Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

32 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Hmmmm interesting but wouldn't that be you? 

Not the first that your wrong. 

I remember when I was telling you about buying the market and tesla and all you did was let your emotions get in the way. 

In the end my call on the market and tesla was right. 

 

Bit of capitalist speculation for greed is different to a holocaust - did you even look up any of the massacres ??

Here take a look at any of them and you'll realise oct 7th was nothing more than a reaction that netanyahu encouraged for more land grab

1. Haifa Massacre 1937 2. Jerusalem Massacre 1937 3. Haifa Massacre 1938 4. Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939 5. Haifa Massacre 1939 6. Haifa Massacre 1947 7. Abbasiya Massacre 8. Al-Khisas Massacre 1947 9. Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947 10. Jerusalem Massacre 1947 11. Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947 12. Tantura Massacre 1948 13. Jaffa Massacre 1948 14. Deir Yassin Massacre 1948 15. Khan Yunis Massacre 1956 16. Jerusalem Massacre 1967 17. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982 18. Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990 19. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994 20. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002 21. Gaza Massacre 2008-09 22. Gaza Massacre 2012 23. Gaza Massacre 2014 24. Gaza Massacre 2018-19 25. Gaza Massacre 2021 26. The genocide in Gaza 2023 is still ongoing.

 

[Fernando 6,608]

7 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Bit of capitalist speculation for greed is different to a holocaust - did you even look up any of the massacres ??

Here take a look at any of them and you'll realise oct 7th was nothing more than a reaction that netanyahu encouraged for more land grab

1. Haifa Massacre 1937 2. Jerusalem Massacre 1937 3. Haifa Massacre 1938 4. Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939 5. Haifa Massacre 1939 6. Haifa Massacre 1947 7. Abbasiya Massacre 8. Al-Khisas Massacre 1947 9. Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947 10. Jerusalem Massacre 1947 11. Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947 12. Tantura Massacre 1948 13. Jaffa Massacre 1948 14. Deir Yassin Massacre 1948 15. Khan Yunis Massacre 1956 16. Jerusalem Massacre 1967 17. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982 18. Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990 19. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994 20. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002 21. Gaza Massacre 2008-09 22. Gaza Massacre 2012 23. Gaza Massacre 2014 24. Gaza Massacre 2018-19 25. Gaza Massacre 2021 26. The genocide in Gaza 2023 is still ongoing.

 

I started to look but I'm not sure if you have. Seems like you have an agenda and you hate Israel, just like your hatred for musk blinded you to the reality.

But as I searched the first one this came up:

The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine, when 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.

 

And a reaction? So terrorism is okay to do because of reaction? Yeah you lost me. 

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

4 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I started to look but I'm not sure if you have. Seems like you have an agenda and you hate Israel, just like your hatred for musk blinded you to the reality.

But as I searched the first one this came up:

The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine, when 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.

 

And a reaction? So terrorism is okay to do because of reaction? Yeah you lost me. 

Try looking at others. 

But if you want to talk about terrorism -there was none in the middle east until terrorist gangs arrived

''The IDF was comprised of three different terrorist groups that terrorised the British, Palestinians, and anyone that stood in their way. The three terrorist groups were Irgun, Haganah and Lehi. They committed so many atrocities before 1948. Those Irgun, Haganah, and Lehi terrorists went on to be Prime Ministers and senior Israeli government officials.'' Reuters

UK gave up with them because of all the atrocities -such as hanging British soldiers in olive groves and booby trapping the bodies with explosives.

The US realised the geo importance of a sattelite state amongst all the oil reserves.

Secondary was getting the US population onboard to value a foreign country more than the US. Hence the creation of evangelical christians that give unwavering support.

As the bible says  ''there are none so blind that shall not see''

Thought you were better than that tbh, being a christian.

 

 

[Fernando 6,608]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Try looking at others. 

