Warpath: Israel vows revenge on Hizbullah

This episode explores the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah following a deadly attack in Majdal Shams, discussing the geopolitical and human impact of these tensions.

1. The attack in Majdal Shams marks a significant escalation in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, representing a shift in the previously observed rules of engagement.
2. Israel's response to the attack is complicated by its desire to avoid a full-scale war, despite public and political pressure.
3. The episode highlights the unique position of the Druze community in Israel and their complex relationship with both Israeli and Syrian national identities.
4. Discussions about potential paths to de-escalation are overshadowed by the immediate need for Israel to respond to the public and political demands for action.
5. The broader regional implications of the conflict, including the roles of Iran and other regional actors, are critical to understanding the potential outcomes.

1: The Strike

Overview of the rocket attack in Majdal Shams and its immediate aftermath. The chapter outlines the impact on the local community and initial reactions. Anshul Pfeffer: "It was a somber event, devoid of nationalistic symbols, a community mourning its own."

2: Israel's Dilemma

Discusses Israel's strategic considerations following the attack, weighing the need for a strong response against the risk of escalating the conflict. Anshul Pfeffer: "Israel now has to respond, and the response will also be a response which breaks the rules."

3: Regional Implications

Explores how the conflict could affect broader Middle Eastern dynamics, particularly concerning Iran's role and the stability of the region. Rosie Blore: "How dangerous a moment is this for the region?"

1. Stay informed on Middle Eastern geopolitics to understand the broader implications of regional conflicts.
2. Support peace-building initiatives that advocate for diplomatic solutions in conflict zones.
3. Educate others about the complexities of identity and loyalty in multi-ethnic regions like the Golan Heights.
4. Engage with and support humanitarian efforts providing relief to civilians affected by conflicts.
5. Promote dialogue and understanding between different cultural and religious communities to foster peace.

After an airstrike killed 12 children in Israel-controlled territory at the weekend, retaliation in Lebanon seems inevitable. The end result could be a war on multiple fronts. British prisons are in crisis, so what should the new Labour government do (10:07)? And for the past 50 years, the Kronos quartet in America has brought together musical traditions to redefine classical music (22:48).

People

Anshul Pfeffer, Rosie Blore

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

Discussions of violence and war

Nickayla
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Rosie Blore
Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event, shaping your world.

Squalid, overcrowded, with overflowing sewage pipes, Britain's prisons are reaching a crisis point. So what is the new Labour government doing about it? And have you heard of the Kronos quartet? For the past 50 years they've been trying to change the definition of chamber music, bringing together every kind of musical tradition.

First up, though, on Saturday evening, a rocket hit a football pitch in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. Twelve young people were killed and dozens of others wounded. This was the deadliest attack on Israel controlled territory since October 7, when Hamas killed nearly 1200 Israelis and kidnapped around 250. Those who died on Saturday were members of the druze community, an arab sect who have a complicated relationship with Israel, although Israel was quick to pronounce the rocket attack as a direct hit on the country. This is the Durus community in Israel.

Anshul Pfeffer
These are israeli citizens. We hug the Durus community. She is part of Israel. We will defend the citizens of Israel and also the Darus community. Many in the international community have blamed the iranian backed Hezbollah for the strike.

Rosie Blore
Hezbollah has fired around 6000 projectiles towards Israel since October 8, to which Israel has responded in kind. Hezbollah has denied responsibility, partly because the militant group also has a complicated relationship with the Druze. The question now is how Israel will respond with fears that this event brings the region a big step closer to all out war.

Anshul Pfeffer
I arrived early on Sunday morning in Majidal Shams, which is basically the northernmost point in any territory controlled by Israel. It's on the furthest reach of the Golan Heights. Anshul Pfeffer is the economist's Israel correspondent. It was about twelve or so hours after the missile had hit the football pitch. There was still a few people milling around the crater left by the rocket, but most people were already at that early hour preparing for the funerals of the twelve children.

