The Sixteen-Seat Waiting Room

News 12 gives Netanyahu’s bloc 50 seats and Eisenkot’s 54. News 13 gives them 52 each. The pollsters move two seats across the room. Neither side reaches the 61-seat door.

The rest of the Knesset does not belong to either bloc: 12 seats for the Arab parties and four for Hendel-Zelekha. Ra’am holds four and the Joint List eight in both surveys.

Hendel-Zelekha also gets four in both. The arithmetic is not a mystery. It is a waiting room with 16 chairs and two men insisting they booked the building.

The opposition has already arranged its spare votes. Bennett and Lapid’s Together signed a surplus-vote agreement with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Eisenkot’s Yashar signed with Yair Golan’s Democrats. The parties have divided the leftovers before the country has chosen the meal.

News 12 gives Itamar Ben-Gvir six seats and the Smotrich-Feiglin joint slate five. News 13 gives Ben-Gvir seven and the Smotrich-Feiglin slate five. The religious right is splitting its vote into competing claims on the same government. Netanyahu needs every seat. His allies have made fragmentation their contribution.

The surplus-vote agreements can shift a final seat after the initial allocation.

The polls show two blocs without a majority. The paperwork is already voting.

#IsraelElections #Netanyahu #Eisenkot #Knesset

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The Election-Year Safety Net

Benjamin Netanyahu needs Yair Lapid because Israel is in an election campaign.

Reopening the budget to increase military spending requires opposition support, so the prime minister asked the opposition leader for a safety net.

Lapid agreed to more money for the defense establishment. Then he named who would pay for it.

“I support the proposal and support transferring the funds, because the IDF needs strengthening,” he said. “But the budgetary source cannot be raising taxes on the middle class and reservists.”

His condition was a cut to coalition funds, including money tied to ultra-Orthodox exemptions from military service.

Likud said state revenues exceed forecasts, the deficit is lower than forecast, and the defense budget can rise without tax increases.

The party said coalition funds had never come close to the sums Lapid named. The government wants the opposition’s votes.

Lapid wants the government to choose between the IDF and its own coalition contracts.

The request concerns tens of billions of shekels for the military. The government’s wider 13-year procurement plan is worth NIS 400 billion.

These are separate figures: the immediate budget opening funds current needs, while the long-term plan covers future procurement.

Netanyahu asked for an election-year safety net. Lapid offered one with a political trapdoor under it.

#IsraelPolitics #DefenseBudget #Netanyahu #Lapid3

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The Prize and the Shipment

NAZA, the documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.

The film draws on anonymous interviews with 24 men who said they served in Israel’s Unit 8200.

They describe AI-assisted target selection in Gaza and systems that estimated the civilian toll in advance.

The story broke two years earlier. On April 3, 2024, +972 Magazine and Local Call published Abraham’s investigation into Lavender. The Guardian published a detailed account that day.

CNN and Reuters followed on April 4. The Washington Post examined the reporting on April 5, and The New York Times placed Lavender and the earlier Gospel reporting in its account of AI warfare on April 10. The Venice audience received the director’s cut of an open file.

The reporting described Lavender, a system that sources said marked Palestinians as suspected militants, and Where’s Daddy?, a tracking tool that reportedly alerted operators when a marked person had returned home.

Israel said Lavender was a database that cross-referenced intelligence sources, not an AI system that determined whether someone was a target or authorized an attack.

On April 4, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the administration was reviewing the reporting and could not independently verify its claims at that stage.

In May, the State Department sent Congress its NSM-20 report. It said it was “reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces had used U.S.-supplied weapons in ways inconsistent with international humanitarian law or established practices for reducing civilian harm.

The report also treated Israel’s written assurances as “credible and reliable.”

The assessment addressed conduct already documented during the war; the assurances covered how Israel said it would use U.S. weapons going forward.

That distinction allowed Washington to criticize the record and keep the weapons flow intact.

Venice gave the film a prize. Washington kept shipping weapons to Israel.

#Gaza #Israel #AI #VeniceFilmFestival

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The Bypass Breaks

Saudi Arabia built the East-West Pipeline to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. A drone strike turned the bypass itself into the bottleneck.

The 1,200-kilometer line moves crude from Saudi Arabia’s eastern fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea. After the September 10 attack, Riyadh shut it down and Yanbu halted loadings.

