Netanyahu fires Gallant; DOJ attys demand US criminal probes of Israel crimes – National & International News – TUE 5Nov2024

First, here’s a link for those looking for minute-to-minute election coverage tonight. 

Boeing workers end strike after approving contract.

Israel: Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

DOJ attorneys demand prosecution of Israelis and Israeli-American dual nationals.

NATIONAL NEWS

Boeing workers end strike after approving contract 

The machinist union representing workers at Boeing’s Pacific Northwest assembly plants has ended a 7-week strike after 59% of its members approved a new contract offer. The offer includes a 38% wage increase for workers over the four-year life of the contract. This means that production of the 737 Max, 777 and 767 at the Everett and Renton, WA, plants can resume. After being shut down for so long, it will take a couple of weeks to get production back to normal. Other plants have also been idled due to supply chain issues created by the strike.

The strike cost Boeing about $100 million a day in lost revenue, which has only added to the company’s chronic and mounting financial woes. The company has not had a profitable year since 2019, and its losses since then have totaled over $33 billion. Last month, Boeing announced 17,000 job cuts and said more could follow. They also plan to raise $35 billion, $10 billion through loans and $25 billion through stock sales.

Money only gets you so far

Plugging financial holes will not be enough to turn things around for the aerospace giant. They also have a long way to go to recover from the immense reputational damage in recent years. In 2018 and 2019, two 737 Max crashes killed a total of 346 people, increasing scrutiny of the company’s quality controls. Just this year, there was the mid-flight door plug blowout in January, followed by numerous whistleblowers exposing Boeing’s toxic safety culture. Finally, there was the embarrassing spectacle this summer when Boeing’s Starliner capsule malfunctioned, stranding two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station.

Gautam Mukunda of the Yale School of Management summed up Boeing’s core issues very well. For decades, Boeing has been “squeezing every stakeholder, squeezing every employee, every supplier to the point of failure in order to maximize their short-term financial performance,” Mukunda said. “That is bad enough if you run a clothing company. It is unacceptable when you are building the most complex mass-produced machines human beings have ever built”. 

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Israel: Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant 

Following increasingly public friction, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sacked his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Israel’s military and political leadership have clashed publicly and privately on numerous occasions since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began 13 months ago. These disagreements have nothing to do with the morality of the campaign, but rather with strategy. Gallant and other members of Israel’s military establishment have widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s desire for “total victory” in Gaza is “nonsense” (as Gallant himself put it recently). Netanyahu’s plans for a prolonged military campaign and occupation in Gaza are also seen as unsustainable. 

Gallant and others have recognized that despite Israel’s superior firepower, Hamas cannot be defeated militarily. Without a political solution, Israel’s costly military endeavors will come to nothing. Both Gallant and IDF chief Herzl Halevi have increasingly expressed frustration with the lack of clarity on military objectives with respect to Gaza, and more recently with Lebanon.

An October memo from Gallant to Israel’s war cabinet demonstrated his view that the war has gone off the rails. “The current situation in which we operate, without a valid compass and without updated war objectives undermines the management of the campaign and cabinet decisions,” Gallant wrote.

Gallant’s dismissal comes one day after one of Netanyahu’s close aides was arrested for leaking information that resulted in sabotaging ceasefire talks. Netanyahu has denied involvement, but it is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu orchestrated this leak to keep the war going and keep himself in power.

DOJ attorneys demand prosecution of Israelis and Israeli-American dual nationals

Gallant and Netanyahu butted heads politically even before the Gaza campaign. In the summer of 2023, Gallant vocally opposed judicial reforms pushed by Netanyahu and his far-right government. Israel’s military leadership feared the reforms would diminish the (nominal) independence of Israel’s judiciary. This appearance of an independent judiciary has helped to shield individual members of Israel’s military from international prosecutions for war crimes, a principle known as complementarity. 

Earlier this year, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan sought arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of various war crimes, including extermination. He also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders, but all three have since been killed. 

Recently, attorneys working for the US Department of Justice have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Israeli officials and citizens. In an October 21 letter, the attorneys cited actionable offenses including:

• The killings of US citizens by Israeli citizens and soldiers in recent years.
• Israel’s illegal settlement project in the West Bank, supported by the state of Israel and US citizens and organizations.
• Numerous well-documented war crimes committed by Israeli forces in Gaza, and crimes of torture against detainees.

The letter specifically mentions that “US courts have jurisdiction over the more than 23,000 US citizens currently serving in Israel’s armed forces, along with IDF members or other Israeli officials that travel to the United States”.

Like Israel’s citizenry, a large percentage IDF members have dual citizenship, with many having American, British, Australian, and European passports. The possibility of IDF members potentially facing prosecutions in their second countries has been coming up more frequently in recent months. Should such prosecutions occur, it would have a serious chilling effect on Israel’s ability to recruit and retain military personnel.