Thousands of Druze, both from the Golan and from Israel, were streaming into the city in complete silence. Everyone was dressed in black. Thousands of plastic chairs had been placed in long, long rows where the funeral procession was supposed to take place.

It was also both a very somber event, and unlike many of the funerals that I've seen over the last nine and a half months here in this war, there were no nationalistic symbols of any kind, no slogans. It was very much a community mourning its own dead, almost devoid of the context of the war going around them.

Rosie Blore
Sounds like a horrendous scene. Of course, there is this context of the war around them. How dangerous a moment is this for. The region since the 8 October when Hezbollah began firing on Israel, the day after the October 7 Hamas attack? We've been talking about a war which has been conducted on a set of unwritten rules.

Anshul Pfeffer
But Hezbollah, when it launches its rockets or its drones, usually targets either israeli military bases or israeli communities which have been evacuated, and therefore there aren't many civilian casualties. And Israel, in its response in this tit for tat war that's been going on now for all this time, likewise hits usually Hezbollah targets, occasionally civilian targets. But those are not the main focus of this war. And we've been talking since the war began about the possibility of a miscalculation, of someone breaking the rules, whether on purpose or by mistake, and a large number of civilians being hit, and how that could change the dynamic of the war, how that could cause an escalation on either side. And what we saw on Saturday evening in Majel Shams was that first major breaking of the rules, a large number of civilians being killed.

Majel Shams, unlike most of the communities to the west on the lebanese border, hasn't been evacuated. Life there has continued more or less as normal, even though they've had a lot of sirens and missile warnings. And the fact that Hezbollah rocket hit directly in the center of Majur Shams, killing those children, means that Israel now has to respond, and the response will also be a response which breaks the rules, and that could cause a chain of further strikes, taking this war to a much more destructive place. Now, both Israel and Hezbollah have massive arsenals, have huge amounts of firepower at their disposal. Until now, they've only used a small proportion of that.

Neither side seems to want to see an all out war, but the dynamic that's being created right now could drag either country into that. What do we know about the people who were killed? Majdal Shams is the largest community of the Golan Druze. The Druze are a small, secretive sect in the Middle east, and those living in the Golan are basically in limbo because on the one hand, they're syrian citizens going back before the six day war in 1967, and on the other hand, they've been under israeli rule and many of them have become Israeli over the half century since. Druz have a very special tradition of, on the one hand, maintaining their cultural and religious autonomy while expressing loyalty to the country in which they're living.

In Israel's case, it means that the Druze citizens serve in the israeli military. Some of them have reached very high ranks. They're in politics. They're very much integrated into israeli society. And on the sidelines of the funeral and certainly further down the hill at the football pitch where the crater from the rocket and the burnt bicycles could be seen, I met a lot of young druze residents of Majdulshams who were saying, we think we're Israelis.

We feel that Israel has to strike back at Hezbollah. We are part of the israeli state and therefore the israeli state has to defend us now. So does the fact that the attack was on the Jews people complicate a response for Israel, or does it make it easier for them not to respond in quite such an inflammatory way, given that there hasn't been these signs of nationalism and fiery speeches at the funeral, as you say? Well, as far as the israeli public is concerned, as far as israeli leadership, certainly in the statements that it's been putting out since the strike on Saturday evening, they're Israelis. This was an attack on Israel.

Even if most of the world doesn't recognize the golan heights as being part of Israel, as far as Israelis are concerned, this is an attack on Israel and on its citizens, and therefore Israel has to respond. Now the response anyway is complicated for the reason that we mentioned that Israel and Hezbollah are careful not to escalate this to an all out war. So whatever shape the response will take, and we haven't yet seen the response, we're talking now a day and a half since it happened will be something which I think will be measured in an attempt not to drag Hezbollah into responding with even more ferocity. What do you think Netanyahu is likely to do next? Well, Netanyahu, from what we've seen in the last nine and a half months, doesn't want to escalate matters with Hezbollah.