But if you want to talk about terrorism -there was none in the middle east until terrorist gangs arrived

''The IDF was comprised of three different terrorist groups that terrorised the British, Palestinians, and anyone that stood in their way. The three terrorist groups were Irgun, Haganah and Lehi. They committed so many atrocities before 1948. Those Irgun, Haganah, and Lehi terrorists went on to be Prime Ministers and senior Israeli government officials.'' Reuters

UK gave up with them because of all the atrocities -such as hanging British soldiers in olive groves and booby trapping the bodies with explosives.

The US realised the geo importance of a sattelite state amongst all the oil reserves.

Secondary was getting the US population onboard to value a foreign country more than the US. Hence the creation of evangelical christians that give unwavering support.

As the bible says  ''there are none so blind that shall not see''

Thought you were better than that tbh, being a christian.

 

 

But what does that has to do with what I'm saying?

If those are true then that's wrong. 

I'm arguing for what is going on right now a war that was started by Hamas. 

If you want to bring stuff up from the past as justified excuse then your the one taking the high morale ground. 

Those things in the past where wrong and no wrong justify doing another wrong. 

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

Just now, Fernando said:

a war that was started by Hamas. 

A war as far as I know takes two armies.

''It is an occupied peoples right to fight the occupiers'' UN Charter.

2 minutes ago, Fernando said:

If you want to bring stuff up from the past as justified excuse

OK, well then fuck the bible - it all happened in the past didnt it ? Its now thats important. 

Oh and dont accuse me of hating Isarel/jews I have three jewish friends who despise their government and what theyre doing -two are season ticket holders.

Think we'll leave it there mate - though I rcommend doing some reading also perhaps on religoius cults

Have a good day

[Fernando 6,608]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

A war as far as I know takes two armies.

''It is an occupied peoples right to fight the occupiers'' UN Charter.

OK, well then fuck the bible - it all happened in the past didnt it ? Its now thats important. 

Oh and dont accuse me of hating Isarel/jews I have three jewish friends who despise their government and what theyre doing -two are season ticket holders.

Think we'll leave it there mate - though I rcommend doing some reading also perhaps on religoius cults

Have a good day

Going back in time and pointing the blame does not make two wrongs rights. 

As Col. Tigh from Battlestar Galactica said:

Yeah, you point finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two.

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

3 hours ago, Fernando said:

Going back in time and pointing the blame does not make two wrongs rights. 

As Col. Tigh from Battlestar Galactica said:

Yeah, you point finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two.

 Those episodes are really old, so as you say you cant go way back and use those as historical references.

You do know Battlestar Gallactica isnt a documentary ?

[Fernando 6,608]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

 Those episodes are really old, so as you say you cant go way back and use those as historical references.

You do know Battlestar Gallactica isnt a documentary ?

Yes I know, but I thought that line was good for your argument. 

Of bringing blames from past crimes to justify current crimes. 

[Vesper 30,346]

the horrid Trumpian gold tackiness all over the White House is now spreading to outdoors

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

3 minutes ago, Vesper said:

the horrid Trumpian gold tackiness all over the White House is now spreading to outdoors

Looks like Ceacescus palace. We know how the people dealt with him...

[Vesper 30,346]

UK Hits New Low

Keir Starmer has been voted the least popular Prime Minister in UK history in a new IPSOS Poll. In this video, I’ll explain: Why Starmer’s ratings have collapsed so fast How he compares with previous Prime Ministers at their lowest point What this means for the Labour government and the future of UK politics

[YorkshireBlue 3,305]

21 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

A war as far as I know takes two armies.

''It is an occupied peoples right to fight the occupiers'' UN Charter.

OK, well then fuck the bible - it all happened in the past didnt it ? Its now thats important. 

Oh and dont accuse me of hating Isarel/jews I have three jewish friends who despise their government and what theyre doing -two are season ticket holders.