Saudi Aramco has canceled or postponed late-September cargoes for European refiners, while market sources expect further delays into October and possibly November.

No Saudi crude has left Yanbu since September 11, according to Vortexa shipping data cited by Argus.

Two regional officials told the Associated Press that repairs to a major pumping facility could take three to five weeks. One said the pipeline might resume partial flows during repairs but could not estimate the volume.

Reuters’ industry sources put the range between a partial restart within days and repairs lasting five to six weeks.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright chose the optimistic end of that range. On September 15, he said crude should be moving through the pipeline “within days.”

Satellite images show fire damage and blackened ground around pumping stations on the route. Riyadh has not released a full damage assessment.

Iranian channels call it total destruction. Washington calls it a matter of days. The oil buyers have already received the only forecast that matters: canceled cargoes.

#SaudiArabia #Oil #EnergySecurity #RedSea

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Cairo, Tehran and Muscat Pick Up

Mohammed bin Salman landed in Cairo, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met him at the foot of the aircraft.

Egypt’s president then told the Saudi crown prince that Saudi and Gulf security form part of Egypt’s national security.

Cairo needs the Red Sea open because ships that avoid Bab al-Mandab also avoid the Suez Canal’s toll booths.

While the Saudi heir went to Cairo, an Iranian government aircraft using the call sign IRAN06 entered Saudi airspace and landed in Riyadh.

Flight-tracking records confirm the landing. The aircraft has previously carried senior Iranian officials, including the defense minister and members of the Supreme National Security Council. Neither Tehran nor Riyadh publicly identified its passenger or mission.

One day earlier, U.S. Vice President JD Vance confirmed direct American talks with the Houthis. Mohammed bin Salman had met Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, in Jeddah.

Saudi Arabia is holding a summit in Cairo, hosting an unexplained Iranian government flight in Riyadh, and watching Washington speak directly to the force firing at it.

In Muscat, Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about reducing tensions and preparing the ground for further diplomacy.

Rubio acknowledged Oman’s “important role in deescalation.” The region has assembled its usual emergency architecture: Cairo for statements, Riyadh for mysterious arrivals, Muscat for the real phone calls.

#SaudiArabia #Egypt #Iran #Oman

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The CENTCOM Switchboard

Saudi Arabia will not normalize relations with Israel. It has asked Israel for intelligence support against the Houthis anyway, with U.S. Central Command carrying the message.

Regional diplomats told The Jerusalem Post that Riyadh requested help through CENTCOM. The talks concern intelligence on Houthi deployments and possible operations against them. Riyadh wants the intelligence picture. It does not want the handshake.

The distinction matters. Military contact can remain inside a security conference. Normalization demands the handshake, the flags and the public credit.

Last week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir joined military chiefs from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt in Germany.

They discussed the Iran war and Houthi escalation. The meeting put Israeli and Saudi officers in the same room. It did not create an embassy.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, met Mohammed bin Salman and other Saudi officials in Jeddah. A source familiar with the talks told Reuters the meeting was “good.” CENTCOM has become the channel that moves intelligence between governments that do not admit to speaking.

Former Mossad official Oded Ailam wants Israel to make the channel public: real-time intelligence, air defense and protection for Saudi oil facilities in exchange for formal normalization.

Riyadh is asking for one piece of that package. It wants the intelligence without the ceremony.

#SaudiArabia #Israel #Houthis #CENTCOM

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Lebanon’s Pilot Zone

Israel says troops from its 55th Brigade found an overnight position and a tunnel shaft in a security zone in south Lebanon.

They also found launchers loaded with 32 rockets aimed at Israel. The military said Hezbollah had left the equipment there before the ceasefire. The pilot zone has a pilot problem.

U.S. Ambassador Michel Issa visited Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh near Nabatieh, one of the areas where the Lebanese Armed Forces are supposed to show that the state, rather than Hezbollah, controls the ground.

President Joseph Aoun rejected Israeli claims that the army is failing to perform its assigned role. Beirut says the pilot is flying. Israel says the runway is full of launchers.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam told parliament that Lebanon entered the war that began in March without choosing it and without asking its people. He said the two wars since October 2023 have killed nearly 9,000 people, wounded more than 30,000 and displaced over a million.