There's been the option on the table since the beginning of this war to take a more drastic action against Hezbollah. There have been some ministers and some generals in the security establishment who have urged taking such a path into the outlandish, has so far refrained from that. There's too much still happening in Gaza. Israel, this is war weary, and I think that Netanyahu is not inclined towards a drastic escalation right now. And do you think there's a way to de escalate this, or are we more likely to see an all out.

War on multiple fronts from the negotiators who are working on a possible ceasefire agreement with Hamas? We've been hearing in the last few weeks, actually optimism. We've been hearing that they think there is a deal on the table that Hamas can accept and that Israel has basically proposed that deal, even though the israeli government isn't fully behind it yet. So there does seem to be a way in reaching at least a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Once that happens, I think we will see a de escalation, but that really remains the key.

Can a ceasefire be reached in Gaza? Can Hamas and Israel accept a deal? And I think once that happens, we will see both Hezbollah and the Houthis and other iranian proxies accepting a ceasefire, because from the beginning they've been saying this is all in support of Gaza. So they want to make a point that we were never just going to war for war's sake. We were in support of Gaza.

Rosie Blore
Anshal, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.

Nickayla
Hey, it's Nickayla from side hustle pro. From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive digital tools, award winning insights and business solutions so powerful you'll make every move matter. Visit bankofamerica.com bankyforbusiness to learn more. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America na Copyright 2024 at the end of last year, prison inspectors visited Bedford prison, about 50 miles north of London.

Rosie Blore
Tom Sasse is the economist, Britain public policy correspondent. Bedford prison was built in 1801 and it holds about 300 inmates. Dear Secretary of state, I'm writing to you to invoke the urgent notification process as a result of our unannounced inspection of his Majesty's prison, Bedford. And really, it's a typical victorian prison, but it's become a bit of a focal point for the sorry state of Britain's prison system. I've issued an urgent notification for the following.

Levels of violence were very high, particularly against staff, which was the highest rate in any adult male prison in the country. So what you're listening to is a letter written by Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, in which he said conditions were among the worst he'd ever seen. Bedford had the third highest rate of recorded self harm in the adult male estate. The segregation unit was squalid. Staff were forced to use sandbags and wear Wellington boots due to overflowing sewage pipes after heavy rain.

Nickayla
And Bedford has been issued with repeated warnings of this kind over the years. But to be honest, it's not actually that unusual. Squalid is a word you hear quite a lot when you're reporting on prisons in Britain. Three quarters of the prisoners lived in overcrowded conditions. Most spent more than 22 hours a day locked in their cells.

Rosie Blore
The wings were dirty and there was a widespread infestation of rats and cockroaches. Some cells had broken windows and black mould on the walls. Really, we're stuck in this problem where we keep sending more and more people to prison, but we're not paying. To keep the estate and the size of the prison estate in good nick. There will need to be a coordinated and sustained effort from national as well as local leaders to effect meaningful change at the prison.

Yours sincerely, Charlie Taylor. But wading through overflowing sewage, that's pretty horrifying stuff. There's a lot going on in this letter, but from a policy perspective, what's the worst of it? So the big problem is overcrowding. Britain's prisons are basically full and space for new innovation.

Nickayla
Inmates is on course to run out within months or possibly weeks. So at the moment, there are around 700 spare places left in the system. The Ministry of Justice thinks that it needs around double that for the system to run smoothly. And what prison governors say is that if you get down to about 300 spare places, then they will have to stop accepting new inmates, and that's really when the system starts to break. So presumably this is why Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, put prisoner reform as one of the first things he wanted to deal with.

Yeah, exactly. So, Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions. He's someone who knows the criminal justice system very well and spent most of his career in it before becoming a politician. What I can't pretend is that we can fix everything overnight. The obvious example of that is the mess the government, or the last government made in relation to prisons.

And it was really interesting in his first press conference as prime minister, he said he thinks there are too many prisoners in Britain. And that might not sound like a big statement, but it's not something that any british prime minister has said for quite a long time. We do need to be clear about the way in which we use prisons. We need to get away from the fact that for so many people come out of prison, they're back in prison relatively quickly afterwards, that is a massive problem. Now, Britain isn't America.

