On The Perils Of Israel’s War Fever

Israel seems on the brink of achieving the war with Iran that Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying all year to provoke. Until now, Iran had not taken the bait. It had not replied in kind to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus, and its assassinations of several of Iran’s main allies, including the killings carried out on Iranian soil.

Instead, Iran’s futile 200 missile barrages (in April, and again this week) were brief, symbolic, did little harm and were cited by Iran as a response solely to a specific Israeli provocation. Before firing this week’s barrage, Iran would have known full well that most (if not all) of its missiles would be intercepted and destroyed by the comprehensive US/Israeli air defence systems. On both occasions, Iran’s actions were calibrated to strike a pose of defiance, while not achieving anything destructive enough for Israel to use it as a pretext for a wider war.

Retaliation, however, seems to be a right the West feels only Israel is entitled to exercise. Netanyahu has publicly called this week for regime change in Iran, and promised it will come sooner than anyone expects. If Israel’s invasion of Lebanon drags the West into a regional war that sets the Middle East ablaze then – judging by Israel’s rhetoric - so much the better.

Meanwhile, and in some other universe entirely, New Zealand continues to witter on about the need for the ceasefire that Israel has consistently spurned in Gaza, and in Lebanon. Like a broken record, New Zealand keeps calling for the two state solution that Netanyahu rejected in January, and that Israel’s Parliament voted overwhelmingly in July to reject.

Plainly, Israel is not interested in diplomatic solutions. Its plan for perpetual war has no endgame in sight – only the military destruction of its enemies, and the degradation by force of the living standards of its neighbours for the rest of this century, if need be.

Into Lebanon, again.

As in 1978, 1982, and 2006 Israel is invading southern Lebanon again. Reportedly, it has thrown double the numbers of troops across the border this time as it did in 2006. Although Western media obligingly repeat Israeli propaganda that this is a “limited” operation, the immediate military aim appears to be to create a permanently de-populated, free -free zone across the 30 kilometres swathe of land south of the Litani river that runs parallel to the (120 kilometres long) border between Israel and Lebanon.

Do the math: in square kilometres that’s a big area for Israel to try and control for any length of time. In particular, the more mountainous regions to the east (away from the coast) would seem to be ideal terrain for Hezbollah’s guerrilla fighters.

A million people in Lebanon – one fifth of the entire population- has already been displaced by the Israeli advance, with many of them heading north to Beirut. Most of the people being displaced from the south are Muslim – almost equally Shia and Sunni - and they are now being pushed north into areas of the country occupied by Christian and Druze communities, thereby creating further tensions within a country that already qualifies as a failed state, both politically and economically.

In the usual media calculus that we have seen in Gaza, non-Israeli lives are cheap. On the same day that our news bulletins were reporting the deaths of eight Israeli troops in southern Lebanon the country, the deaths of 55 Lebanese in Israeli air strikes on residential areas of Lebanon were going by all but unreported here. As we saw in Gaza, the death toll in Lebanon is vastly disproportionate, although Israel continues to play the victim card regardless.

Invasions though are easy to launch but much harder to sustain. Reportedly, many of the Israeli troops now in Lebanon are reservists, who will be doing limited tours of duty before returning home to play their part within Israel’s domestic economy. Hezbollah are adept at waging guerrilla warfare from the networks of tunnels they have built in the eastern, more mountainous areas of the country. To repeat: Israel has no diplomatic end game. That’s one reason why getting bogged down in southern Lebanon as winter approaches must be far less attractive to Netanyahu than leap-frogging Lebanon, and triggering a head-on conflict with Iran.

A likely starting point will be Israeli air strikes on Iran’s means of oil production. Currently, those oil fields are almost Iran’s only way (via bargain price oil sales to China) of earning foreign exchange.

The Price of Luxon Not Getting it

It seems that MPs may be 10 times more likely than the rest of us to be landlords, and own rental or investment properties. Earlier this year, Renters United calculated that nearly one third (28%) of parliamentarians own rental or investment properties, compared to an estimated 2.8% of the adult population.

Just as turkeys don’t vote for an early Christmas, it is pretty easy to see why sheer self-interest might inspire so many parliamentarians to restore to landlords a huge tax break on their property investments. Just as easy to see why so many MPs oppose a tax on the capital gains from property speculation. No surprise either that the majority of MPs voted to reduce the “bright line” period in which landlords incur tax liabilities if they flip their properties too soon, in order to get their mitts on those capital gains. If this country has a housing problem, it's partly because we have a problem in the House.

This week, these conflicts of interest came under the spotlight again, after news emerged that PM Christopher Luxon had flipped his Wellington apartment for a $180,000 capital gain, on top of the $200,000 gain he made on a recent sale of a property he owned in Onehunga. Moreover, the reduction in the “bright line” test that the coalition parties enacted means that Luxon has also benefitted by $70,000 on the sale of that Wellington apartment alone.

True to form, Luxon has spun this issue as being all about envy – “I get it, I’m wealthy” – rather than outrage at the glaring lack of fairness within our tax system. Wages get taxed, wealth from property speculation doesn’t. That’s obviously unfair, and it widens the gaps in income inequality. Luxon doesn’t get it.

According to Luxon, a capital gains tax would destroy the incentives for wealth creators. Really? That’s another thing he doesn’t get. In every other developed country, a capital gains tax exists (a) to deter the speculation that only drives up house prices (b) to encourage productive investment and (c) to help grow the economy in ways that create good jobs, and lift living standards. Unless given a prompt card to read, Luxon seems to have no natural interest in such matters.

Luxon didn’t get it either, when his family got its $8,000 Clean Car Discount just before he removed that option for everyone else. He didn’t get it when he picked up a $52,000 housing allowance while living in his own apartment, and only paid the money back after the arrangement became politically unsustainable.

To repeat: there is no evidence that New Zealand envies the rich and successful. Quite the contrary. We love claiming them as our own, even when their link to this country is tenuous. All we want is for rich people to return something to the community by paying their fair share of tax. If the rich did so, there would be more to admire about them, and less to resent. No such luck. If New Zealand appears at times to be heading in the wrong direction, it may be because the country’s leader doesn’t seem to have a moral compass.

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