He put the economic cost at more than $27 billion. The Lebanese state wants the exclusive right to decide questions of war and peace. It is asking Arab states to finance the consequences of not having it.

Sami Gemayel, leader of the Kataeb Party, warned that Lebanon could slide toward “Somalization” if the government fails. The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors are due to meet at the U.S. State Department in Washington.

Beirut will argue for sovereignty. Israel will argue that sovereignty begins when the Lebanese army owns the ground, not merely the paperwork.

#Lebanon #Hezbollah #Israel #BorderSecurity

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The Right’s Prenup Fight

Likud told Itamar Ben-Gvir to stop bluffing. Ben-Gvir replied that Netanyahu was already trying to replace him with Gadi Eisenkot.

The right is campaigning against a left-wing government while arguing over who gets excluded from the right-wing one.

Likud said Netanyahu had repeatedly pledged to form his next government from the parties already in the national camp.

It told Ben-Gvir to focus on stopping an Eisenkot government that included Yair Golan, Avigdor Liberman and the Arab parties.

Otzma Yehudit said Netanyahu’s office was telling foreign governments that Ben-Gvir would not serve in the next cabinet.

The party also accused Likud of promoting a unity government and avoiding joint appearances with Ben-Gvir, while making empty promises at home that he would be included.

Otzma demanded that Netanyahu publicly rule out sitting with Eisenkot and Golan.

Ben-Gvir delivered the personal version to Netanyahu: “I love you, but I want a full-on right-wing government.”

Netanyahu’s coalition begins every election with the same romance. By September, the partners are asking each other for written proof that they will not leave.

Itim, a religious-services advocacy group, asked the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Amos Dror, Shas’s No. 6 candidate and supervisor of the Haifa religious council.

Itim said Dror had failed to resign at least 100 days before the election, as the law requires of senior public officials. The right cannot agree on its cabinet. It is now litigating its waiting list.

#IsraelElections #Netanyahu #BenGvir #IsraeliPolitics

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Erdogan’s Grand Strategy Needs Small Hands

Turkey speaks like a regional empire. DİSK says 6.7 million children live in poverty, about one in three children nationwide.

Arzu Çerkezoğlu, president of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, said 15 percent of children work.

Employment among 14-to-17-year-olds has risen 70 percent, while enrollment in that age group has fallen by 8.1 percentage points.

MESEM is the Education Ministry’s vocational education program. DİSK says its enrollment has grown more than fivefold over the past decade.

The program sends students into workplaces under the name of training, while employers receive labor with fewer rights and lower costs.

DİSK recorded 93,517 children injured in workplace accidents over the past nine years. At least 546 children died at work. That is eighteen classrooms.

Erdogan’s government sells national grandeur abroad. At home, poverty pushes children into factories, workshops, farms and other workplaces.

Employers call it training. Empires need soldiers. This one is hiring children.

#Turkey #Erdogan #ChildLabor #MESEM

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The Anti-Corruption State Eats Its Own

Ukraine has discovered a new form of national resilience, every corruption scandal comes with a sequel.

Operation Midas targeted what prosecutors described as a $100 million corruption scheme around Energoatom, the state nuclear-energy company. Former Energy and Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko became a suspect.

Then NABU, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and SAPO, its Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, opened Operation Forrest Gump. Investigators say a criminal group laundered UAH 150 million, about $3.35 million, to post bail for a Midas suspect.

The investigation reached into the Presidential Office. Iryna Mudra, a former deputy head of the office, was detained after investigators named her as a suspect. On August 25, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ordered her held for 60 days and set bail at UAH 20 million, about $485,000.

Prosecutors say the case involves money laundering and an alleged effort to seize control of state-owned Sense Bank.

The inquiry also crossed into the Prosecutor General’s Office. NABU and SAPO detained Serhii Kropyva, head of the cyber unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, over allegations that he protected fraudulent call centers and helped launder their proceeds.

The agencies created to clean up the state are now investigating the people who were supposed to investigate everyone else.

Ukraine is fighting Russia at the front. In Kyiv, former ministers, presidential-office officials, state bankers and prosecutors appear in the same corruption plot.

Europe sends reconstruction money. Kyiv keeps producing new characters for the case file.

#Ukraine #Zelenskyy #Corruption #NABU

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#Green #diesel #price #California

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America’s Empty Magazine

The Pentagon’s inspector general says the war with Iran drained U.S. weapons stocks and exposed a defense industry that cannot replace them as fast as Washington fires them.