Think we'll leave it there mate - though I rcommend doing some reading also perhaps on religoius cults

Have a good day

War in its self doesn’t take two army’s, by that standard your saying they can attack them but if they defend them selfs they are equally to blame, utter horse shit, 

and you can’t just I have Jewish friends as an excuse to not hate Jews, Tommy Robinson has Muslim friends and is still accused of hating all Muslim, that’s a typical response to some one calling some one a racist, “I ain’t a racist I have a black friend” 

also on the topic, calling one person blind from one side to some one who supports another side in its self makes you blind, your both blinded by your own emotions and thinking, which is fine but people are different and have different opinions, and that’s a good thing, to get upset and hostile with people over an opinion makes your no better than the people your arguing against. And the worst part is won’t even give that a second thought because your opinion on the matter is so strong it blinds your from a different way of thinking, Charlie Kirk although I didn’t agree with everything he said but I do on this, “your truth doesn’t matter” that goes for everyone and he was bang on the money.

Edited yesterday at 12:32 by YorkshireBlue

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?

 Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, who uses the name “Tommy Robinson,” is one of the most prominent anti-Muslim activists in the world. A political adviser to a right-wing British party, he is the founder and former chair of a far-right Islamophobic group.

Recently sentenced to 13 months in prison for illegally filming a court proceeding involving Muslims accused of sexual assault and publishing it on Facebook Live, Robinson is more than just an agent provocateur. He’s one of the main forces bringing extremist forms of hate and bigotry from the fringes to the mainstream.

Why, then, are some of his biggest supporters — financial and otherwise — a loose coalition of reactionary, self-proclaimed pro-Israel backers?

According to a recent investigation by The Guardian, Robinson is being bankrolled by a nexus of international organizations. Many of those groups, it turns out, are part of the American right-wing infrastructure and Israel

Times of Israel

His secretary blew the lid on this a while back when she revealed he is paid 8k a month by Israel

[Vesper 30,346]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?

 Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, who uses the name “Tommy Robinson,” is one of the most prominent anti-Muslim activists in the world. A political adviser to a right-wing British party, he is the founder and former chair of a far-right Islamophobic group.

Recently sentenced to 13 months in prison for illegally filming a court proceeding involving Muslims accused of sexual assault and publishing it on Facebook Live, Robinson is more than just an agent provocateur. He’s one of the main forces bringing extremist forms of hate and bigotry from the fringes to the mainstream.

Why, then, are some of his biggest supporters — financial and otherwise — a loose coalition of reactionary, self-proclaimed pro-Israel backers?

According to a recent investigation by The Guardian, Robinson is being bankrolled by a nexus of international organizations. Many of those groups, it turns out, are part of the American right-wing infrastructure and Israel

Times of Israel

His secretary blew the lid on this a while back when she revealed he is paid 8k a month by Israel

it's from 24 January 2019:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-are-us-pro-israel-groups-boosting-a-far-right-anti-muslim-uk-extremist/

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

5 minutes ago, Vesper said:

it's from 24 January 2019:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-are-us-pro-israel-groups-boosting-a-far-right-anti-muslim-uk-extremist/

Still going on apparently. Foreign agent. Mind you look who he attracts. 🤐

 

[Fernando 6,608]

Israel intercepted a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid in international waters. Can it do that? 

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-flotilla-international-maritime-law-7c0b4c31e46e17119accb62d7b6933f3

I think this is messed up from Israel military. They are people who are wanting to help not bringing weapons to Hamas. 

 

[Vesper 30,346]

On 02/10/2025 at 18:50, Fulham Broadway said:

Still going on apparently. Foreign agent. Mind you look who he attracts. 🤐

 

Niko Omilana’s ‘I Exposed Racists’ drop passes 5 million views in 5 days

https://www.dropmedia.co.uk/niko-omilanas-i-exposed-racists-drop-passes-5-million-views-in-5-days/

Digital-first documentary maker Niko Omilana’s latest film I Exposed Racists In London has smashed through the 5 million views mark after just five days on YouTube.

The 30-minute film tells the story of how Omilana disguised himself as a white man using prosthetics (pictured) and then infiltrated the Tommy Robinson-orchestrated Unite The Kingdom March on September 13, 2025. Once on the march, he used undercover filming techniques to record extreme racist language and abuse.