We're not as obsessed with incarcerating people as they are, but we have become a bit of an outcome among other rich countries. So we lock up far more people than anywhere else in western Europe. And actually, per head of population, we lock up about double as many people as the Netherlands and Germany do. So the new justice minister has got a lot to deal with, then? That's right.

So, Shabana Mahmood has just been sworn in as the UK's first female muslim lord chancellor. Would you raise the Quran for the oath of allegiance and repeat after me? In her speech at the swearing in, she underlined the urgent and repercussions of the issue. Justice delayed is all too often justice denied, and this has proved particularly true of women and girls who are the victims of violence and abuse. So she gave her first press conference from Bedford prison, trying to sort of draw attention to these problems.

She also then tried to turn the blame onto the previous conservative government. The last government left us with a time bomb ticking away. If we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system and a total breakdown of law and order. The total breakdown of law and order sounds pretty worrying. Is she being hyperbolic there?

It was a little bit. She actually went on to draw this rather dystopian image of vanloads of dangerous people circling the country. But she's right, really, that if you reach this point where prisons can't accept new inmates anymore, then the whole system does start to break down. It would mean police would be forced to be taken off the street and manage overflow cells in police stations. And courts would have to delay sentencing people.

So that would really be a big problem for the criminal justice system. So what is labor saying they're going to do about that? So, its short term fix for this is extending an early release program, which means that some prisoners will be let out when less of their sentence is complete. And what they've proposed is basically allowing certain prisoners to be let out after completing 40% of their sentence. And 50% is the standard here.

Now, some prisoners will be exempt from that, and that includes those with violent sexual or terrorist offences, as well as those who have committed crimes connected to domestic abuse. But this is a change that at least buys Labour some time to try and solve this bigger problem. In her speech, Shabana Mahmoud also talked about speeding up the building of prisons. So there's been a couple of prisons the last government was trying to build that have been held up in the planning system. But to be honest, Labor's unlikely to be able to build its way out of this current crisis.

And in a sense, we've got a bit of history repeating itself here. What do you mean by history repeating itself? Well, the prison population in England and Wales has almost doubled in the last 30 years, and we face this problem of supply not keeping pace with demand before. So Labour, last time it was in government, ended up almost running out of space in the late two thousands and being forced to implement quite a similar early release program. So really the Tories inherited this problem, but they've then exacerbated it.

So throughout the 2010s, they were extending the length of sentences. The average custodial sentence handed down in Crown courts rose by about a quarter between 2012 and 2023. And that's a big reason why the prison population is rising so fast now. So where we've ended up really is a bit of a dead end. We're sort of locking up more and more people, often for not particularly serious crimes.

We're putting them in pretty grotty, overcrowded prisons that's not doing much to rehabilitate them. And then as a result, we've got this very high rate of re offending, one of the highest in Europe. So what does labor want to do differently this time? Labor's hinted at taking a bit of a different approach. So we've got the language from Starmer about there being too many prisoners.

But also his most eye catching appointment so far has been James Timpson as prison minister. Now, James Timpson was the former boss of Timpsons, which is a key cutting and shoe shining business in Britain, but more widely known for employing a lot of former convicts. And hes long been a passionate advocate of prison reform and improving sort of rehabilitation and getting prisoners back into work. Labor has been pretty cautious in its language on this. Clearly, it doesnt want to be seen to be soft on crime, but criminal justice is really going to be one of the interesting areas to keep an eye on, to see how they manage this pressure on prisons, but also whether they try and shift the direction of the last 30 years.

Rosie Blore
Tom, thank you so much. Thank you.

Over the summer, the Economist is launching a new series of its schools briefs, simple guides to some of the most important stories of the day. This time, we're focusing on artificial intelligence, from its origin story through to its existing and future capabilities. And here on the intelligence, we're asking for your questions about AI, which over the coming weeks, our correspondents will attempt to answer. Thank you to those who've emailed in already. You can do the same@podcasteconomist.com.

dot.