Operation Epic Fury cost $33.4 billion from February 28 through June 30, 2026. The Pentagon spent $22.3 billion on munitions, another $3.7 billion on replacing lost equipment, and $7.4 billion on operating costs.

The inspector general found “strategic inventory shortfalls” and bottlenecks in munitions replacement.

The losses included four F-15s destroyed, one F-35 and seven KC-135 tankers damaged, and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reapers destroyed.

Iranian strikes also damaged or destroyed hundreds of U.S. military facilities across the Middle East. America’s most expensive military machine spent four months proving that hangars burn too.

The Congressional Budget Office put the war’s cost through August 1, 2026, at $38.1 billion. It estimated another $2 billion to $3 billion for every additional month of fighting. Rhetoric is in surplus. Missiles require factories, rocket motors and explosives.

The U.S. Navy is considering buying warships from Japan and South Korea, a step it has not taken since World War II.

The superpower that sells security to the world is shopping abroad for the hardware to keep delivering it.

#UnitedStates #Iran #Pentagon #DefenseIndustry

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The Bedouin Endorsement That Wasn’t

Gadi Eisenkot’s party announced that eight Bedouin local leaders backed him for prime minister. By morning, several said they had never endorsed him. They had asked whether Ra’am would enter his government.

Muayad al-Hayeb, head of the Tuba-Zangariyye local council, initially said Eisenkot had promised to push for bringing Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am into a future coalition.

Eisenkot called that “a complete lie,” released video from the September 15 meeting, and said he had not discussed the next government’s makeup. Al-Hayeb later withdrew the claim and said Eisenkot had not told him he would form a government with Ra’am.

The meeting was meant to show Eisenkot making inroads into the Arab-Bedouin vote and cutting into Ra’am’s base. Instead, four local leaders told Haaretz they had rejected a request to endorse him. Municipal chiefs deliver budgets, not voting blocs. They deal with whoever controls the purse strings.

Eisenkot says any coalition he leads will require acceptance of the Declaration of Independence, recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and acceptance of universal service.

He says parties that do not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization will remain outside the coalition. Netanyahu says Eisenkot cannot form a government without Arab parties. The campaign is already selling red lines wholesale, months before anyone has counted a seat.

Israel has seen this movie. On Channel 20, two days before the March 2021 election, Naftali Bennett signed a pledge that he would never let Yair Lapid become prime minister, “not even in a rotation,” and would not form a government dependent on Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am.

Bennett later formed a rotation government with Lapid, served first as prime minister with Yamina’s seven seats, and brought Ra’am into the coalition. In a September 4, 2026, interview with The Jerusalem Post, Bennett acknowledged that he broke the promise.

Campaign vows are Israel’s most renewable resource.

#Israel #Elections2026 #GadiEisenkot #Raam

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The Pollster Protection Racket

Channel 13 gave Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 54 seats to Gadi Eisenkot’s 52, despite Likud falling to 18. Ofer Winter’s Amcha Israel supplied six seats, while Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha fell below the threshold.

Channel 16 showed the mirror image: Eisenkot’s bloc at 53 and Netanyahu’s at 52. Israel’s next government currently exists as two spreadsheets arguing over a rounding error.

Naftali Bennett said he was “really worried” after Eisenkot’s No. 2 stopped short of ruling out a rotation with Netanyahu.

“We will not allow a rotation with Netanyahu,” Bennett said. Later that day, Bennett met Avigdor Liberman; their offices said they discussed the steps required to win the election.

The state is arranging bodyguards for the same candidates. A ministerial committee authorized Shin Bet chief David Zini to decide whether, and how, to protect Eisenkot, Yair Golan and Winter until the 26th Knesset is sworn in. Justice Minister Yariv Levin was reportedly the only minister present at the committee meeting.

Eisenkot has proposed an ethics code requiring lawmakers who defy the party line to vacate their Knesset seats.

He called the defections of Amichai Chikli and Idit Silman “despicable,” after previously praising Chikli’s departure as principled. The standard is portable: a defector is a conscience when he joins your side and a contamination event when he leaves it.

President Isaac Herzog says he will do everything possible to prevent another election if the vote produces a deadlock. Separately, he is still pushing for mediation toward a plea deal in Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial and says he has left the door open to a future pardon request.