Praising the film on LinkedIn, Spirit Studios co-founder Matt Campion said the film is proof that powerful storytelling doesn’t need a huge budget. He added: “Omilana’s documentaries regularly hit 10 million views. That’s an audience most broadcasters would struggle to command, especially with younger viewers. So the question is: do broadcasters need creators like Niko, or do creators like Niko even need broadcasters anymore?”

Omilana’s YouTube channel has 8.14m subscribers. His videos combine social-first style storytelling and outrageous pranks with hard-hitting political insights – often generating large audiences. I Opened A Fake McDonalds secured 27m views while How I Won The London Mayor Election attracted 19m. 

He is also part of popular creator collective The Beta Squad and is set to appear in the 2025 edition of Celebrity Traitors on BBC1 (starting on October 8th )

[Fulham Broadway 17,389]

Tucker Carlson the next one to be 'assassinated' ?

 

[Vesper 30,346]

Trump Is Steadily Pushing the Republic Toward the Edge of Oblivion

The administration has entered its most anti-Constitutional phase yet. We must call a regime that’s a danger to our way of life what it is.

https://newrepublic.com/article/201058/trump-dangerous-autocracy-crackdown-rights

 

It is well past time to connect the dots. The Trump administration’s assault on democracy has entered a new and dangerous phase. Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do, and what many of us warned was coming. He is at the head of a political movement that has long aimed to demolish American democracy, and he and his inner circle of supporters are now backed into a corner where they have few options but to double down. In the next phase of this corrupt takeover of America’s governing institutions, the Trump administration is certain to expand on its already substantial control of both the system of justice and the corporate media, and it will use this control to suppress dissent and spread still more disinformation. Whether the GOP’s plan to destroy American democracy for good will succeed can’t be known. What those who still believe in the promise of America should do is clear.

Dot number one is the conversion of federal law enforcement and the system of justice into an instrument for punishing enemies of the regime and its leader. The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, just days after President Trump said that Attorney Pam Bondi should prosecute him along with other political adversaries, takes us a giant step toward this objective. This radical action is not surprising for a man who appointed many of his own personal defense attorneys to top positions within the Department of Justice. It really doesn’t matter that the case against Comey is unlikely to result in a conviction. Trump’s adversaries will have already gotten the message that federal law enforcement is now a thoroughly political instrument of the leader and the ruling party. That is how corrupt autocracies work.

Dot number two: the executive order declaring “Antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization.” As an article published on the website of the libertarian Cato Institute pointed out, “antifa” is not a formal organization but rather “an idea”—the way Taoism or Crossfit or “going keto” are ideas—and it declared the move “idiotic on multiple levels.” The point of the order is to follow through on the hateful rhetoric with which Trump and many of his followers responded to the horrendous murder of Charlie Kirk. The administration intends to use the coercive power of federal law enforcement to attack all those who disagree with its political views on the pretext that to disagree with the ruler is to invite “terrorism.” With the administration’s attack on the Soros-funded Open Society Foundation, this weaponization of the DOJ and FBI is already well underway.

Dot number three is the deployment of the U.S. military against (so-called) domestic enemies. This began with the deployment of the National Guard and now includes various orders and declarations that make clear that Trump expects to use the military to apply coercive pressure against large sectors of the American population. The transformation of ICE into a federal police force largely outside of traditional law enforcement is a connected part of this project.

Dot number four is the conversion of mainstream media into regime-compliant propaganda and disinformation providers. The big story last week wasn’t the cancellation and (partial) return of Jimmy Kimmel. It was the clear declaration, long foretold, that antitrust regulators now work not for the American public but rather for the advance of Trump administration interests, which include the consolidation of America’s mainstream media industry into the hands of a small number of Trump-boosting billionaires. The sale of TikTok (with a Trump-loving billionaire in charge), the ongoing elevation of Fox News into the semiofficial party-state broadcast network, and other data points—including the involvement of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in a $50 billion buyout of Electronic Arts, completes the picture. The creation of these media oligopolies will impoverish and misinform the public, which is exactly what authoritarians want.