John Fassman
What comes to mind when you think of classical music?

Rosie Blore
John Fassman is a senior culture correspondent at the Economist. Maybe it's fragments of Beethoven from your third grade piano lessons, or perhaps it's a hazy memory of a winter's trip to the Nutcracker.

John Fassman
It is unlikely to be George Crumb's jarring 1970 composition Black angel, but this piece inspired a violinist named David Harrington more than anything he'd previously heard or played.

Anshul Pfeffer
We had the radio on late at night in August of that year, and I had never heard anything like that piece. It wasn't a matter of thinking or making decisions. It's just I got magnetized and I didn't have a choice. I had to play that piece, and I've always trusted that feeling. Protests against the Vietnam war had erupted across America, and the piece had struck something visceral that was missing from the classical music Harington had known.

John Fassman
And so, driven by this feeling, he assembled a violinist, violist and cellist into what would become the Kronos Quartet.

More than 50 years later, this ensemble has forever changed the shape and sound of classical music. They've performed for concert halls around the world, feature films, and even Sesame Street's Big Bird. We're the Kronos Quartet. A quartet? What does that mean, four people who play music together?

Kronos has also delighted in breaking genre barriers. They've played pieces by some of the greatest living classical composers, including Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Reilly.

But they've also played songs by Thelonious Monk and Jimi Hendrix.

At its core, though, Chronos has dedicated itself to expanding chamber music's repertoire, adding works like Musa Susso's Tilaboyo to the genre's canon.

Anshul Pfeffer
So after our first concert in 1973, November, I asked my wife Regan, what she thought. She looks right at me and she said, where were the women composers? So at that very moment, that became, okay, look, this doesn't make any sense that half of humanity is not even represented in this music that I know. And it didn't make any sense that I didn't know any african composers, any asian composers. The amount of ignorance that I embodied, and probably still embodied, was enormous.

John Fassman
The quartet would go on to draw upon a dizzying array of musical traditions from all over the world, incorporating indian ragas and the turkish tambour, which you can hear in this piece called Niha Vencerto. Throughout it all, they've developed and performed scores rich with depth and meaning. Every Kronos collaboration, every kronos piece of has a story. It's almost like the music is just the tip of the iceberg. The story behind it is just, that's kind of what it's all about.

Paul Wianco is the quartet's cellist. There's just no wasted moment. Every note in every piece has a deeper meaning than just being a beautiful or terrifying or ugly or rapturous note. Thank goodness it was cello, because I could not imagine myself as a violinist. Oh, you don't want me to answer that question, but I know too many violinists who might be listening.

Over its half century career, the quartet has ordered over a thousand new works and arrangements by artists from around the world, from Pflugu Frelserina by the atlantic pop group Sigur Ross to the peruvian composer inti Figas Vizueta's branching patterns.

They've sold over 4 million albums, more than any other string quartet in history, and have won three Grammy awards. Ahead of its 50th anniversary, the group launched an initiative called 50 for the Future, which is a library, which is digital and free for any quartet to access. More than half the composers commissioned for that project are non white. Many of them are women.

Over its lifetime, the Kronos has had a number of different musicians, most recently two of their stalwarts, John Sherbet and Hank Dutt, who've both been with the quartet for more than 45 years, retired. And two new players have taken their place.

And so on this anniversary, I think it's fair to say that change remains part of their lifeblood. And it's a reminder that the quartet's organism, the quartet as a whole, is greater than the sum of its parts.

Anshul Pfeffer
I think that Kronos is. I think it's bigger than any of us. I think that that is the testament to the work that everybody that's been involved has done.

Rosie Blore
That's all for this episode of the intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcasteconomist.com. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

Nickayla
Hey, it's Nickayla from side Hustle Pro. From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive, exclusive digital tools, award winning insights, and business solutions so powerful you'll make every move matter. Visit bankofamerica.com bankiforbusiness to learn more. What would you like the power to do bank of America na Copyright 2024.