The parties are writing promises. Their candidates are arranging security. The coalition negotiations are already waiting behind the curtain.

#Israel #Elections2026 #Netanyahu #GadiEisenkot

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The NAZA™ Speech-Control Bundle

The film NAZA apparently failed to become an international crisis. So the government is working to make it a domestic one.

Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the immediate preparation of what he calls the “NAZA laws.” One proposal would raise the maximum no-proof-of-damages award in defamation suits twentyfold, to 1 million shekels.

The other would permit stripping citizenship from people who “defame” IDF soldiers or the state abroad. “We will revoke citizenship from anyone who slanders IDF soldiers around the world,” Netanyahu said. “We will hit them deep in the pocket.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir called the allegations in the film lies and baseless manipulation. He said the IDF is “the most moral army in the world,” acts according to its values and international law, and ordered an inquiry into whether classified material was leaked for the production.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar also asked Shin Bet chief David Zini to examine who supplied the filmmakers with testimony and materials, including whether an enemy actor was involved.

Meanwhile, professionals in the IDF and Foreign Ministry reportedly reached the opposite conclusion: stop attacking the filmmakers and lower the media profile.

Their assessment was that NAZA had drawn little attention abroad, prompted no protests or questions from foreign governments, and that public attacks would hand Israel a second story about silencing speech. “We are working in an orderly and planned manner and not acting from the gut,” an internal message said.

That leaves two Israels in the same office complex. One says: ignore a film that has not travelled. The other dispatches Shin Bet, drafts citizenship-stripping legislation and raises the price of criticism to 1 million shekels.

Diplomats told Channel 12 that Netanyahu’s office was fueling the dispute for political reasons during an election campaign. The movie may have had a limited audience. The campaign trailer has the whole country.

#Israel #NAZA #Netanyahu #FreedomOfSpeech

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The Europe That Wants Its Receivables Back


Salvini has found his constituency in the roughly 350 Italian companies still operating in Russia.

Italy’s deputy prime minister calls them “heroic,” offers to serve as their conduit, and says Rome should preserve commercial ties with Moscow.

One hundred have production in Russia; about 250 work in import-export. Their complaints run from payment restrictions and customs to logistics and capital transfers.

Salvini did not call for lifting sanctions today. He chose the more durable demand: end the war, then restore “full” economic, energy, trade and cultural relations with Moscow.

He also said Italy could oppose efforts by some EU states to block visas, including tourist visas, for Russian citizens. The ceasefire, in this version, arrives with gas contracts, business-class tickets and a queue of firms asking where the payments portal went.

Italy-Russia trade has already shrunk from about €30 billion in 2013 to less than €8 billion expected this year, according to Salvini. The sanctions architecture did not erase business interests; it turned them into a political constituency with a ministerial spokesman.

This is the European split in its commercial form. Brussels sells a unified Ukraine line. National parties sell cheaper energy, restored exports and “peace” without explaining whose terms will define it. Salvini is not attacking sanctions head-on. He is setting the table for the day after them.

#Italy #Russia #EuropeanUnion #Ukraine

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Saudi Guarantees, Kohat Delivery

Pakistan says it will go “to any extent” to defend Saudi Arabia. On Friday, a vehicle packed with explosives struck a gate beside a mosque inside the Kohat Police Lines compound during prayers.

The early count was seven dead and more than 30 wounded. Those were initial Rescue 1122 figures from the first evacuation.

By the evening, Kohat Hospital’s medical superintendent reported 22 dead, including 16 police officers and six civilians, and 103 wounded. The blast tore through the mosque’s outer section and collapsed part of a wall.

Police said seven armed militants entered the compound after the vehicle-borne bomb exploded. Police and Counter-Terrorism Department units killed six of them, including a suicide bomber and a sniper.

A clearance operation continued as the casualty reports rose. Dawn reported that Ittehadul Mujahideen, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack.

On Thursday, Pakistani military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said Islamabad would go “to any extent” for the security of Saudi Arabia and the Haramain.

He cited Pakistan’s commitments under the Makkah Defense Agreement and the bilateral defense pact with Riyadh.

On Friday, Pakistan failed to keep a bomb out of a mosque inside a police compound.

#Pakistan #Kohat #Terrorism #SaudiArabia

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