Dot number five is the capture of the corporate sector. As predicted early on, this has proved the easiest part of the authoritarian project. CEOs with MBAs trained in the shareholder-value theory of management are, all too often, pushovers for autocrats. You just point to the “bottom line” as you enlist their support in depriving the public of its rights. They have no clue that you’ll be coming back later to shake them down too.

Dot number six is the reduction of the legislature to a plate of Jello. As long as Republicans control both chambers of Congress, this mission is done and dusted. The Constitution places the power of the purse in Congress; this Republican Congress has handed it over, along with every other matter of substance, to the president. Congress has also always had the power of oversight. This Congress isn’t just wearing blindfolds; it has poked its own eyes out so that it won’t have to witness the epic levels of corruption and self-dealing at the highest office.

And dot number seven, which is to remove any opposition in the form of expertise by decimating the federal government, has been underway ever since Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, and his 22-year-old minions went on their chain saw rampage through the federal government.

While we have arrived at a dire moment, make no mistake: Now is not the time to curl up in despair. We have work to do—institutions to defend, pro-democracy organizations to support, lawsuits to pursue, corruption to expose, and midterm elections next year.

The same forces that have brought us an antidemocratic movement have succeeded in undermining key institutions: the judiciary, the integrity of religious institutions, and the guardrails of one of our two political parties. If we want better outcomes, we can start by learning how those institutions have been undermined and commit ourselves to the process of restoring them.

Last December, Politico published a terrific piece by the Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas, who lived through and documented Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s methodical process of state capture—and the pushback, which is ongoing. It is well worth a read. It takes time for the autocrat to consolidate control, she reminds us, so it is vital to remain active and engaged. She advises that we focus on strategic and broad-based actions that have appeal beyond the professional classes.

She tells us to take a step back from identity politics and purity politics and work with other like-minded people and organizations, even if we don’t agree on everything. She reminds us that nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democratic principles. “America will survive the next four years,” she writes, if those who support democracy “pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.”

[Vesper 30,346]

The Economics of Complicity

How Israel Is Buying the Destruction of Gaza

https://www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-economics-of-complicity/

 Reserve Israeli soldiers register for duty in northern Israel on October 7, 2023

Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, have changed many things in Israel. Among the most worrisome developments since then has been the near disappearance of people’s resistance to some of the worst excesses of Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration. 

For some months before the attacks, an unprecedented number of Israeli reservists had been refusing to serve in the military, part of a popular protest against the government’s threats to overhaul the judiciary and dismantle the country’s democratic institutions. Military reservists, who form the backbone of Israel’s defense establishment, were leading this resistance. Thousands had declared their unwillingness to serve under the ultra-right-wing government and what they saw as an increasingly authoritarian regime. Senior military officers, veterans of elite units, and Air Force pilots announced that they would refuse orders. It was the most serious crisis of military insubordination of the last several decades.  

The movement represented not merely political opposition to authority but a fundamental challenge to the automatic compliance that had long characterized Israel’s pervasive military culture. From a social perspective, this was a particularly compelling phenomenon, with the politicization of a broad swath of the public around legal and political issues that are often overlooked. 

But after October 7, the very same pilots who on principle had refused to take orders now began carrying out a strategic bombing campaign targeting a largely unprotected civilian Palestinian population. In effect, they agreed to execute Netanyahu’s directive to turn Gaza into “rubble.” Within days, and then for weeks and months, tens of thousands of Israelis actively supported, or participated in, military operations that amount to some of the most severe violations of international humanitarian law in recent history. The brutality of the war and the use of starvation as a weapon, among other things, have led multiple researchers and organizations to conclude that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as a genocide, in Gaza.  

Yes, there have been protests against the government’s campaign, and yes, some reservists—several hundred, we estimate—are refusing to serve, at the risk of a prison term. But the military reports having no problem carrying out its missions because of noncompliance. According to a poll conducted in March by Tamir Sorek, a professor of Middle East history at Pennsylvania State University, 82% of Jewish Israelis surveyed supported expelling all Palestinians from Gaza (and 56% favored expelling Arab citizens of Israel). General acceptance of the military’s mission has been maintained, in other words, despite both the growing scale of the government’s crimes against Palestinians and its continued onslaught against Israel’s democratic institutions.  

