the council. Now the leader of your partner party – another one - wants you organising against your own members. Apparently getting the library open on a Monday also requires an acceptable position on Israel. Your bins and recycling depend on Israel, what you pay your Council Tax for is apparently dependent on a given viewpoint of Israel and not the one most of us currently hold.

Right, so Albania’s government signed a new agreement with Israel on 12 October all while Prime Minister Edi Rama had already been facing months of protests, which have of course in the days since that signing, got dramatically worse, so it’s quite the moment to announce relations with Israel were reaching their highest ever point. Outside government, people have been rather less impressed with how things were going, I don’t know if burning down the Supreme Court might have been a big enough hint though. Of course, the anger didn’t begin with this agreement, but then Israel wasn’t exactly too far away from this part of the story either. It began around luxury resort developments associated with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, because apparently marrying into that family doesn’t provide quite enough opportunities to acquire more things. There were proposals for Sazan island and the mainland coast near Zvërnec, raising objections about protected landscapes, public access and who was getting to decide what happened to them. Now, you can understand the appeal if you’re looking for an exclusive Mediterranean holiday. It’s a slightly different proposition if you live there and discover that your country’s exciting new future is being negotiated without you knowing enough about the terms. People wanted answers. The demonstrations continued. Opposition to the developments grew into demands for Rama to resign, which is where we are now.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu’s office is questioning a reported settler attack, and Belgium has a rather awkward contribution to make to it: one of the damaged vehicles belongs to its own consulate. A French mayor says he was assaulted too into the bargain, so Belgium is demanding accountability and pressing for further EU sanctions on the ongoing settler menace and very much becoming rather more difficult for Israel to wave away as hostile publicity or just meddling kids. The visit began with something fairly ordinary. Bernard Baudoux, the mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries in northern France, was in Taybeh as part of cooperation between the two towns. European representatives and Catholic officials were there, and members of the delegation joined Palestinians gathering olives as part of the annual olive harvest. For the visitors, a gesture of solidarity. For the families alongside them, work that helps pay the bills. Then came the confrontation.