No doubt, the attacks of October 7—and their cruelty—and Hamas’s other crimes since have traumatized Israelis; the notion that the State of Israel was a safe place for Jews has been shattered. But the dramatic transformation of many people’s position from resistance to a form of tacit compliance also demands a fuller explanation.  

A New Currency 

How does a democratic society move so rapidly from unprecedented protest to silence and arguably, in some cases, to moral, or even actual, complicity in state crimes? In our book The Lexicon of Brutality: Key Terms from the Gaza War (Pardes, 2025), we examined the discursive mechanisms that have enabled public support for the war, and so, too, the crimes being committed in Gaza: the linguistic and cultural tools that normalize the unthinkable and make mass atrocities socially acceptable. Consider, for example, the use of euphemisms or terms that obfuscate harsh realities, like “strategic bombings” and “humanitarian zones,” or the notion that “there are no uninvolved in Gaza.” These ploys implicate the public in state violence even as they facilitate the implementation of government policy. They create what we call “a cage of discourse” by confining thought and restricting the space for dissent. In times of war, many nations rally round the flag—with the result of building up public support for engaging in violent conflict. But the discourse in Israel since October 7, 2023, has also provided legitimacy for a wide variety of crimes: we argue in our book that it has become a main pillar for the government’s attempt to create a criminal society.  

Such was for our argument about the discursive mechanisms the Israeli government deploys. However, that cage does not operate on its own; it is supported by a second, powerful economic mechanism.  

The Netanyahu administration has transformed military service to offer material incentives that purchase not mere compliance with, but also active participation in, atrocities. It has created a war economy that binds the welfare of several hundred thousand Israelis to state-committed crimes, thanks to a tool that is both simple and effective. A new economic currency has emerged in Israel during the Gaza war: the “reserve duty day” (RDD), the state’s remuneration for a day of reserve service.  

The Israeli government commits to paying individual reservists almost 29,000 Israeli shekels (close to $8,800) per month to volunteer for reserve duty. Minimum wage in Israel is 6,247 shekels (about $1,890) per month, and the average salary across all sectors is 14,200 shekels (about $4,300). The RDD thus offers more than 4.5 times the minimum wage and more than double the national average. It is competitive with tech salaries, long the gold standard of prestige employment in Israel. 

The RDD is not merely payment for work over a given unit of time: it is an attempt by the state to purchase the active partnership of citizens in its project to annihilate the Gaza Strip. This is not an entirely new mechanism. A large part of Israeli society (mainly Jewish men aged 21–45) has long been formally assigned to a military reserve unit and could be summoned to service—separated from their daily job, their family, their routine—with compensation. But before October 7, the use of RDD was limited to a maximum of 42 days annually (and the actual average was about 11 days). Reserve service was seen as a genuine civic obligation, and it imposed a relatively small financial burden on the Israeli economy overall. From 2018 to 2023, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute, reserve-duty time amounted to no more than 0.1% of total working hours for the entire labor force.  

Today, though, the scale of military service is unprecedented: according to Israel Defense Forces data, in 2024 some 300,000 reservists participated in an average period of service of 120 days. To deal with this huge number and its toll on both reservists and their families, the army has introduced what it calls “open orders,” allowing reservists to work minimal hours for the military while receiving compensation for both their military service and their daily civilian job. The state has also introduced additional bonuses and social services for reservists, as extra compensation for longer service spells.  

The RDD is, in essence, a public bribe to encourage private individuals to enroll in Israel’s military gig economy. This is a significant innovation in modern warfare economics, considering that the Israeli army has historically been a people’s army, with no mercenaries; it is a systematic way of purchasing citizens’ compliance through a sophisticated design of freelance work. An article in the Israeli economic daily The Marker exposed “a whole world of WhatsApp groups where people seek to do reserve duty.” The open-order system allows reservists to effectively double-dip by maintaining partial civilian employment while receiving full military compensation.  

It’s a very flexible arrangement, too. One 34-year-old reservist described to The Marker how soldiers he knows used RDDs to pay for various goods and services—in this case, meat for their unit’s barbecues: they simply registered their butcher as a reservist entitled to 30 days of reserve pay. “A parallel economy has developed here,” the reservist said, with RDDs functioning as a recognized currency. The gig model has extended beyond traditional employment relationships to create new forms of economic participation. 

A growing network of interests is capturing more and more segments of the population, as each additional participant increases the reach and the value of the system, deepening collective involvement in government policies. Active reservists represent about 16% of the relevant population (meaning, mostly Jewish males aged 21–45, minus the ultra-Orthodox, who do not do military service). Today, many of them still serve for long periods and are directly enrolled in the war economy. Their extended social networks encompass a much larger share of Israeli society.  

Incentive as Control 

This economic transformation functions as both an incentive for individuals and a means of control for the government. In return for the compensation it gives out, the state receives far more than just military labor to execute its policies; it also acquires partnership, support, and social legitimacy. The RDD functions as currency and contract, creating an economic bond that ties an individual’s welfare to the state’s military operations, even if those involve crimes. And so here is an economic cage, on top of the discursive one—together, the two trap Israeli society by incentivizing it to follow the government’s political designs, in this case for the destruction of Gaza. 

Some critics in Israel have argued that the deployment of reserves appears to be inefficient, that the army command is using the RDD and open-order mechanisms without any rational planning. We think instead that this is not a bug, but a deliberate feature of co-optation. It represents an integral component of a political strategy designed to deepen civilian involvement in military operations. The mechanism of recruiting public participation through purchased labor serves multiple functions simultaneously. It provides manpower, creates economic dependence, and generates social complicity in systematic state crimes. The broader the participation, the wider the human network of material interests invested in the commission of those crimes.  

The psychological and social dimensions of this economic cage are equally important. The reservist earning high monthly wages will find it difficult to criticize the crimes they participate in or witness. Their family, benefiting from a stable and respectable income during a time of economic uncertainty, will also have weaker motivations to oppose military operations, even if those involve systematic atrocities. Friends will be less inclined to criticize those sacrificing their personal life even as they profit from it. The social circles of each reservist—family, friends, colleagues, neighbors—become indirect stakeholders in the war economy. This creates a web of complicity that extends far beyond direct military participation to encompass entire communities whose economic welfare depends on the continuation of the military’s activities.  

And the RDD is only one component of a broader war economy that Israel has built during the Gaza conflict. Additional economic incentives include extras for extended periods of reserve service (a 10%–20% bonus on base pay per day of service above 60 days annually), free psychological treatment, complimentary healthcare, and free vacations at various Israeli resorts. The system also includes private contractors, for example those hired to destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza.  

According to the BBC, Israeli bulldozer and excavator operators earn premium rates for these activities, with contractors compensated up to $1,500 for every house destroyed in the Gaza Strip. Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, nicknamed “the Jabaliya Flattener,” represents a new category of war-crimes entrepreneurs: demolition contractors. These relationships extend the economic model beyond traditional military service, creating additional constituencies with direct financial interests in the continuation of armed operations while expanding the social network of those who profit from systematic destruction.  

The effectiveness of this economic cage relies on the protracted erosion of other opportunities and the systematic dismantling of the welfare state. The war has devastated key economic sectors while creating a climate of uncertainty that discourages private investment and employment. The scale of this destruction is substantial and is expressed in a recession in leading sectors, including high-tech, and in the large number of those workers or academics who have left the country for long-term relocations since October 7. Meanwhile, credit-rating agencies such as Moody’s have downgraded Israel’s sovereign debt. The Israeli welfare state has continued to crumble, and education and healthcare expenses now consume growing portions of household budgets. In this changing economic environment, the Israeli state’s new gig-like form of military Keynesianism provides a crucial compensation mechanism, the difference between economic stability and financial distress, especially for those groups that have been harmed by decades of neoliberal policies. 

Our preliminary analysis of data from the Bank of Israel reveals that as Israeli exports drastically decline and large parts of the labor force are enlisted (and therefore unable to contribute to production), fiscal spending by the government is fueling household consumption. Thus, the RDD serves not only social, psychological, and micro-economic functions; it also has a macro-economic purpose by supporting Israel’s economic growth despite the ongoing war. That, in turn, is of crucial importance to Israel’s position in the global economy, and an attempt to shield it from sanction by international rating agencies and lenders. 

Meanwhile, as traditional employment becomes more precarious, military service appears increasingly attractive, regardless of its potential criminal dimensions. Reserve duty becomes what the sociologist Noa Lavie describes as “a successful gig with social prestige.” It is economically viable and socially respectable in ways that address both material and status concerns even as it normalizes participation in state crimes. Any criticism of military operations becomes a criticism of friends, neighbors, and family members who participate in and profit from them.  

The broader implications for Israeli society are profound. The traditional citizen-soldier model maintained clear distinctions between the civilian and the military spheres; military service was a civic duty, not a gig. When some of the most attractive economic opportunities in a society exist within military structures, and when military operations generate the income necessary for middle-class stability, the boundary between civilian and military dissolves. And when military operations then involve war crimes and other crimes, society becomes structurally invested in the military’s criminal policies. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis now directly dependent on this system, as well as on the broader social networks they represent, constitute a powerful constituency for the continuation of the Israeli government’s policies in Gaza regardless of these policies’ strategic effectiveness, any moral considerations about them, or international legal obligations.  

Complicity and the Social Contract 

This transformation’s long-term implications extend far beyond the current conflict: more than a temporary wartime adjustment, it could represent a permanent shift in the social contract between the Israeli state and its citizens. And it raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of democratic governance when substantial portions of the population have a direct economic interest in the perpetuation of war crimes and other abuses.  

At its worst, this development could spell the unification of Israeli society through crime. That would be both a sociological phenomenon and a political reality—the birthing of a collective mentality that politicians can act upon. Of course, members of Israeli society differ in values, beliefs, and political views. But crime has now imposed itself upon them, and through economic (and discursive) mechanisms, it has unified them. The RDD is just one of those mechanisms—and it is hardly an accidental byproduct of war; instead, it has been intentionally cultivated by parts of the leadership.  

This is not the first time the Israeli government has used economic incentives to recruit citizens into criminal activity. During the Nakba in 1948, after the expulsion and flight of more than 750,000 Palestinians, the Israeli state redistributed the Palestinian lands and homes it seized to bribe a young Israeli society. One of us, Adam, wrote in his book Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property (2024) that an “integral part of the Israeli public participated in the plunder” and that “This made the pillagers into partners in crime, stakeholders in the non-return of the Arabs, and involuntary supporters of a specific political policy.” Most Israelis still deny this.  

Nor is Israel alone in rallying public support for criminal state policies through economic incentives. In Hitler’s Beneficiaries: How the Nazis Bought the German People (2007), Götz Aly demonstrates how the role of economics was at least as significant as that of ideology in Nazi Germany. The plunder of Jewish possessions enabled the Nazis to systematically enhance standards of living for ordinary Germans, and Germans reaped material advantages daily from the exclusion of Jews from society. Similarly, Ümit Kurt writes in The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (2021) that “The fate of the abandoned properties in Aintab proves that the transfer of wealth in the form of plunder as well as expropriation was an inextricable part of the genocidal process.”  

Israeli society is not inherently criminal: the crimes of the current government in Gaza that we are denouncing are neither a natural byproduct of Israel’s formation nor an integral part of Zionist ideology. But like Turks or Germans in the early twentieth century, Israelis today are being manipulated by what the historian Mary Fulbrook called “processes” of complicity in her book about Nazi Germany, Bystander Society (2023). The Israeli government is not only destroying Gaza. Through the RDD mechanism, it is fundamentally altering the country’s economy and society. It is creating a financial dependence on the state’s commission of crimes that may prove irreversible long after the current conflict ends.  

---

Assaf Bondy is a labor sociologist at the University of Bristol who researches the political economy of employment relations.

Adam Raz is a human rights researcher and historian. He works at Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research and is the author of Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property.